Up until now all the articles have been on nutrition and life improvement.  This article will break the ice for exercise benefits. Instead of getting right to how to do certain exercises and which ones to do it's a good idea to for you to learn WHY you should exercise- be it running, yoga, bodybuilding, sports, etc.  Everyone already knows that exercise is a extremely good thing, depending what your body benefits from the most.  You're all taught that throughout your lives.  This week's article will list a lot of those benefits, some of which you may not have known.  You will also learn a little about several myths about exercise that you may have heard in your time.

This information come from a site I found through Yahoo, eruptingmind.com.  They have a ton of articles on health and fitness that briefly explain the main point of each thing.  Due to time constraints of getting this posted up this site was the best option.  But it does have good information so I may be going back to that place in the future.  Again, the articles aren't very long, but they do get the point across for this week's topic.


Benefits of Exercise

Exercise has many benefits fro the body, and the more of these benefits you know about, the more likely you are to become motivated to exercise on a regular basis.

-Increased Confidence
The more you exercise the more you confidence will increase.  You will become more confident about the health of you body and the way you body looks.

-Healthier Heart and Lungs
Doing aerobic exercise will improve the health of you heart and increase your lung capacity.  As a result you will experience much greater energy levels throughout the day, and feel less tired.

-Stronger Bones
Doing aerobic exercise will help to increase bone density and improve the strength of your joints,  This will help to reduce the risk of your bones thinning later in life, and make you more resistant to broken bones.

-Decreased Stress Levels
Exercising on a regular basis is one of the best things you can do to help decrease stress levels.  People who don't exercise very often much more likely to feel stressed than those who do, and experience higher levels of stress.

-Improved Quality of Sleep
Regular exercise helps you to burn off the energy you acquire from food, so by the time you reach the end of the day you will have burnt off the energy and will fall asleep quicker, having a much more restful sleep.

-Improved Mood
Due to the fact that endorphins are released when you exercise, you can drastically change the way you feel simply by exercising more often.  In fact, regular exercise is something which is often recommended by doctors to patients who are suffering from depression because it is so effective in changing the way they feel.  This is also due to the fact that exercise helps to detoxify the body by improving blood circulation and the functioning of organs in the body.

-Increased Energy Levels
Aerobic exercise in particularly effective at increasing energy levels due to the positive effects it has on the heart and lungs.  Over time, aerobic exercise will help to increase oxygenation levels of blood, which will make you fell much more energetic and lively throughout the day.

-Improved Brain Function
The brain relies on a good supply of oxygenated blood, therefore by exercising on a regular basis the brain is able to receive the oxygenated blood it requires and by doing so can function at an optimal level.

-Less Risk of Developing Disease
certain diseases such as cancer and heart disease can be drastically reduced simply by exercising more.  this is largely due to the fact that regular exercise helps to strengthen the immune system and detoxify the body of toxins, as well as improving blood circulation.

-Less Risk of Injury
The more you exercise the stronger your bones and muscles will become.  This mean that your body will become stronger and less at risk of developing an injury.  however, if you are not careful when you exercise, or try to exercise too much, then you will increase the risk of injuring yourself.


Myths About Fitness

A lot of people get put off from exercising because they have misconceptions about it.  The good news is that most of these beliefs aren't correct, and so they shouldn't dissuade you from starting up an exercise program.  For example, some people think that you need to be in a lot of pain to get any benefit from exercise, or that you need to dedicate a lot of free time to do it.  Both of these assumptions are false.  Here are some other fitness myths to watch out for.

-If You Work Out you Can Eat As Much Food As You Like
Just because you are exercising it doesn't mean you can eat junk food all day long.  The key to losing weight is to eat a healthy balanced diet in addition to your exercise program.  this means eating less sugary foods and more green vegetables.

-To Get Fit & Lose Weight You Need To Go To The Gym Every Day
You don't actually need to go to the gym to get fit.  As long as you eat a healthy diet and are fairly active throughout the day you keep yourself in good shape.  As little as 30 minutes of exercise a day, five days a week should be enough for most people to keep control of their weight.  In addition to this, you don't have to go to the gym to work out, as many workout routines can be done at home with a pair of weights.

-If Women Lift Weights They Will Get Big Muscles
some women are afraid of lifting weights because they think that they are going to develop large muscles.  What they fail to realize, however, is that they don't have enough testosterone to develop large muscles.  In fact, weight training, regardless of your sex, is an important part of exercise because it helps to accelerate fat loss.

