A Great Time (and a Great Reason) to Vary Your Exercise

By Editorial Staff

Your initial reaction when COVID-19 prompted stay-at-home orders and shuttering of non-essential businesses such as your local gym may have been, How am I possibly going to maintain my exercise routine? Hopefully by now, you've figured out a few workarounds; here's a simple suggestion that can reap big fitness benefits, now and in the post-COVID world: mix things up.

Yep, researchers suggest you're more likely to spent adequate time exercising if you pick different activities, rather than focusing on just one (for example, only lifting weights or running on a treadmill / elliptical) day after day.

In fact, they suggest mixing at least three different activities into your exercise routine per week after learning that people who were more likely to meet weekly goals (total time spent exercising) participated in more types of exercise. People who spent less time exercising generally participated in fewer types of exercise by comparison.

Among people who reported exercising, walking was the most popular activity (30 percent of respondents), followed by bicycling (9.5 percent), dance (7.5 percent), treadmill walking and running (7.4 percent), and weightlifting (6.9 percent) - but overall, a whopping 47 different types of physical activity made the list. The study appears in the research journal Translational Behavioral Medicine.