Exercise word find Physician finder Related health topics from Living Well Related links

Exercise Is Very Cool

Exercise makes your heart happy
The heart is a muscle. It is the strongest muscle in your body—pumping blood every minute of every day. Like all muscles, the heart needs exercise to stay strong. Since the heart can't lift weights to be stronger, it needs exercise—aerobic exercise.

Aerobic (air-oh-bick) is a fancy word for needing oxygen, and aerobic exercise is any kind of activity that makes your muscles use oxygen. Aerobic exercise is an activity you do over and over, to keep bringing fresh oxygen to all of your muscles. When you do aerobic exercise, your heart becomes stronger. It's a good idea to do some kind of aerobic exercise two or three times a week, for 20 to 30 minutes at a time. Excellent aerobic activities are swimming, basketball, roller hockey, jogging (or walking quickly), rollerblading, soccer, biking, and rowing. Even dancing, skipping, jumping rope and playing hopscotch are aerobic activities!

Exercise makes muscles
You use all the muscles in your body every day—even for easy stuff like picking up a book or walking down the stairs. But when you do harder things, like taking long bike rides or climbing a tree, you begin to build muscles. As your muscles get stronger, you can do more active things for longer periods of time. Strong muscles also help protect you from injuries when you exercise, because they give better support to your joints (where your bones meet).

Building up all different types of muscles is easy to do. For awesome arms, try push-ups, pull-ups, tug-of-war or twirling a baton. Rowing in a boat or canoe is also great for building strong arm muscles. For superior leg muscles, try running, rollerblading, skating and bike riding.

And for strong stomach muscles, try some half sit-ups (with your knees bent and your feet on the floor), bike riding, or even twirling a hula hoop around your waist. Now that's fun exercise!

Exercise makes you flexible
Most kids are pretty flexible, which means that they can bend and stretch their bodies without too much trouble. But as you get older you will tend to get less flexible, so that's why it's important to exercise when you're a kid—so you can stay flexible. Plus, when you're flexible, you can be more active without getting sprains or strained muscles.

Luckily it's easy to find things to do for good flexibility! Tumbling and gymnastics are great ways to become more flexible. Yoga, dancing (especially ballet), karate, tae kwon do, and other martial arts are great sports for flexibility.

Exercise keeps you at a healthy weight
Every time you eat food, your body uses some of the nutrients in the food as fuel. It burns these nutrients to give you energy or calories. You need calories for everything you do, from brushing your teeth to breathing! So it's important for you to get all the calories you need from the foods you eat.

But if your body isn't able to use all the calories that are coming from the food you eat, it stores them away as fat. Exercise burns up extra calories, and helps you stay at a weight that's right for your height.

Exercise makes you feel good
Exercising is a most excellent way to feel happy, whether you're exercising on your own or with a group. If you've had a tough day at school, a fight with a friend, or just feel kind of blue, try some exercise! When you're active and running around, sometimes it's hard to think about just what was bothering you.

Exercise can make you feel better about yourself too. When you are stronger and more capable of doing things, you can feel pretty proud—whether you scored the winning goal or jump-roped for an hour straight!

There are so many reasons why exercise is good for you. It's time to get away from the TV and the computer and get right to some very cool—and very healthy—exercise.