Health & Wellbeing - Are intense workouts essential?

..for weight loss? By Heather Smith

When I suggest you improve your fitness, what image flashes through your mind? I imagine it’s a hard and fast workout which leaves you gasping for breath and dripping with sweat. It seems that these types of workouts are associated with what it means to be fit. And if you’re put off by the idea that this is how you have to exercise if you want to lose weight and get fit, then I have excellent news for you –these kinds of workouts are not essential! I often find myself conveying the importance of resistance exercise, and this is because resistance exercise is repeatedly shown to have the most rounded overall positive effects for health and fitness. It is also because resistance exercise tends to be the most overlooked, or mis-interpreted. A resistance program which asks you to take a proper rest between exercises can be really effective when you’re aiming to lose weight. This said, there is a place for getting out of breath too – although perhaps not to the stage encouraged by many of these mega intense workout routines (unless you love it, of course, then it becomes a different question). If you have a history of diligently slogging through these hard and fast workouts, you may well find that approaching exercise differently is likely to be the key to reaching your fitness, weight loss, posture and pain related goals. Exercising for the after effects of the workout rather than the calorie burn during the workout could well get the scales moving. www.fitbiztraining.co.uk

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