7 Incredible Benefits Of Regular Exercise For Teenagers
A fit and healthy body is a prerequisite for a healthy mind and life. Regular exercise plays a vital role in shaping one’s life in a healthy manner.
Doctors recommend a compulsory hour of daily physical activity for teenagers. This is to keep them healthy and fit. Regular exercising can help teenagers in controlling their mood swing, push their overall growth better, sharpen their brains and skills and improve overall appearance too. Read on below to know how much exercise should a teenager get and the recommended exercise for teenagers!
Top 10 Healthy Exercises For Teenagers:
Teach your teenager to fix up a time for his daily exercise session. Just like his meals and school, fitness should also form a part of his regular routine. This helps set the body clock time for exercising.
Here are 10 exercises you should ensure your teenager indulges in:
1. Walk:
This is one of the best exercises for teenagers.
- Walking burns calories from almost every part of the body.
- It is perfect for toning the body.
- Encourage your teenager to walk as often as possible.
- Tell him to always take stairs and go for brisk morning walks.
[ Read: Productive Activities For Teenagers ]
2. Jogging:
Jogging is a great way of increasing the heart rate and burning more calories.
- Instruct your teenager to always brisk walk first and slowly increase speed before starting to jog.
- It is simple, easy and can be made fun too if you or his friends accompany him.
3. Swimming:
Swimming is yet another excellent physical activity that doesn’t just refresh your teenager’s mind but also tones his body.
- It engages almost all main groups of muscles like abs, legs, back, hips and even shoulders.
- It helps lose and maintain weight.
- This can be a great hobby too.
4. Cycling:
This is another best exercise for teenagers that can make them lose weight and stay fit.
- It largely recruits muscle groups like legs, hamstrings, calves and quadriceps.
- It is enjoyable, especially when done with friends and family and pollution free too.
[ Read: Confidence Building Activities For Teenagers ]
5. Dancing:
Your teenager might think he has two left feet, but that should not stop him from trying this feel good exercise. One of the best ways of toning the body is losing weight and having fun at the same time.
6. Butterfly Breath:
This exercise tones the sides of the body and builds endurance. Ask you teenager to:
- Stand tall with his legs a little apart from each other.
- Get him to stretch his arms out, lifted in the air.
- Now touch the right knee with left elbow while exhaling out.
- Inhale while returning to start position.
- Repeat this on both the sides.
7. Push Ups:
Push-ups are great strength training exercises for teenagers.
- It is known to ward off signs of depression and anxiety in teenagers.
- It is advised to learn the correct technique of doing push-ups from someone elderly, a fitness expert or a trained teacher of gym.
8. Sideways Bending:
This exercise for teenagers is simple and extremely effective.
- It engages the sides of your teenager’s body.
- It stretches entire sides and back while toning abdominal organs, arms and legs.
9. Crunches:
Doing crunches the right way and under supervision will result into flat abs.
- The lower abdomen is the most difficult part to work on.
- Teach your teenager the right technique of doing crunches; it engages a lot of lower abdomen muscles.
- This classic exercise can be done anywhere without using any special equipment.
10. Planks:
If your teenager is not a great fan of crunches, get him to do planks.
- These too attack abs and lower abdomen.
- Football, soccer, badminton, tennis, basketball, hula hoop, yoga, kick boxing and rising are some more physical activities that make for great exercises for teenagers.
[ Read: Teen Body Image ]
Tips To Remember:
- Always take 15-30 seconds break between each repetition.
- A good exercise session must always start with warm up exercises and end with cooling exercises. This avoids injury.
- Initially supervise and guide your teenager and train him as much as you can. If possible, exercise with him. This helps make staying fit fun.
Benefits Of Exercising For Teenagers:
Here are the many benefits of everyday exercises for teenagers:
1. Controls Weight:
Physical activity supplies more oxygen and uses it to burn the stored fat in the body. This is essential to maintain a healthy weight. Encourage your teenager to walk often. Walking is one of the best ways of controlling weight gain.
2. Strengthens Muscles:
Regular exercises help strengthen muscles of your teenager. Strong muscle means muscle mass. Muscle mass is also known as tissues that are metabolically active. This helps lose weight even when not working out.
3. Strengthens Bones:
Regular exercising would help your teen strengthen his bones and translate into a fitter body.
4. Controls Mood Swings:
Exercising regularly will help your teenager combat stress better. It will lift up his psychological fitness. This results in improved mood, lesser stress and a strong and focused mind.
[ Read: Teenage Stress ]
5. Controls Illness:
Regular exercising will strengthen your teenager’s immunity and boost it. This helps avoid falling sick too often. It controls common health problems like cold, cough and even flu.
6. Sharp Mind:
Regular exercising circulates more oxygen to the brain. This in turn will activate your teenager’s brain and sharpen it further.
7. Healthy Skin:
Regular exercising helps circulate more oxygen and blood in the body. This helps deliver more important nutrients in the body and hence translates into a well hydrated and healthy-looking skin.
Train your teenager to exercise for at least 60 minutes daily. These habits will help your teen lead a healthy and fit life. There is no need to hit the gym at this early age. Support him to try these free exercises at the earliest.
Which of these exercises are your teenagers favorite? Write in and tell us how exercising helped your teenager and in which ways?
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