Healthy exercise for adults means:
Move 2.5 hours per week, moderately intensive and/or intensively intensive:
- Moderately intensive is, for example, walking, cycling, swimming, and dancing.
- Your heart will beat faster and you will breathe faster.
- Heavy intensive, for example, running, football, fitness and martial arts. You start to sweat and get out of breath.
- Spread the activities over different days.
- 2 times a week activities/exercises that strengthen your bones and muscles.
- This can be done with exercises, strength training, jumping, climbing stairs, and fitness.
- If you are older, you can also recommend balance exercises, such as standing on one leg, lunges, yoga and taichi.
- Not much sitting still.
Are you moving more often, longer or more intensively than these recommendations? That will increase the positive effects on your health.
What are the benefits of exercise and sports?
Regular exercise is healthy and also fun for many people to do together. If you exercise a lot, your muscles, lungs, heart and blood vessels get used to working. You feel physically and psychically fitter and you have more energy.
Benefits of moving are:
- You can relax better and have less stress.
- Exercising works well with gloom, depression, and anxiety.
- You can sleep better, you are less tired and get up more easily in the morning.
- You get stronger muscles and bones and a better skin.
- It is good for your blood pressure and cholesterol.
If you move, you have less chance of:
- overweight
- mental health problems
- diabetes mellitus
- cardiovascular diseases, such as a heart attack or stroke
Are you moving a lot (more than the advice)? Then you also have less chance of:
- breast cancer
- colon cancer
In the elderly, exercise also reduces the chance of:
- physical limitations
- spiritual decline
- dementia
- bone fractures
- Do not sit still for too long
Sitting a long time in a row is not good for your health. It increases the risk of illness, even if you exercise regularly.
If you sit still for a long time, you have a greater chance of developing diabetes and cardiovascular disease. It appears that metabolism changes when sitting for a long time: the effect of insulin is disrupted.
It is therefore important to prevent a long sit down:
- For example, walk for half an hour or stand for a few minutes.
- Try to move as many moments as possible: take the stairs instead of the elevator, go for a walk in the lunch break, stand up and make a phone call.
