How to Start Exercising and Improving?

How to Start Exercising and Improving? - CONTENTS

1. Why Should I Exercise?
2. Exercising from Home—Pros and Cons
3. How to Choose a Suitable Activity?
4. How to Track Your Performance?
5. Analyse Your Performance with the Right App
6. Smart Bracelets vs Fitness Bracelets

Why Should I Exercise?

Many people start the year with the resolution to improve their fitness but, despite good intentions, their best-laid plans never seem to work out. Perhaps the error is waiting until 1st January to start exercising, when there are plenty of activities that don't need any equipment. For starters, you could try some basic movements like push-ups, crunches and various stretches. When you have perfected these, you can gradually add fitness aids, such as dumbbells, kettlebells or gymnastic balls. Or you can grab your trainers, and go for a run or a walk (ideally somewhere in the countryside).

The primary motivation for fitness beginners is to lose a bit of weight. But weight loss is not the only benefit of exercise—it's one of the most effective means of preventing serious illness, especially heart and vascular diseases. Not only does working out regularly improve your physical condition, but it also supports your psychological well-being. This usually takes effect much faster than weight loss, and you quickly fall in love with the buzz you get from exercising.

Regular movement is just one part of the puzzle when it comes to changing your lifestyle. Try to cut out sugary drinks and don't visit fast-food restaurants so often, or, even better, at all. It's a good idea to get some support, especially initially, to make sure you don't slip back into your old ways. This doesn't have to be a friend or family member—smart devices make the perfect companions. Unlike humans, they never forget about you and are created to cheer you on as you make your way towards physical excellence.

7 Practical Tips to Make Sporting Activities More Enjoyable

• Create a good training plan (with the help of an app or a trainer).
• Do not forget a varied and balanced diet.
• Motivate each other with family or friends.
• Get at least basic sports equipment and tools.
• Use mobile apps.
• Take inspiration, for example, by watching illustrative videos.
• Don't overdo the start and divide your training and rest time evenly.

Exercising from Home—Pros and Cons

Exercising in the comfort of your own home brings with it a number of undeniable benefits that you won't enjoy in public sports facilities or gyms. On the other hand, it has some disadvantages that may not suit everyone. Learn the advantages and disadvantages of exercising at home.

Make a Training Plan and Stay Motivated

Beginner and advanced athletes require different training. Everyone has their own fitness goals and ideas about exercise, so creating a plan is an individual affair. The first thing to do is set an achievable goal—do you want to lose weight, increase strength, or gain muscle mass? You can then adapt the type and length of individual training sessions to help you meet your target. Avoid getting bored by keeping it fresh and changing your training plan regularly.

Make exercise a regular part of your life that you look forward to and reward yourself for hitting your targets. Some people might be motivated by a slice of cake at the end of the week, others by a new item of clothing or an electronic gadget—whatever makes you happy—you deserve it!

How to Choose a Suitable Activity?

If you want to lose weight, you'll need to burn fat. And that involves stepping out of your comfort zone. You'll sweat a lot, you'll get out of breath, and it might hurt a bit. Make sure to include aerobic exercise (a.k.a. cardio) into your training plan as it supports a healthy heart, blood vessels and respiratory system. Even better—it burns loads of calories. Cardio activities include running, rowing and aerobics, which you can easily do from the comfort of your home thanks to  treadmills and rowing machines.

The Best Exercises to Do at Home

Exercising at home doesn't have to be boring, and you can do it without special equipment. Try exercising using just your body weight by doing classic push-ups, squats and sit-ups. Do the exercises in a series of repetitions (reps), and keep a record of the results. If you want to move forward, gradually tighten the demands on yourself by increasing the frequency of repetitions or the number of individual exercises. Yoga is an excellent all-body activity, as is Pilates. To diversify exercise at home, you can also use various fitness aids from gymnastic balls and dumbbells to expanders and cardio machines.

The Best Strengthening Exercises

Once you start exercising, you'll soon discover that you can't just strengthen one part of your body over and over again. The key is to strengthen your entire body, especially your core (muscles that stabilise and control the pelvis and spine). A strong core not only provides essential support for your back but also helps prevent injury. Workouts with an exercise wheel or a balance pad are ideal for strengthening the whole body. If you prefer to train without equipment, try squats with a jump (burpees) or a plank—both are easy to do and get plenty of muscle groups working.

