Exercise: healthy and fun? or just boring?

By Daniela Ortega Amaya

Nowadays, most people belong either to a gym or a sport club. However, being healthy does not only mean practicing a sport every week. It is the result of the amount of quality effort that a person put in, (Taylor, T) obtaining different benefits such as reducing the risk of diseases.

There are many studies that guarantee that doing some physical exercising, whether if you take a walk for 15 minutes, or you have an intense training, it actually works. According to Scientific American, when a person exercises, the heart muscle contracts frequently and forcefully, which increases blood flow through the arteries. Additionally, it lowers the risk for certain cancers (breast and colon), because overweighed people are more likely to develop insulin resistance, which makes the pancreas produce even more giving as a result, high level of insulin that are linked to cancer.

Moreover, exercise reduces the risk of osteoporosis, in other words, if you do not do anything, your fracture risk is much greater. Therefore, working out your muscles, will be an exert force on the bones and also the supporting of those parts of the body.  In addition, something important for all of us, exercise makes you smarter, because it increases levels of some molecules in the brain which boosts cognition; this means that “the more you exercise, the more you are going to have changes in the brain” (Scientific American).

Now, leaving aside the medicinal conceptions and regarding the amusing part, people have to take into account that they can start to exercise at any time and the most important issue to have in mind is that they have to find a kind of training that makes exercise fun and not boring.

With the last information, CrossFit arrive to California as a workout program emphasized in military training and Olympic weightlifting (Health Fitness Revolution) and nowadays there are already 9,000 CrossFit affiliated gyms worldwide. This means that, people are demanding this type of exercise, not just because it is an intense cardio and strength training, therefore burns more calories in a shorter period of time, but, people prefer it because the workout of the day (which in a CrossFit box is called “WOD”) is always different, so there is no chance of getting bored, also you will make new friends, and whether you don´t believed it yet, every time you training, you are going to feel in family.

Finally, despite that everything at the beginning is complex, at the moment you make it; you are going to feel incredibly accomplished and stronger. In summary, CrossFit or any other training you feel is the ideal is going to make you feel empowered, and it boosts your confidence and making you feel better than before.