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8 benefits of fitness training outdoors

Written by Fiona

January 30 2018

Weather your training for a marathon or working towards to becoming a personal trainer, here are 8 ways in which the outdoors can give you the push you need to step up your routine.

8 reasons to exercise outdoors

See the sun: Exercising in the daylight helps to improve feelings of well-being. Research has shown that even just 15 minutes of walking in the daylight, especially in the winter months, can vastly decrease your chances of being depressed. Imagine how much better you will feel if you spend more than 15 minutes each day running, walking or even swimming outside.

Enjoy nature: Another study, conducted by the University of Glasgow, revealed that exercising outdoors surrounded by greenery can reduce the risk or depression by as much as 50%. Running or mountain biking through woodland or walking through a park, even if it’s set amid a busy city, helps to boost feelings of self-worth and increase self-esteem.

See so much more: Exercise of any kind is good. However, if you work out in the gym or swim laps of a pool you will see the same walls or stretch of water over and over again. When you run, cycle, swim or walk outdoors you’ll enjoy an ever changing landscape and scenery. This makes exercise far less boring.

Get from A to B: Instead of seeing exercise as something extra you have to do, why not aim to reach various destinations, such as the office, the shops or a pub to meet friends by exercising? Whether you walk, run, hire a city bike or ride your own bike you will feel the benefits of the exercise and cut the cost of transport.

To be social: It’s much easier to enjoy the company and chat of a friend if you are training outdoors. There is much more space to jog side by side or side two abreast on a mountain bike. Gyms, fitness classes and swimming pools do not allow for such easy socialising as exercising outdoors.

Fresh air and rosy cheeks: Working up a sweat while fitness training in the outdoors makes you glow. If you exercise indoors you’ll end up red faced and sweaty but exercising outdoors brings a rosy cheeked glow to your face. It’s also great to breath fresh air, rather than stale indoors air, and feel the breeze on your cheeks.

Burn more calories: If you are running, walking or cycling outdoors you will meet natural obstacles such as hills, rough terrain and all kinds of lumps and bumps of the terrain. You’ll also need to work against the wind at times. All this will burn more calories because you have to work against these obstacles.

All over fitness: Another benefit of the unpredictable and ever changing terrain is that it will give you an all-over body workout. You need to stabilise more muscles to stay upright and you will be forever changing your position to cope with the ground beneath your feet or tyres.

What benefits have you discovered while keeping fit outdoors?

 

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