Exercise has many benefits. Exercise can reduce the risk of major illnesses and chronic diseases and can help you lead a healthier and even happier life. Research shows that physical activity can also boost self-esteem, mood, sleep quality and energy, as well as reducing your risk of stress, depression, dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
BASRaT’s Exercise Guides
BASRaT’s Guides to Exercise will help you to safely start exercising or inspire you to try something new. Check out our guide to running and be inspired by our cycling guide to discover the type of cycling that could suit you. here
Motivation
Exercise can reduce your risk of major illnesses, such as heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and cancer by up to 50% and lower your risk of early death by up to 30%.
How much exercise do we need to do?
To stay healthy and get the most benefits, aim to be active daily and achieve at least 150 minutes of physical activity a week through a variety of activities. However, if you currently do very little exercise, any amount is beneficial, start with small amounts and gradually increase the amount you do!The easiest way to get moving is to make activity part of everyday life, like walking or cycling instead of using the car to get around. However, the more you do, the better.
Use our exercise flowchart to check if it is OK for you to exercise. here
Moderate and vigorous activity
To benefit your health, you need to be moving quickly enough to raise your heart rate, breathe faster and feel warmer. You can tell if you are working at a moderate intensity if you can still talk but you can't sing the words of a song.Vigorous intensity activity requires you to work even harder and can bring health benefits over and above that of moderate activity. You can tell when it’s vigorous activity because you're breathing hard and fast, and your heart rate has gone up quite a bit.
Check out this infographic which shows you the benefits of different types of exercise and guides you on the amount to do each week. here
Further exercise guides
The NHS’s Live Well website has many inspiring suggestions on how to fit exercise into your daily life from 10 minute workouts to ideas for exercising together as a family. http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/fitness/Pages/Activelifestyle.aspx