How Mobility Training Can Keep You Fit
There are many different reasons to start exercising. The physical benefits are obvious. People who engage in regular exercise live longer and are more likely to be at a healthier weight. If you keep fit, you’re less likely to require a disabled parking permit later in life or to suffer ill health such as diabetes or strokes. However, when deciding on an exercise routine, it’s important to keep it varied, and mobility training should be an important part of your regime.
When you’re looking to start exercising, experts usually focus on cardiovascular exercise, often known as cardio, and strength training. Cardiovascular exercise can be thought of as exercise that raises your heart rate and gets you sweaty. Examples include running, cycling, and swimming as well as any of the cardio machines at the gym, including the stepper and the elliptical. Strength training can be thought of as exercise that involves weights to build muscle. This includes using kettlebells, weightlifting, and using weights machines at the gym. It also includes exercises such as planks, which put your muscles under pressure, encouraging them to get stronger.
It is not as often thought of, but mobility training is very important for keeping the body healthy. Usually when people get injured while training, it can be traced back to a lack of mobility. This is often a big problem for athletes who focus on strength training, such as bodybuilders. You’ll notice that they’ll have no problem bench-pressing a crazy amount of weight, but they won’t be able to raise their hands over their heads or touch their toes. The key to a successful and healthy exercise regime is a balance of all kinds of exercise.
Mobility training can be thought of as exercise that focuses on the stretching and movement of the body, especially its joints. Joint pain and problems are incredibly common as people age, so if you focus on mobility now, you’re less likely to suffer problems as you get older. Common forms of mobility training include yoga and Pilates, both of which use different forms of exercise to focus on the body and its small movements to improve mobility.
Yoga is an ancient form of exercise that has its origins in India. It focuses on poses that allow the body to stretch and grow stronger, depending on the type of practice you’re doing. The best thing about yoga is that there are so many different types. There is hot yoga, which is performed in a really hot room to encourage the joints to be looser. You can also do yoga for pregnancy or just an everyday yoga class for beginners that focuses on getting your body to be able to stretch more. Yoga also focuses strongly on the mental benefits of exercise and ensures that practitioners gain a spiritual peace and happiness from doing the exercise.
Pilates is a more modern mobility training exercise, but also offers many benefits. It was established in the 20th century and focuses on small movements and breathing to strengthen the core of the body. While it does not have the same spiritual aspect as yoga, it has been shown to improve strength and to lessen pain in people who have back issues. It has also been shown to help elderly people improve their balance. You can also perform Pilates on a machine that further emphasizes the strength aspect to the exercise.
When deciding on which exercise to focus on to improve your mobility, it’s important to decide what your body can handle and to take your improvement slowly. While the benefits of mobility training are obvious, it is like other exercise in that you can’t just jump into the deep end. If you’re signing up to yoga for the first time, for example, seek out a beginner’s class and speak to the instructor before you begin so they can keep an eye on you to make sure your technique is good. With most kinds of mobility training, the specific techniques are very important and you need to focus on the smaller movements in your body. Form is incredibly important in keeping the body healthy and mobile, and even the smallest move away from the correct technique can lead to injury. It’s important to not attempt mobility training alone as it’s the type of exercise that is best suited to expert guidance.
When you start mobility training, you might feel odd leaving a workout session not being exhausted and in some kind of pain, but as you keep going with it, you’ll find that your body responds well to being coached and taken care of to ensure other exercise doesn’t get the opportunity to injure you. By keeping it mixed up and fresh, your body will appreciate the chance to stay safe, strong, and mobile.