Meeting the recommended guidelines is clinically proven to increase lifespan and reduce risk of a variety of diseases, injuries, AND, helps you recover faster from illness and injuries.
Light activity helps you with small stabilizing muscle strengthening and reduces risk of repetitive and insidious injuries like back pain.
Strengthening helps keep muscle and joints healthy. Even if you get injured, you would recover faster, along with many other benefits like lower risk of dementia.
It’s safe to say that across the board, even getting a LITTLE BIT more movement is associated with significant health benefits.
First and foremost, like any behaviour change, you should be prepared for ups and down, and slowly work on changing things and your behaviour pattern over time! You could try some of the following:
Make it easy for yourself to engage in these activities. Time is a big issue for a lot of people, you can go to the gym in your condo instead of a larger gym. Park farther and walk or run to your destination. In winter, join a sports team or drop in classes at your community center.
Strengthening doesn’t just have to be weights at the gym (although you can totally do that if you’d like). You can also do bodyweight exercises at home, follow youtube tutorials and such. You don’t even need to leave your bedroom to do this effectively!
Arjun Patel, PT, MScPT, MCPA is an orthopedic, neuro, and vestibular physiotherapist. He is the director of Blue Space Clinic Physiotherapy and sees complex cases on a daily basis. He is also an adjunct lecturer at the faculty of medicine at University of Toronto.
To learn more about Arjun and our clinic, click here!
