Exercise has many benefits and is one of the best things you can do to maintain your health. Exercise aids in fat loss, muscle growth, and decreases risk for many diseases, even some cancers. Some people believe they’re too young, or too old, or too skinny, or too heavy. Unfortunately, they’re all wrong, you can exercise at any age, or at any size, and it will benefit you in some way.

Exercise has positive effects on your brain in many different ways. When you exercise you are improving your memory, and decreasing your stress, anxiety, and depression. Exercising regularly improves health in other organs such as your heart and lungs. When you exercise your body releases serotonin, and dopamine, both give you a feeling of happiness and motivation that can lead to a boost in your confidence and make you more social.

Exercise makes your muscles bigger and stronger by creating little tears in your muscle fibers. The fibers then fuse  back together as shown in the picture to the left. There are little tears on the muscle after exercising, however, following a rest period the tiny tears will create a fuller muscle tissue. Exercising also makes your bones stronger by reducing the rate of bone loss and reducing the risk of a fracture. If you workout you will also reduce the risk of life threatening events such as heart disease, stroke, and even some cancers by 30% to 40%. Exercising daily can prolong your life expectancy. Exercising just 75 to 150 minutes a week can keep you alive for nearly four more years. To get the best results, you should try to drink more water, eat healthy, and get more sleep.

Even with all of these positive benefits there are still people that don’t exercise because they think it will damage their body. Many of those people that won’t work out think their joints will be damaged if they do, but they will actually be strengthened if they do the exercise correctly. Studies show that exercise builds the muscles around the joints and strengthens the bones included in the joint. Another reason people don’t exercise is because of a lack of time. People may think they don’t have time when they’ll waste hours on their phone or hours watching TV daily.

At Andale High School we have weights options for both spring and fall semesters that are helpful to our students even if they don’t play sports. Working out on a routine every day with correct technique is a huge reason for Andale’s success with athletics. Most students can pass this class as long as they show up and try their hardest; attendance is crucial! Our daily routine includes: a structured warm up in the auxiliary gym, then we walk over to the weight room and set up for our lifts. Following set up we start the clock and do our main lifts, after our main lifts we have an auxiliary lift. The clock is set anywhere between 48-52 seconds, this helps with proper recover time following a main lift. As soon as our auxiliary lift is over we can get ready for our next class. Everybody in a weights class has improved in strength, speed, physical fitness, in their thinking or possibly all of them. In conclusion exercise is a crucial part in many peoples lives and can drastically change you for the better in so many different ways, if you don’t exercise I highly recommend you try it out!