by Kendra Weisbrod

An explanation of different types of exercises and benefits

While any and all types of exercise are beneficial to one’s health, the best workout regimens incorporate different types of exercise. Exercise is categorized into four primary types and each emphasizes a different element of physical fitness.

Aerobic Exercise

Aerobic (a.k.a. cardio) helps give your heart and lungs a good workout. Aerobic exercise, also known as cardiovascular exercise or “cardio” for short, includes exercises such as jogging, running, cycling, swimming, and dancing. These exercises increase your heart rate and breathing and are important as they give your heart and lungs a work out! Additionally, aerobic exercise helps to lower blood pressure and blood sugar levels, burn fat, and boost mood.

Strength Training

Strength training is essential for maintaining muscle that the body loses naturally with age. With age and inactivity, the body loses muscle mass. Therefore, strength training is important to maintain or build muscle mass, strength, and tone. Increased strength may improve your ability to complete functional activities such as carrying groceries, or getting up from a chair or the floor. Moreover, strengthening may stimulate bone growth to prevent osteoporosis, as well as reduce stress at joints to improve pain related to osteoarthritis. Strength training can be completed with various types of equipment such as weights, resistance bands, or body weight (i.e. squats, lunges, push-ups).Flexibility exercises – like Yoga – improve your overall joint health and range of motion.

Flexibility Exercises

Flexibility exercises involve stretching muscles such as with yoga. These exercises are important to overall physical fitness as they can improve range of motion at your joints, as well as reduce the risk of injury during other activities.

Balance Exercise

Balance exercises are particularly important as we age in order to help prevent falls. Balance exercises can improve your ability to stabilize and control your body. While balance exercises are beneficial for all age groups, they are most valuable to older adults because balance often gets worse with age which can lead to falls.

Kendra Weisbroad is a licensed Physical Therapist.
She treats patients at the OrthoCincy location in Edgewood.