Being aware of various sub-health symptoms in your body and hoping to improve them through exercise is a very positive decision in itself and deserves recognition.
The feelings of “out of breath and sweating after running a few steps” and “feeling like your whole body is falling apart” are often manifestations of a person’s low basic endurance level during aerobic exercise. The so-called aerobic exercise refers to an exercise method that mainly uses aerobic metabolism to provide the energy required for exercise.
When a person feels short of breath quickly during exercise, it is a sign that the body is less efficient at using oxygen to metabolize and obtain energy levels. Especially if you still “feel loose” during relatively easy exercise, this means that the heart rate rises rapidly soon after the exercise begins, and the circulatory system tries to support the exercise demand by delivering more oxygen-carrying blood to the body, thus producing Strong feeling of fatigue. Even if the circulatory system works hard to deliver oxygen to all parts of the body, the body is still unable to effectively utilize oxygen due to low metabolic efficiency. This is the real reason why even lower-intensity exercise cannot be sustained.
Under this premise, we believe that any exercise with a certain intensity can improve the human body’s aerobic system as long as it increases the heart rate and maintains it within a reasonable range.
According to the latest “Guidelines on Physical Activity and Sedentary Behavior” released by the World Health Organization in 2022, each of us, regardless of age and ability, can engage in appropriate physical activities, and the definition of these activities is very broad.
Among them, adults aged 18-64 years should engage in at least 150-300 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity or at least 75-150 minutes of vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity per week, as well as moderate or moderate exercise involving all major muscle groups. Increases muscle activity to a greater extent. At the same time, sedentary time should be limited and replaced with physical activity of any intensity (including low intensity). Only in this way can human health be ensured.
In other words, even physical activities during leisure time, traveling between different locations, or as part of a person’s work, as long as these activities reach a certain intensity, can be regarded as exercise that can improve health.
This is also the original intention of our watch with built-in [intense activity time] record. Most health organizations recommend that adults engage in at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity per week. Likewise, engaging in at least 75 minutes of vigorous physical activity per week can provide similar health benefits.
What can we do?
● Walk quickly
The subject does not have high requirements for exercise intensity. We believe that we can first consider brisk walking as a means of exercise to reshape one’s aerobic system from scratch. Brisk walking is an exercise that does not require extra time and energy to learn, and the intensity is very light, which is especially suitable for people with poor aerobic foundation to “get moving”.
For exercise like brisk walking, we don’t need to worry too much about speed and distance. If there is an initial goal to be achieved, our suggestion is time – walk briskly and easily for 30 minutes every day. If time or energy does not allow it, then dividing it into two 15-20 minute sections can achieve similar effects. Take advantage of opportunities to make walking a part of your daily routine, such as walking instead of using transportation for a short commute, or walking the stairs instead of taking the elevator. In addition to the time for a single exercise, you can also try to set weekly walking goals, which will also help ensure our long-term exercise.
When doing brisk walking, we would recommend paying attention to your posture and gait, such as maintaining a straight body posture and relaxing your shoulders. Land on the entire ball of your foot and avoid leaning too far toward your toes or heels. If possible, try to maintain a normal stride length and don’t take steps that are too big or too small. If your body gradually adapts to the existing intensity, you can gradually increase your walking speed, walk faster, or even try to start jogging. You can also add some uphill sections to increase the overall intensity of exercise.
● Cycling
If you feel that brisk walking is too monotonous and want to improve your aerobic foundation with some other exercises, then cycling is also a good choice. Very similar to brisk walking, cycling can be used as a low-intensity and sustainable aerobic exercise to improve the body’s aerobic foundation as a whole. In particular, cycling is relatively simple and produces less impact on the human body, making it especially suitable for people who plan to start exercising again.
Some people may think that cycling is a sport that requires special preparation and execution. But if you are just exercising from scratch, then at any time, even if you just ride a shared bicycle for a while, move your body and A higher heart rate also has positive meaning.
Of course, it would be better if you could have a dedicated bicycle for exercise. An entry-level bicycle does not necessarily need to be expensive or high-end. The most important thing is to choose one that is tailor-made for you. Choosing a bicycle that suits your height, leg length, etc. may be more important than any other parameters. With such a bicycle, we can ride for several hours on weekends and rest days, observing the world around us as we move, which is both healing and exercise for the body and mind. Finally, although there are no mandatory regulations in traffic laws, we believe that a qualified helmet is indispensable for cycling.
