Hey Guys,

In my first secondary school, or if you’re not British, High School, most of our P.E sessions consisted of running track or circuit training, so we were very active, but when I moved schools, the hours were longer, and we only did P.E once a week rather than twice, so I lost that side of my life a bit. However, I did a bit on my own time, but I still didn’t think it was enough. Now that I am out of school, I have been getting back to how I was before, exercising and working on my fitness levels, as well as helping health wise.

Some people have even gone as far as to ask me why I do it so much, and why I enjoy it, and the reason is, it helps me reduce my stress levels, and my anxiety, as it releases a feel good hormone. If you suffer from anxiety, this is a perfect way to decrease it, and bring your levels back to normal. It may not help you as much as it did with me, but it’s a least worth a try!

Walking:

Walking has many health benefits including: strengthening the heart, losing weight, toning up muscles in the body such as your legs (well done captain obvious), as well as boosting vitamin D.

According to many different sources, we should be walking around about 10,000 steps a day, which may seem difficult at first, so you can start with less if it helps.

For walking, I use the app Pedometer, which is free on the play store. It is a great app which works by sensing the movements as you walk, and tells you things such as how many steps you have walked, how long you have walked for (the clock stops when you do), calories lost and the speed in which you are walking.

The app needs to know information like gender, age, and weight, so it can calculate your steps more efficiently.

Here is an example of mine from today:

As you can see, it tells you how many steps you have walked that day, and in the week and the month. You can even look at previous days, weeks, and months to compare. It is a great way to keep track of your progress, but I have to say, it will not be fully accurate, but it is pretty close!

Other Exercises:

The other exercises I do are mainly for toning certain muscles in my body, whether that is in my legs, arms or abdomen. For these, I use the app, 30 Day Challenge, which every day for a month tells you how many of each different exercise to do. There are quite a few levels to complete, and for each you have to finish the 30 days, with each day getting harder and harder, with a few rest days in between for certain things.

The exercises include, Ab training, Bodyweight exercises, Push ups, and Squats. As the days go on, new things will be added to these categories, as well as larger amounts to do, resulting in sweating like mad. I am really sorry to tell you that, but least it shows you it is working.

What you will see:

For each category, it gives you the amount of each exercise you need to do before you can tick off the day, as well as showing you the amount of days done and how many are left to go. It gets more difficult as you go along, but if there wasn’t a challenge it wouldn’t be worth doing.

Final Thoughts:

When I do both of these, I like to make sure that I have music on so I have something else to concentrate on whilst exercising. It really helps and is the perfect distraction from the pain, although you still feel it. Also, it is important to keep hydrated, so always make sure you have water with you or straight after so your body can begin to recover. Oh and good luck!

Chloe Lauren x

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