Fun Fitness Facts

There is a lot more to fitness than you may realize. These fun facts may give you the motivation you need to get moving.

Fun Reasons to Move

• If you're always in a bad mood, then getting fit just may help. Regular exercise can enhance mood and overall well-being.
• Regular exercise is linked to better sex, because it can improve body image, energy, self-esteem and overall fitness.
• In spite of what you may have read, there is no "best time to exercise." It turns out that the best time to exercise is when it works for you.
• Regular exercise can reduce the signs and symptoms of PMS.

Cardio Fun Facts

• Frequently running long distances may actually encourage your body to hold onto excess weight, according to Shape.com. The more you train to run long distances, the more efficient your body becomes at doing this, so you end up burning less energy when you're running.
• By the time you have reached 50 years of age, you will have walked approximately 75,000 miles.
• You can judge whether you are exercising at too high of an intensity by seeing if you can speak a few words without needing to take a breath. If you can't, you may want to back off the intensity just a little until you can.
• Too much cardio can actually prevent fat loss because your body will actually burn muscle for fuel.
• No wonder your feet hurt - running puts three to four times your body weight in pressure on your feet.
• Dancing is a terrific and fun form of exercise that can improve cardiovascular fitness just like any other more formal type of exercise.
• Some key factors that determine whether or not you will stick to your exercise routine include having support and accountability, setting a goal that is realistic, and not pushing yourself too fast. If you push yourself harder than you are ready for, or set an unrealistic goal, you will get frustrated and burn out. Your recipe for fitness success just may be keeping careful track of your progress - such as going from being able to run a quarter mile without stopping to a half mile - while working out with a friend.
• Being dehydrated reduces exercise performance. Make sure you hydrate for peak performance during a workout.
• Visualization can help to improve your workout. By visualizing yourself completing the exercise before you actually perform it, then you will be able to perform the exercise with more intensity and effectiveness.
• Don't work out on an empty stomach! According to Shape.com, if you run out of energy during your workout, your body will start burning your muscle tissue, not your stored body fat.

Strength Work Fun Facts

• You can increase your strength faster by spending more time on the eccentric part of lifting weights - the part of the lift where your muscles lengthen instead of shorten (such as bringing the barbell up in a bicep curl, or lowering yourself into the bottom of a squat).
• Add strength training to your cardio to speed up fat loss - cardio alone can actually burn muscle tissue, and you need muscle tissue to burn fat even while you're at rest.

• People who cross-train with a variety of exercise are more fit and less injury-prone than those who exercise using only one or two exercise modalities.

Fun Facts About Your Body

• How much air do you breathe every hour? You breathe about 2.1-3.17 gallons of air per minute at rest, which is 126-190 gallons per hour. If you are exercising, this amount can increase to 2377.8 gallons per hour for the average person.
• What is your body's hardest-working muscle? It's your heart - which beats approximately 100,000 times per day. That means that in just 10 days, your heart beats one million times. If you do sustained, intense exercise daily, you'll reach a million even more quickly.
• The muscle in your body that can pull with the most force is your soleus muscle - the muscle in your calf that helps you stand and walk.
• The muscle that can generate the most power is your jaw muscle, and the record for human jaw strength is 975 pounds of pressure for 2 seconds.
• Your heart pumps almost 2000 gallons of blood each day!
• Your brain and heart are both about 73% water.
• Your body has about 650 skeletal muscles (but this doesn't count cardiac and smooth muscles).
• Blood circulates through your body very quickly. It takes about one minute for all of your blood to circulate through your entire body once.
• The smallest muscle in your body is the stapedius muscle, which is barely over one millimeter long. This muscle stabilizes the stapes in your ear, protecting it from the intense vibrations of loud sounds.

Get Moving!

By utilizing the fun fitness facts provided above, you can pump up your workout, get to know your body and make your way to the best shape of your life.