-You Can Burn Fat From Specific Parts Of Your Body
Unfortunately ou burn off fat in one area of your body just by exercising that area.  this can only be done through a combination of aerobic and anaerobic exercise.  Whilst it is true that some exercises will help to tone specific areas of your body, if you want to lose weight you're going to have to do a full body workout.

-You Have To Feel The Pain To Get The Weight Loss Gain
Every exercise you do should challenge you to some degree, but this doesn't mean you should exercise to the point of pain because this could cause you more harm than good.  Ideally, the difficulty of the exercise you do should increase gradually so that you strength your heart, lungs and muscles without causing injury to yourself.

-Muscle Weighs More Than Fat, So Being Fit Makes You Heavier
Although muscle is denser than fat, it doesn't weight more.  The more your muscles become developed, the quicker you will burn fat from your body.  This is why exercising using weights is important, because it develops your muscles and increases the rate at which you burn fat and loose weight.

-Fruit Juice Doesn't Make You Fat & Helps Weight Loss
Whilst fresh juice may have some health benefits, most of the juice you buy in stores is full of sugar and has been been pasteurized.  this means that most of f the vitamins and enzymes within it have been destroyed.  As a result, drinking too much fruit juice can actually cause you to gain weight due to its high sugar content.


This article could have gone into a bit more detail with some of the fact, but it put out the gist of everything with the rest being for you to learn as you go.  I want to point out that "Less Risk of Injury" fact was originally titled "Less Risk of Back Problems" but I felt it didn't go with its following paragraph.  It was an example of preventing injuries, so I put that instead.  I will also mention that this article had some grammar issues.  I had to type the whole thing because for some reason the articles, to include the text, were "pictures".  But I glad I was able to correct some of the mistakes.  Also, i feel I need to do research on the myth of muscle not weighing more than than.  I was told that by my dad a couple time throughout my life ( he used to bodybuild), so even I'm a little dumbfounded.  If that myth is true then I'll edit that section out.

At any rate, I hope you have a better understanding of why you are doing exercises, and if not, why you should do them, along with dispelling some of the myths you may have heard about.  I'd like to reiterate the whole deal about women being afraid to gain muscle.  Plenty of times I've heard women say that to me.   News Flash- you ladies won't.  You'll never be as big as a guy unless you're heavily taking supplements.  Heavily.  Your bodies aren't built for that.  Plus, it takes a very long time to gain a lot of muscle mass.  Sometimes even for a man.
Use this as a small guide to give you motivation to exercise more often or to continue what you're doing.  And as always, if you have any additional tips, comment or testimonies I encourage you to post them here.


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For those who do not know the difference between aerobic and anaerobic exercises, I will give a brief explanation. Aerobic exercises are basically those that get your blood pumping, like jogging and jumping jacks. Anaerobic exercises are meant to build muscles, such as weight lifting.

What I want to say next is from personal thought, that being said please hear me out. If you do get yourself into an exercise routine, make sure that you do some aerobic exercises before doing any strength training. By getting the blood flowing, you are also loosening up your muscles and reducing the risk of injury. This comes from personal reflection from when I took martial art classes --even though there was no weight lifting.

After reading this post, Cyro, I am beginning to see how much I need to put exercise into my routine as college starts up again. I have been lacking confidence, I feel tired in the afternoon, and I am pretty often stressed. Thanks again for sharing this.

I have one question. For those of us who do not have weights around the house, nor go to any gym, are there other way to building muscle? Examples that I would think of would be, push-ups, sit-ups, and chin-ups --all three utilized the person's own weight. Are there more besides my examples?

AuraBlaze : Sorry for the late reply. I don't know of much of the top of my head, but I can do a little research. One I do know of is doing squats. If done right they can condition your leg muscles pretty well. Calf raisers is another good exercise. I will tell you that that while those 3 that you mention are great, there are many variations of them that can build different parts of your muscles depending on what you do. In next week's thread, for example, the topic will focus on pushups. The page I got it from is a Men's Health article on Yahoo and is titled, "How to do the Perfect Pushup". After reading through it I found that it is indeed a great way to do pushups. Needless to say everybody has different bodies, so while this may work for the majority of the people on Earth, there will always be those that get better results from doing a different method of pushups.

So should you decide to look for different exercise to do at home yourself and don't come across good ones remember that you can look up different ways of doing the ones you do know of.