I’m just 1 person balancing my physical health with my mental health. The good news is that workouts help with both.
Obviously, exercise boosts your physical energy, builds your muscles, and tones your body. It can help your circulation, your balance, your maneuverability, your strength. If you’re working out regularly, choose a variety of workouts that target different parts of your body or different muscle groups. Even if you’re working toward a perfect set of abs or the ability to bench press another fifty pounds, you want to keep your entire body fit and healthy.
Exercise helps with stress and anxiety relief, raising your endorphins. Studies have shown that exercise also helps improve your mental clarity and concentration. Workouts that require a little bit of thinking and coordination involved are especially good at this. Cardio kickboxing-type workouts target all of this, which is why I think I love them so much. Imaging anything stressing me out and going through the motions of punching or kicking those things is therapeutic. And layering punches and kicks into complex combinations requires a lot of brain power and coordination to keep up accurately. Jab, cross, front hook, duck, cross, roundhouse kick, back push kick, repeat!
My Week of Workouts
- Sunday (33 minutes): Strong Nation Cardio and Full-body Toning with Aurelio Figari
- Monday (25 minutes): Tae Bo Basics with Billy Blanks (used 1lb weighted gloves)
- Tuesday (37 minutes): Single Dumbbell HIIT with Kristina Earnest (used 7lb weight) *new to me
- Wednesday (30 minutes): Cardio and Core Workout with Jake DuPree *new to me
- Thursday (43 minutes): Sweat Box Workout with Christa DiPaolo *new to me
- Friday (20 minutes): Low Impact HIIT Workout with Abby Pollock *new to me
- Saturday (32 minutes): The Greatest Showman Dance Workout with Kyra Pro + Boxing Workout with Milan Costich (used 2lb weights)
Total: 220 minutes
My lower back hurt a lot Thursday evening, a sign that I pulled a muscle or pushed myself too far (or both). So I took it easy with a low impact workout on Friday that was designed to not stress the lower back. Emptying my dishwasher hurt more than the 20 minute HIIT workout I found! And it definitely got my heartrate up and allowed me to work on my abs a little as well. I saved it to do again for sure.
Photo by Gustavo Torres on Unsplash