Why Active Living?
Exercise is essential for healthy living. To maximize health benefits, experts recommend that you do at least 30 minutes of exercise each day.
Here are 10 good reasons to get started
Physical activity can:
- Benefit your heart health
- Help you to maintain a normal, healthy weight
- Help build strong and healthy bones
- Improve your physical fitness and endurance
- Increase your physical strength and flexibility
- Tone your muscles and improve your shape
- Increase your resistance to infection
- Provide you with a general sense of well-being and improve your mood
- Build your self-esteem
- Give you an opportunity to mix socially and can be fun!
Start Slowly
If you have been inactive for a while, you may want to start with less strenuous activities like walking or swimming at a comfortable pace. Gradually building up your exercise intensity will allow you to gain fitness without causing strain.
Everything Counts
If exercise is usually the first thing you give up when burdened and stressed, you are not alone. But bear in mind that a couple of 10 minute sessions a day will lead to increased stamina and a long list of benefits to the mind, body and spirit. It may be a useful way to help you deal with the physical and psychological demands of a hectic life.
Examples of everyday activities that count include:
- walking up stairs instead of using lifts,
- walking up moving escalators,
- for short journeys, walking instead of driving,
- doing the housework
- DIY and gardening, such as painting or raking leaves.
Get moving!
Walk your way to better health...
Lots of people talk about exercising more, or join a gym but never go. There’s tendency to think about exercise as high intensity; pumping iron or pumping sweat. This can be a bit off-putting and lots of people simply feel that they don’t have the time. That’s where walking comes in.
For general health, experts recommend accumulating a total of 30 minutes of brisk walking on most, preferably all days of the week. That’s it. No long hours in the gym, just 15 minutes to an from College, or half an hour before, during or after your day in Trinity.
Here’s a lowdown on the benefits:
Walking can:
- Help to lower blood pressure
- Help to reduce high cholesterol
- Reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke
- Help to maintain a healthy body weight
- Walking one mile burns around 100 calorie
- Increase bone density and help to prevent osteoporosis
- Reduce the risk of cancer of the colon
- Reduce the risk of non insulin dependent diabetes
- Help osteoarthritis
- Help flexibility and co-ordination and reduce the risk of falls
- Improve self esteem, relieve symptoms of depression and anxiety, and improve mood
- Walking, particularly in pleasant surroundings, and with friends is relaxing and sociable. It can also be an opportunity for some time to yourself!
How fast do I need to walk?
You don’t have to overexert yourself to get the benefits of walking. You should just be breathing a little faster than normal but should be able to carry out a conversation.
Some 30 minute walks from Trinity
- Go out the main gate, down to O Connell Bridge and follow the board walk down one side of the river and back the other side.
- Head out Nassau St. Gate, watch the people in Grafton St as you go and do a lap of Stephen’s Green.
- Go out the Lincoln Gate and head across to enjoy a few laps of the leafy surrounds of Merrion Square.