How to start playing sports and not harm your health

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Lifehacker and Inspector Gadgets show you how to make your first workouts safer, more effective and more enjoyable. At the end - a promotional code for a 10% discount.

Sport does not guarantee health, on the contrary, ill-considered activities can cause injury and push you away from training for a long time. If you decide you don't need a coach, there are a few important things to keep in mind to keep your sessions comfortable, safe, and enjoyable.

1. Track your heart rate zones

Often, beginners who are unfamiliar with the rules of running training go wild. Twisting their joints in place, they run with all their might, so that the pulse rises to 70-80% of the maximum heart rate (HR). Since the beginner cannot keep up with this pace, very soon he will suffocate, feel nauseous and stop.

Moreover, such loads can have a bad effect on the cardiovascular system, especially if a novice athlete is overweight. As a result, the training will be ineffective and will most likely be the last. To avoid this, be sure to monitor your heart rate and increase the load gradually.

First, calculate your maximum heart rate.

220 - your age = maximum heart rate.

Start your cardio workout with a warm-up. This is light activity at a heart rate of 50-60% of the maximum. It is followed by a fat burning zone at a heart rate of 60–70% of the limiting heart rate. Being active in this zone feels quite comfortable, does not cause nausea or severe shortness of breath, and at the same time helps to burn more fat.

Aerobic training starts with a heart rate of 70–80%. It improves cardiovascular health, increases lung capacity and continues to burn fat.

Here's a rough plan for your first run: 10 minutes in the warm-up zone, 10 minutes in the fat-burning zone, and 10 minutes in the aerobic zone. Gradually increase the time spent in the aerobic zone to 15 minutes, and do not forget about the 5-minute cool-down on the heart rate of 50-60%.

To track your heart rate and heart rate zones while running, use a heart rate monitor or fitness band. Many people do not like chest straps: they are inconvenient to put on and take off, they crush and slide. At the same time, compared to a fitness bracelet, they provide more accurate heart rate readings.

There is a good option for a sensor that fits over your shoulder or forearm, the Polar OH1. It's budget friendly, user-friendly, and accurate. The optical sensor on the strap connects to any iOS and Android smartphones or Polar sports gadgets - sports watches, activity trackers or cycling computers - and shows your heart rate.

You can view your heart rate data on your phone or sports watch. Of course, the latter is much more convenient during activity.

If you don't want to have any sensors at all, either on your chest or on your shoulder, there is a smartwatch option with a built-in optical sensor - Polar M430. The optical sensor of this model is only 1–2% inferior to the chest strap in accuracy and absolutely wins in terms of convenience.

For experienced runners this watch will be useful, but for beginners it is an absolute must-have. Your watch tells you how to train and how long it will take to recover from your workout. In the Polar Flow app or web client, you can find daily training programs, additional strength training with videos, interval training.

In addition, the watch will help you track your progress. The Running Index lets you know about your VO2 max - your maximum oxygen consumption - and other fitness metrics.

For more advanced runners, the Polar M430 can help you get the right cadence, or cadence, program to prepare for your run, and improve your performance.

2. Listen to suitable music and think about safety

Many runners and cyclists love to listen to music while exercising, and for good reason. Music cheers up How does music aid 5 km of running? and increases the pleasure of training, energetic compositions help Influence of music on maximal self-paced running performance and passive post-exercise recovery rate to maintain the pace, and slow ones help to restore the pulse faster after a run.

There are many advantages to listening to music, but there are also disadvantages, namely safety. Cyclists and runners are advised not to use headphones because of the possible dangers: you will not be able to hear the car in time, there is a risk of getting hit by the wheels.

Fortunately, you don't have to give up music or move your workouts to the gym. State-of-the-art bone conduction technology leaves your ears open while providing you with musical motivation.

For example, in AfterShokz Trekz Air headphones, sound travels through the bones of the cheekbones to the ears. At the same time, you can perfectly hear both the music and what is happening around you.

If you work out in the gym, at the stadium or in the forest and cars do not pose a threat to you, you can listen to music with ordinary headphones, but it is better to give preference to wireless ones: they will not get caught on the simulators and will not get tangled in your pocket.

There are just good wireless headphones with high sound quality, such as Beyerdynamic's Byron BT with three different sized silicone ear tips. Choose under your ear and listen with comfort - great sound, nothing falls out and does not dangle while driving.

You can switch tracks directly on the headphones, receive calls from your phone without slowing down, and listen to music for 7, 5 hours in a row.

There are also dedicated sports and fitness models, such as the Monster iSport Victory Wireless. If the previous earbuds could still accidentally fall out of the ear, then the iSport Victory Wireless definitely won't. Here, in addition to the silicone nozzle, there is also a special bow that follows the bend of the ear and is securely attached to it.

At the same time, the headphones are covered with antibacterial dusting and are protected from sweat and dust. You can easily wash them, and there will be no irritation on the ear.

3. Change habits in your daily life

For good results in sports and fitness, it is not only your training that is important, but also how you behave in everyday life. Activity, nutrition, sleep, stress - all these affect your athletic performance and reduce the risk of injury.

