The Three Best Immunity Boosting Exercises to Keep You Healthy
Looking to keep your immune system in fighting shape this flu season? The best personal trainers in Calgary have you covered with this week's article below.
Keeping your body and immune system in tip-top shape is more important than ever this year given the ongoing health concern COVID-19 presents. While most of us know that regular exercise is good for our body and mind, there is a limit to how much we can work out before we start having the opposite effect we set out to achieve. With flu season right around the corner, here are the three best immunity boosting workouts to help keep you healthy for the rest of this unprecedented year.
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The Three Best Immunity Boosting Exercises to Keep You Healthy
It's a fine balance between boosting your immune system with exercise and making it less effective at warding off viruses and diseases by working out too hard for too long. When we work out for an extended period of time at a high intensity, our body interprets that as stress to its system and produces two stress-related hormones, cortisol and norepinephrine. These two hormones lead to a decrease in the number of cells that provide your body immunity — including white blood cells — both during and after the workout. This effectively suppresses your immune system, making you more likely to catch a cold or get sick.
So what exercises can help you avoid this double-edged sword and boost your immune system? Let's take a look at the top three.
1. Walking/hiking
It's no secret that having low psychological stress is key to a well-functioning immune system. For those who have chronic mental stress, they're more at risk for heart disease and infectious diseases. Walking or hiking helps boost your immune system on two fronts. First, it helps keep your body active providing it with the physical conditioning it needs to support a strong immune system. Second, it helps combat depression and results in better mental health for those who partake in this easy and low-intensity form of exercise.
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2. Strength training
Strength training involves either lifting weights or your own body weight, such as doing push-ups or pull-ups. This form of exercise can easily be overdone, which is why you need to be mindful of how hard you're pushing your body when executing these types of workouts. If you've never done strength training before, it's recommended you start low and go slow. Strength training will help boost your immune system by making your body stronger, while also reducing fat, increasing your metabolic rate, and improving your confidence and overall mental health.
3. HIIT (high-intensity interval training)
If you don't know what a HIIT workout is, then it's probably best to start off with the two exercises above before progressing to this one. High-intensity interval training — which used to be called circuit training — requires you to go as hard as you can with an exercise for about 30-60 seconds, then rest for that same amount of time, and then move onto another exercise, with you emptying the tank for another 30-60 seconds. And so on and so on until the circuit is complete, which usually takes about 15-20 minutes in total. While intense, the shortness of HIIT workouts helps safeguard against degrading your immune system as touched on before, while also providing the physical and mental immunity-boosting benefits you need to help keep you healthy.
Help your body be its best
With COVID-19 and flu season set to collide, doing everything you can to keep your immune system functioning at a high level is more important than ever. The three exercises listed above will help do just that, whether you're into bodybuilding or brand new to working out. And as always, if you ever need a bit more help, our personal trainers are standing by to help you with your weight loss or fitness goals.
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