Kinds of Exercise

Aerobic Exercise

This type of exercise is also called endurance or cardiovascular exercise. Any exercise that makes you breathe faster and makes your heart beat more quickly is aerobic exercise. Aerobic exercise is important for the health of your heart and your skeletal system. It will also help increase your stamina and make some everyday activities, like climbing up stairs or mowing the lawn, less tiring and easier to do. Methods of aerobic exercise include running, bicycling, swimming, and walking.

Resistance Exercise

Also called strength training - increases muscle strength and mass, bone strength and your body's metabolism. Along with cardiovascular endurance, muscle strength is what  helps you to do such daily activities as housework. Adequate muscular strength is especially important for  tasks like carrying heavy bags of groceries. Methods for resistance training include free weights, weight machines and calisthenics like push-ups or chin ups where you are pulling against your own body weight. A newer form of resistance training called resistance tubing involves the use of an elastic band that provides resistance to the active muscles.

Flexibility or Stretching Exercises

This kind of exercise focuses on your "range of motion"-how far you can safely bend and stretch your body. Flexibility exercises become more and more important as you age and are helpful in keeping you limber  and able to do tasks like reaching on the top shelf of your kitchen cabinet or bending over to pick up something from the floor. Younger people also benefit from flexibility exercises because many types of sports require a flexible, limber body. Flexibility exercises include many types of stretching and floor exercises-you can even do some simple flexibility exercises while sitting at your desk at work!

More about these kinds of exercises:

• To Learn More About Flexibility Exercise
• To Learn More About Strength Exercise
• To Learn More About Aerobic Exercise