● Strength training
In addition to some low- to medium-intensity aerobic training, we can also perform some strength training that is more suitable for indoors. Whether it is for professional athletes or beginners, strength training has many benefits:
- Improvement of muscle strength and endurance:
Strength training can enhance muscle strength and endurance, improve muscle resistance to fatigue, and can effectively improve the effect of our aerobic training.
- Improvement of toughness:
Strength training helps improve toughness, which is the ability of muscles to adapt to stretching and twisting. This reduces the risk of injury during exercise while also helping to protect joints and muscles during recovery.
- Improvement of metabolic level:
Increasing muscle mass increases your basal metabolic rate, allowing your body to burn energy more efficiently. This has a positive impact on weight management and overall health.
There are many types of strength training, such as bodyweight exercises such as squats and push-ups, or training with simple equipment such as dumbbells, kettlebells, and elastic bands. For those who are starting from scratch, elastic bands, which require very low initial strength requirements, are perfect for training.
For resistance band exercises, the first step is to choose the appropriate resistance band. Stretch bands come in different strength levels, and a set of bands is usually represented by a different color. Beginners can choose lighter resistance and gradually increase the resistance as the training progresses.
Although the strength requirements of elastic bands are low, as a strength training exercise, warm-up still cannot be ignored. Therefore, before performing resistance band training, 5-10 minutes of easy aerobic exercise or warm-up activities can increase body temperature and joint flexibility. At the same time, pay attention to fixing the elastic band on a stable support, such as a door handle, a fixed frame or a special wall hook, so as to ensure the safety of training.
For the training methods of different parts, you can briefly see the following:
Shoulder training: Tie an elastic band behind your back, hold both ends of the band with both hands, and perform shoulder presses.
Chest training: Wrap the strap around your back and train your chest muscles by pushing forward.
Back training: Fix the strap in front and perform back training through rowing or pull-ups.
Leg training: Tie the strap around the ankle and perform leg training such as side kicks and front kicks.
Butt training: With your legs apart and a band around your knees, perform butt exercises such as side leg raises.
Abdominal training: Kneel on your knees, wrap the strap behind your feet, and perform sit-ups or crunches.
Waist training: Kneel on your knees, wrap the strap behind your feet, and perform side waist training while lying on your side.
In addition to the elastic band training mentioned above, Garmin Connect also has strength training courses for people with different sports foundations. The difficulty levels are divided into: novice-intermediate-advanced. Everyone can choose according to their own situation.
In fact, whether it is low- to medium-intensity aerobic training or strength training, beginners who have just started exercising or have a weak foundation must pay special attention to some principles:
Pay attention to the gradual increase in exercise intensity during exercise. During exercise, you need to gradually increase the intensity and duration of exercise to achieve better results. But at the same time, you need to be careful not to be too impatient to avoid injury. Because once injured, the recovery process may make all previous efforts in vain.
Therefore, we must pay attention to rest and give our body enough time to recover. Everyone who has extensive experience in exercise will tell you that rest is an important part of exercise progress. The body often gains higher capabilities through rest and repair, and overtraining may be counterproductive.
Maintaining a balanced diet is equally important for good health. Especially after just starting to exercise, the human body will be more likely to feel hungry. Increased appetite may lead to more calorie intake, leading to the possibility of obesity the more you exercise. We should pay attention to taking in more high-quality carbohydrates and proteins and avoid excessive intake of high-sugar and high-fat foods.
Turn exercise into a habit. Try to exercise at a fixed time every week and every day to create a sense of rhythm in the brain and body and help us persist in exercising.
If we want to further improve the effectiveness of training, we might as well cooperate with Garmin’s various wearable devices to conduct long-term testing of our various sports and daily physiological indicators. In addition to the familiar heart rate, sleep time and special sports monitoring with various sensors, our device can also monitor the wearer’s activity intensity through the “high-intensity activity time” function and record participation in moderate to high-intensity activities of time (heart rate data is required to quantify intensity).
A weekly high-intensity activity goal can be accomplished cumulatively by performing 10 or more consecutive minutes of moderate-to-vigorous activity in a single session. Minutes of high-intensity activity are calculated as twice as long as those of moderate-intensity activity. In this way, whether the wearer is focusing on one sport or exercising in conjunction with various sports, he can have a summary of his weekly intensity training, and monitor his overall training effect in a more macroscopic manner, so that everyone can Training gets twice the result with half the effort.
