According to Harvard Health Publishing, “Just like a healthy diet, exercise can contribute to general good health and therefore to a healthy immune system. It may contribute even more directly by promoting good circulation, which allows the cells and substances of the immune system to move through the body freely and do their job efficiently.”
It’s no secret that exercise helps to boost your immune system, but what exercises help the most with your immunity? Here are a few exercises to consider when thinking about your health.
Free Download: Top 5 Exercise MistakesTop 3 Exercises That Boost Your Immune System
It’s important to remember that everyone must start from the bottom when you’re beginning to exercise. Don’t push yourself too much or too far beyond your limits. When you do this, you increase the risk of injury which will keep you from exercising much longer than if you started slow.
1. Strength Training
Strength training, such as push-ups, crunches, and squats are great exercises that can help to improve your overall health. These exercises include movements of the body that stimulate strength and stamina. These exercises introduce a new stressor to your body. Don’t be alarmed though, your body needs this type of stressor to keep your muscles working properly.
When performing these exercises, you are causing microscopic tears in the muscle tissue that the body will then work to heal. The body will learn how to repair these microscopic tears, adapt to the stressor that you are introducing to the body, and as a result, the body becomes stronger.
These are great exercises as well because you don’t need weights to perform these. When you feel the need to add or increase weight with these exercises you most certainly can. This will allow you to grow bigger and stronger while also improving your overall health.
2. Walking
Waking is a great exercise that almost anyone can do. Walking gets your heart rate up and you moving. There have been many studies that show walking is a great exercise to perform to get your health going in the right direction. It provides a number of other health benefits such as lowering cholesterol, and decreasing the risk of heart disease. Even 30 minutes of walking, three to four times a week can greatly improve your overall health and will have you feeling a lot better both physically and mentally.
Your walks can be fast-paced to increase your heart rate and increase the benefit of the exercise. If you want to push your walking regimen further, you can start hiking. Hiking is a great way to get your heart going and with the light weight of your pack on your back and the different terrain you are exposing your body to, it will kick your walking exercise to a whole new level.
Be sure that you’re ready to hike. Begin walking first and then gradually increase the distance and when you’re comfortable with distance walking, you can then begin to add weight to a backpack.
3. High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)
HIIT training is a great workout that you can do to improve your overall health and boost your immune system. HIIT training gets you doing exercises that are usually for a set time, anywhere from 20 to 60 seconds of intense workout.
Once you complete the exercise, you rest for the same amount of time before moving on to the next exercise. The purpose of HIIT training is to increase your heart rate higher and faster than performing slow and steady exercise. HIIT training is great for those that find it hard to incorporate a workout schedule. HIIT training sessions usually only take 15 to 20 minutes to perform.
Most of the exercises that are incorporated into the sessions don’t need heavy weights either. This is by design. Heavy weights are meant to be used slowly. HIIT training is meant to be performed fast and therefore, performing these with heavy weights would lead to injuries. Some of the exercises included in a HIIT training session are burpees, squats, push-up, sprints, and kettle bell swings.
Top 5 Exercise Mistakes (Free Download)
Knowing what not to do is as important as knowing what to do when it comes to exercise and workouts. Being healthy is about taking action to do more of the right things, and fewer of the wrong things every day. Did you know there are certain exercise mistakes that are easy to make and can even cause you to gain weight! Download my free report, Top 5 Exercise Mistakes to help the more common fitness mistakes, and boost your immune system, so you get the results you deserve.