How to Run Correctly?

It might seem that running is just the latest fad. However, the benefits of running are indisputable—it helps us relax, reduces stress, and helps get our bodies into better shape. Running is a cheap and accessible way to exercise. You just need to get the right pair of running shoes and open the front door.

If you are new to running, it is best to alternate light jogging with walking. During the first month, your body needs to get used to a new regular activity and build a solid base. In the first week, start with a 30-minute run/walk that you can repeat every other day. Listen to your body. If you feel exhausted or have any unusual pain, take the day off instead of rigidly sticking to your training plan. Once you've got the first month in the bag, you can increase the length of your running while reducing your walking. See how it goes—if you feel like it, try running a few faster sections.

Once you've been running for six weeks, the habit is already programmed in your body. Now you can confidently make an investment in some better quality running shoes or an electronic device to monitor your heart rate, pace and distance.

Swimming Gets You in Shape

Swimming is an ideal sport for weight loss—you don't put strain on your joints and strengthen all the muscles in your arms, legs, back and chest. It's up to you what pace and style you choose, but you'll lose the most weight when swimming crawl or butterfly—up to 480kcal an hour.

Fight Cellulite by Playing Squash

If you have cellulite, squash or perhaps badminton are ideal activities. With plenty of lateral flexions, lunges and fast starts, these two racket sports alternate calm and fast phases. Be aware that changing direction frequently and suddenly puts an increased load on joints and tendons. But, if squash or badminton appeal to you and you can play at a high tempo, you will lose weight rapidly—up to 560 kcal per hour of play.

How to Track Your Performance?

How can you maintain long-term motivation to stick to a training plan? There are several ways. From our own experience, we recommend forming a small training group with your friends. It isn't necessary to practice together all the time, but one or two group workouts a week are perfect for keeping you motivated. If you prefer to exercise and play sports on your own, you definitely need a fitness band or smartwatch. Let's look at these devices and see what they can do.

Heart Rate Measurement and Other Health Functions

Smartwatches, like fitness bands, usually offer heart rate measurement. It is the basic indicator of training intensity that is key to achieving your desired goals, such as burning fat. If you are sporty, you will undoubtedly benefit from a smartwatch with more advanced features, such as training effect calculation, recovery time, adaptive race-targeted training plans, a virtual coach during training, pre-workout exercise suggestions, and more. Other functions can include a compass, altimeter, thermometer, tachometer, barometer (to determine the atmospheric pressure), oximeter (shows your blood oxygenation level or VO2 Max as an indicator of your physical condition). You can find more about advanced features in our Get into Shape with a Smartwatch.

Some manufacturers (Garmin, Huawei, Honor and more) offer smartwatches that analyse heart rate variability, from which they calculate the stress your body is under. This is not to be confused with psychological stress, but about the overall stress on your body, which, alongside physical exercise, is influenced by diet, illness and other stress factors. This gives us information about our overall fatigue over recent hours and days and helps us understand and plan our training.

Some smartwatches give you the chance to take an ECG on the spot, while others can even estimate blood pressure. Many watches allow you to enter the amount of fluids you drink to give you an overview of your hydration. Women can also use menstrual cycle tracking to get a variety of useful data. Smartwatches are also credited with saving people's lives. In an emergency, fall detection or an SOS button can alert our nearest and dearest, call for professional help, and sometimes send precise GPS coordinates.

Body Battery Tells You How Much Power You Have Left in the Tank

Garmin smartwatches are perfect for seasoned athletes. They come packed full of handy features that use physiological data to recognise our capabilities more accurately than any professional trainer could.

The first important tool is your Stress Level score, which uses current cardiac variability to evaluate the overall stress load on your organism, especially in terms of physical (somatic) stress. Unfortunately, due to the name, many customers believe that it is a direct indicator of psychological stress—but mental well-being is only partially reflected in the Stress Score.

