Top 7 benefits of exercise for your body and mind

1.      It Can Make You Feel Happier: Exercising produces a happy hormone called Endorphins. These endorphins minimize the anxiety of exercise by blocking the feeling of pain and are often associated with a feeling of euphoria. It’s observed that on the days one works out their mood is a lot happier and feel more productive compared to the days they don’t.

2.      It Can Help with Weight Loss: Having a full-time job and an inactive life, it’s easy to pile up calories and fat, especially around the belly and the hips. Hence, it’s important to give your body some cardiovascular exercises to keep that weight in check. By running for around 30 minutes, you can burn an approximate of 300 calories.    

3.      It Is Good for Your Muscles and Bones: Exercise builds and strengthens muscles, which protects bones from injury. Strong muscles also give stability and improve balance and coordination. Exercise improves blood supply to the muscles and surges their capacity to use oxygen. Outdoor exercises such as swimming and bicycling can help build and maintain strong muscles and having cardiovascular benefits. Weight-bearing and resistance exercises are the best for bones since they force you to work against gravity. These include walking, hiking, jogging, tennis, and dancing. Resistance exercises, like lifting weights, strengthen bones too.

4.      It Can Increase Your Energy Levels:  – Exercising regularly increases our stamina and strength. This helps daily activities like climbing stairs become easier. It increases energy levels by strengthening the circulation and the heart muscle. When your body becomes more active internal mechanisms like metabolism and blood flow increase.

5.      It Can Reduce Your Risk of Chronic Disease: Sedentary lifestyles increase causes of Chronic diseases like diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, depression and anxiety. You get prolonged life and reduced disease risk with a minimum of 45 minutes of exercising. The first 20 minutes of the workout, if someone has been deskbound, provide most of the health benefits.

6.      It Can Help Skin Health: The sweat caused by working out helps to keep the skin supple and cleans off the pores. It also reduced wrinkles as it maintains healthy levels of the stress-related hormone ‘cortisol’. Furthermore, by toning your muscles helps to reduce the appearance of cellulite.

7.      It Can Help Your Brain Health and Memory: Your brain is no different from the rest of the muscles in your body. Exercise boosts memory and thinking by improving mood and sleep, and by reducing stress and anxiety. It increases heart rate, which pumps more oxygen to the brain. It also releases a plethora of hormones that nourishes the growth of brain cells. Boxing for instance; Sparring or punching a bag sharpens the memory by challenging your mind and muscles to combat each move. Thus, improving hand-eye coordination.

My first class at the Golden Gloves Fitness

The following is an experience from a female member at our fitness gym in Vaughan:

When it comes to workout I have never been fascinated by commercial gyms, in the past, I did gym regularly for three years which garnered no result. My routine was cardio and abs on day one, upper body on day two and lower body on day three and repeat. However, this week, I decided to try out ‘Golden Gloves Fitness’, from the very first step into the gym, I felt a positive and energetic vibe.

The gym is well equipped for the requirements of boxing.

‘Boxing’, being a male-dominated profession it was refreshing to see many females getting trained and some as professional MMA fighters. Alex, the coach has a natural knack for teaching and is very patient yet strict with all his students.

After a quick introduction, Alex pushed the timer at which I had to start punching the smallest punching bag in the room until the end of the buzzer. After a few breaths, I was made to lift light dumbbell weights followed by a body bar workout. To keep the momentum going, Alex pushed the timer again, this time I had to punch a bigger punching bag with the help of gloves, its ideal to get your personal set of gloves but in case one doesn’t have it, the gym provides them to you. After punching the 2^nd bag, I was made to do the second rep of dumbbells, body bars and disk weights along with some squats. Off went the buzzer again, this time I had to punch the 3^rd largest bag on the floor. In the third rep, we ran around in circles with a few stretch exercises followed by dumbbells, body bar and disk weights, additionally a roller to stretch the abs. Buzzzz, it was time for punching the 4^th largest bag and by now I was breaking some serious sweat.

Finally, it was time for some abdominal workout on the inclined bench followed by a series of stretching exercises to ease the tensed up muscles. At the end of that one hour, it was indeed a satisfying full body workout under the supervision of Toronto’s best boxing coach. It is like an indoor boot camp perfectly suited for Canadian snow. The gym is located close to the Vaughan subway station making it easily accessible even by the TTC. I have just enrolled myself and I highly recommend the same for you.

-          Rinku Gala