Sport is good for your health!

That’s the main reason that comes to mind when you ask yourself why you should do sport: because it keeps you fit! By practising a sporting activity, you can have a positive impact on a whole host of aspects of your health.

Whether you opt for endurance or muscular endurance sports, the benefits of sport for our general well-being are undeniable. Let’s take a look at the different benefits of sport for our physical condition and our morale!

Health Benefits of sport

The list of health benefits of sport is as long as your arm: better heart function and blood activity, increased muscle mass, reduced body fat, joint and bone maintenance, reduced stress, reduced risk of cancer, benefits for the brain such as improved sleep… In short, doing sport will help you live longer and in better shape.

Doing sport will help to improve your mental state and banish stress and other negative thoughts. It’s a time to think about yourself, to reconnect with your body and your mind.

Through physical activity, your body will secrete endorphins that will give you a great feeling of well-being, sometimes to the point of addiction! In any case, by taking part in a sporting activity, you’ll be able to keep your mind off the gloom and doom of everyday life: above all, don’t deprive yourself, we all need to unwind! These sensations of pleasure and inner well-being will also boost your self-confidence and self-esteem.

Sport is good for your heart

Losing weight isn’t just about looking good, it’s also about protecting and preventing your heart from cardiovascular disease.

The heart is a muscle and, like any trained muscle, it gets stronger. Through physical activity, the heart becomes bigger, heart rate and blood pressure gradually decrease, and the walls of the blood vessels become softer. Sport therefore helps to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke. Belly fat is the most dangerous for the heart, and it is mainly endurance activities that encourage its loss.

By doing sport on a regular basis, you attack your deep-seated fat, while at the same time increasing the volume of your muscles. As a result, your figure will gradually become slimmer and you’ll feel better in your movements. Faster, longer-lasting, stronger… it’s all good, isn’t it?

Sport helps regulate weight

There’s nothing worse than a sedentary lifestyle to affect our weight. As we all know, practising a sporting activity is a great ally when it comes to losing those few extra kilos!

Of course, exercise alone is not enough to bring about lasting weight loss. If you want to lose weight, you need to combine sport with better eating habits. Be careful, too many restrictions combined with intensive exercise are not recommended! For lasting weight loss, it’s best to take things one step at a time and to proceed gently.

To give yourself the best chance of success, why not get some help? A sports coach can be your ally in avoiding wrong movements and injury, as well as helping you target the areas you need to work on. With the help of a sports coach, you can learn to practise the exercises that are most effective for your body, in complete safety.

The benefits of sport for the mind

We’ve all experienced that feeling of well-being that comes over us after taking part in a sporting activity. Sport triggers a natural hormonal secretion that leads to a feeling of serenity and even euphoria after a good session.

These hormones are known as endorphins, or happy hormones, and are released by our brains after a session of sport, encouraging us to do it again and again.

If sport is practised consciously, with respect for our abilities and acceptance of our limits, it can bring a feeling of well-being and reduce the effects of stress on our bodies.

A stronger bone structure

A sedentary lifestyle takes its toll on our bone structure. Fortunately, there’s a simple and effective way of remedying this: physical activity! One of the most interesting yet little-known benefits of sport is its impact on our skeleton.

Regular exercise helps to improve bone density. It’s thanks to the contractile movements of the muscles you use during exercise that your bones are actively strengthened. Our bones depend, of course, on our diet and the quality of the minerals we consume, but they also depend on the muscular resistance we develop during physical exercise.

Wolff’s famous law takes this reasoning a step further by explaining that our bone structure goes through phases of formation and resorption in line with the demands we place on it. So the more we move and activate our bodies, the stronger our bones become. Appropriate physical activity is therefore a simple and effective way of preventing age-related bone discomfort.

Sport, a quality stress reliever

Stress is certainly one of the scourges of modern society. Stress is an inherent part of our daily lives and cannot be avoided. However, we can put in place practices that enable us to cope with this stress by minimising the damage as much as possible.

The benefits of sport do not stop at the physical sphere alone. Practising a sporting activity is an excellent way of regulating your stress. People who take part in regular physical activity are much better equipped to cope with the stresses of everyday life.

Indulging in a session of sport several times a week provides a real break and allows you to return to your daily routine with renewed energy. Keeping your body in tip-top shape has a host of benefits for your mind!

What’s more, on a physiological level, the simple act of practising a sporting activity allows us to secrete endorphins, which guarantee our well-being and serenity. The benefits of sport are sometimes more profound than we can imagine!

Sport, just for fun!

What if you took up sport just for the fun of it? You don’t necessarily have to have kilos to lose or someone to impress to take up a sporting activity. You can do yourself good by thinking only of yourself and only of yourself!

This feeling of pleasure will vary according to the sport chosen and each person’s expectations: the thrill of extreme and/or speed sports, the satisfaction of improving your own performance without having to compare yourself to someone else, the pleasure of touching your feet with your legs stretched out after hours of yoga, the pride of staying 30 seconds in a sheath exercise without feeling like you’re dying, the joy of climbing the stairs while being able to talk at the same time, sharing a great moment with friends in a team sport…

There’s no shortage of these simple pleasurable moments as you practice, and in the end that’s all we ask! Enjoyment is the key to regularity and therefore to your progress and well-being.

Sport, other questions

Do you have to do sport every day?

Everyone is free to organise their sports schedule according to their constraints and desires. You can do 15 minutes of sport a day, or 3 sessions of 45 minutes a week! It all depends on your objective. If you want to keep fit and feel supple and alive in your body, 15 minutes a day will be enough. If you’re looking to lose weight, you’ll need to opt for longer sessions that tap into your reserves!

The secret is to vary your sessions (cardio, muscle strengthening, stretching, relaxation), and the second tip is to practise progressively, so don’t go in like a brute – be kind to yourself and your body. And the last tip: enjoy! It’s the only thing that can help you to be regular!

How long before you see the effects of sport?

As you can imagine, everyone is different and reacts differently to sports sessions. But on average, with 3 45-minute sessions a week, you can feel the effects after 3 weeks, such as less breathlessness on the stairs. To see it physically takes between 1 and 2 months, so get going and hang in there!

“Seeing it is one thing, but feeling it is quite another. If you want to feel good thanks to physical activity, the time is shorter, or even immediate, thanks to the production of endorphins. After a session of sport, you feel better!

It’s still essential to eat a healthy, balanced diet, keep regularly hydrated and, it can’t be said often enough, get a good night’s sleep! Put all this together and your quality of life is bound to improve 😉

When is the best time to exercise?

Morning, noon or evening? That’s the question! There’s the morning team, who enjoy the peace and quiet and wake up their bodies, and then there’s the evening team, who aren’t afraid to do a bit of sport before going to bed… so what should you do? There’s something to be said for every moment of the day.

Above all, it’s up to you to find YOUR rhythm, the one that will enable you to keep physical activity in your schedule.