Lack of sleep reduces Testosterone levels in Young Healthy MenFREE Effect of 1 Week of Sleep Restriction on Testosterone Levels, which negatively affects body composition, preventing you from losing weight and gaining muscle mass. Try to sleep 7-8 hours a day and go to bed at about the same time to make it easier to fall asleep.

Stress, especially strong and prolonged, negatively affects Effects of Anxiety on Athletic Performance on the work of the cardiovascular system, increases blood pressure, reduces the ability to concentrate and decreases motivation. In addition, stress increases Chronic stress puts your health at risk the amount of cortisol, which suppresses testosterone production and suppresses immunity.

In addition to sleep and stress, it is worth taking care of daily activity. A sedentary lifestyle is detrimental to posture, lowers energy expenditure, and makes all your efforts to fight excess weight less effective.

In addition, to lose weight, nutritionists advise drinking more water - this has a proven Efficacy of water preloading before main meals as a strategy for weight loss in primary care patients with obesity: RCT has a positive effect on losing weight even without counting calories.

To fix all the mistakes in your daily life, you need a good fitness tracker that can track your daily activity, sleep quality, water quality and stress.

For daily monitoring, the Polar A370 fitness bracelet with continuous heart rate tracking throughout the day is suitable. It helps you take control of everything: daily activity, sleep, energy expenditure and exercise.

The bracelet will show how well you slept, how many times you woke up in the middle of the night and how far behind the scheduled hours of sleep, it will tell you when you stayed up and it's time to warm up. By the way, Polar A370 can also be used for training: the bracelet tracks your results in different types of activity, registers your heart rate zones and independently determines the intensity of the load.

Of course, it will not replace a specialized sports watch with many functions, but it is not required. This is your friend and helper for every day, not just during your workout.

There are even more advanced body managers who can even track stress levels, such as Healbe Gobe 2. Like other gadgets of a similar plan, Gobe 2 records activity, energy consumption and sleep, but, unlike many, it can also show the level of hydration, calories consumed and emotional stress.

Moreover, you do not need to enter any data: the body manager calculates the calories consumed by the rate of food absorption and automatically calculates the balance between consumption and expenditure, every seven minutes determines the level of hydration through the analysis of intercellular fluid and reminds you to drink water.

Using a galvanic skin response sensor, pulse tracking and sleep quality, Healbe Gobe 2 concludes about your emotional stress and the amount of stress. It would be nice if he at the same time reminded to meditate and calm down, but there seems to be no such function.

In any case, the Healbe Gobe 2 body manager will help you keep all the indicators of your body under control and, in case of deviations, quickly correct the situation.

4. Track your progress

Their own assessment of success is far from being objective. After the first lesson, you can feel like a real athlete, although there are no visible successes, and in times of bad mood you can underestimate your results.

Even if you have a normal scale, it will only show you the weight, and this is not enough to assess your achievements. The fact is that during training, the weight can stand still, but the percentage of fat and muscle can change.

By tracking not only your weight, but also your body fat percentage and body mass index, you will see your progress, be able to choose the optimal diet and not lose motivation.

Moreover, to track the percentage of fat, you do not have to sign up to the clinic, there are already compact and inexpensive scales with this function. For example, smart diagnostic scales from the Chinese company Picooc.

When you step on the scale, they send a small and imperceptible shock through your body, determine your body mass index, percentage of fat and muscle mass, and even metabolic age. In addition, you do not need to memorize and write down anything to track the results: Picooc S3 connects to the phone via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, depending on the model, and you can see all your statistics in the Russian-language PICOOC application.

5. Monitor air quality

It doesn't matter if you plan to work out in the gym, outdoors or at home, in order for your workouts to be effective, comfortable and truly healthy, it is important to choose the right place.

Avoid jogging near a freeway or exercising in a stuffy, unventilated gym, even if it has a cheap season ticket. Intensive exercise in a hot room increases the body temperature, which can provoke the relationship between insomnia and body temperatures. insomnia, and running in polluted air is unlikely to benefit your health.

You can even check the air quality before deciding where to practice. There are special little gadgets for measuring air quality, temperature and humidity on the go.

A good option is the Atmotube portable monitor. This 42-gram toddler can be hung on a bunch of keys or simply put in a pocket.

It will show you the temperature, humidity and air quality, determine the amount of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. The data can be viewed on the phone or quickly identified by the color of the indicator. If the indicator is blue - the air is good, yellow - not very good, red - bad.

You can analyze the air with a single tap and find out if sports are worth it or if you need to look for a cleaner, fresher and cooler place.

Often the best motives end in nothing simply because you don't have enough information and resources. An inadequate workload, a poor workout location, or a lack of motivation can ruin your plans and keep you from exercising for a long time.

Build your workouts correctly, get enough sleep and deal with stress, track your progress and have fun, and sports will only benefit you, and workouts will firmly enter your life.

For everyone who is determined to take care of their figure and health, the Inspector Gadgets online store gives a good discount.

Enter the promotional code SPORTHACK and get a 10% discount.