Although the Stress Level feature is absolutely invaluable, we do need to consider our recent activity, rest and exertion when interpreting it. That's why Garmin has developed a much more intuitive Body Battery feature that shows the user's remaining energy with a score from 1 to 100, where a higher number means a larger energy reserve. This function is perfect for planning future training sessions. When you have a low Body Batter score, it's best to choose a shorter or less intense activity or to schedule a rest day for complete recovery.

Analyse Your Performance with the Right App

Garmin, and its Garmin Connect app, completely revolutionised the approach of manufacturers by realising that the hardware—the smartwatch itself—is only half the battle. The second piece of the puzzle is incredible software support.

You can use Garmin watches fully without needing a smartphone or PC. Activity logs are analysed in detail with graphs plotted on the watch's display. You can analyse heart rate curves and bar graphs in detail. After synchronising with Garmin Connect for mobiles and Garmin Express for PCs, you can view all your data in graphs and compare your values and personal bests. If you want to learn more about your athletic performance and take enjoyment of exercise to an even higher level, you won't go wrong with a Garmin.

You can also track your friends' activities through the Garmin Connect app. And if you feel like anyone is slacking, you can create a sports challenge to motivate each other to reach targets. Garmin Connect also comes with a virtual coach and adapted workouts based on your recent performance, which you can download to Garmin watches. Are you improving beyond expectations? The plan will encourage you to perform even better. Did you miss a training session? No worries—the plan will help you get back on track.

The Strava platform brings together active athletes across the entire smartwatch market. Strava serves as a training diary, suggests challenges, counts the kilometres you've run or walked and, most importantly, acts as a social network. Follow your friends and send them kudos when they post an impressive performance. You can even follow top athletes and celebrities, such as Chris Froome, Laurens Ten Dam and Jenson Button, and learn a trick or two from ultramarathoners, including Radek Brunner. Tens of millions of users around the world actively use Strava—give it a go—it's a superb community and a great way to stay motivated.

One of the biggest attractions of Strava is Segments—sections of road or trail created by members where constant battles to be number one take place. The app collects records of everyone who has moved through the area (you can opt out) with a GPS device and shares their performance on Strava. You just need to run through the segment as part of your usual run.

No athlete wants to keep multiple sports diaries, so make sure your primary app (e.g. Garmin Connect) connects easily with Strava, and all your performances will be automatically synchronised and in one place.

Smartwatches vs Fitness Bands

You can tell smartwatches and fitness bands apart at first glance by their appearance. Fitness bands feature a thin strap with an embedded display that fits inconspicuously around your hand, whereas smartwatches are similar in size to classic watches with a round or square body and a wider strap.

However, the critical difference lies in the range of features, measurement accuracy and access to virtual training plans. Smartwatches lead the way in all these areas, especially sports watches. Understandably, basic smartwatches costing the same as fitness bands don't have many features. On the other hand, beginners probably don't need the myriad of data that Garmin's most expensive products provide.

Why Get a Fitness Band?

Fitness bands are an excellent choice if you are trying to lose weight and understand that you need to get moving but are not naturally sporty. Fitness bands are simple accessories that monitor and record your movement—even the most basic can count your daily steps, which is a great place to start.

Smart Sports Watches

A premium smartwatch is an excellent choice if you're serious about sports. You'll get a watch with a colour display featuring an optical heart rate monitor and a built-in GPS receiver. A few models don't come with a GPS receiver, so you have to pair the watch with your smartphone to view the route. If we look at features, we could write a book just listing and describing them. As wearing a smartwatch is like having a small science lab on your wrist, we'll try to stick to the main highlights, essential features, parameters, and pros and cons.

Smartwatches are a fantastic tool and a wonderful technological "gadget" for athletes who live active lives. Due to the size of the display, you can use your smartwatch as a full-fledged display to help you navigate when cycling. You can also connect other sensors (watt meters, speed sensors, cadence sensors, rearview radar with tail light) to get more performance data and increase safety.

Exercising from home saves you time and money—you just need to stay motivated and train regularly. If you choose the suitable activity for your abilities and lifestyle, exercise will help you stay fit and healthy, plus you'll enjoy plenty of mental health benefits. You don't have to spend several hours a day exercising—it's better to move vigorously for a few minutes than stay sat in front of the TV or computer all day. Just make a plan and get started—the sooner, the better!