THIS MAY
 HEALTH FIRST, FITNESS ALWAYS  

2025 is your FIT year! 

Set Goals, Sweat Hard, Succeed in 2025

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Full-Year Membership Fee (January - December 2025)  EUR 24 
Half-Year Membership Fee (January - June 2025)          EUR 12

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                  SESSION 29 April - 2 May                                                               SESSION 6 - 9 May 

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FIND MOTIVATION TO BE MORE ACTIVE IN MAY

Exercise & fitness

Exercising regularly — every day if possible — is the single most important thing you can do for your health. In the short term, exercise helps to control appetite, boost mood, and improve sleep. In the long term, it reduces the risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, dementia, depression, and many cancers.

What are the best types of exercise?

While there are endless forms of exercise, experts categorize physical activity into four broad types based on what each calls upon your body to do and how the movement benefits you.

Aerobic exercise is marked by an increased heart rate. Although most aerobic exercises require you to move your whole body, the main focus is on your heart and lungs (aerobic exercise is often called "cardio" because it challenges and benefits your cardiovascular system). Activities like walking, swimming, dancing, and cycling, if done at sufficient intensity, get you breathing faster and your heart working harder. Aerobic exercises burn fat, improve your mood, reduce inflammation, and lower blood sugar.

Join our cardio classes on Tuesday (1pm with Eva), Wednesday (12pm with Wills), Thursday (1pm with Agnes) and Friday (12pm with Rob). 

Core exercises improve your balance and stability. It includes your pelvis, lower back, hips and stomach. The stomach muscles sometimes are called abs. Core exercises train the muscles in your core to work in harmony. This leads to better balance and steadiness, also called stability.

We offer Pilates class on Tuesday (12pm with Connie).

Strength training, sometimes called resistance training, should be performed two to three times a week. Squats, lunges, push-ups, and the exercises performed on resistance machines or using weights or bands help maintain and even build muscle mass and strength. Strength training also helps prevent falls, keep bones strong, lower blood sugar levels, and improve balance.

Do a combination of both isometric and isotonic exercises. Isometric exercises, such as doing planks and holding leg lifts, are done without movement. They are great for maintaining strength and improving stability. Isotonic exercises require you to bear weight throughout a range of motion. Bicep curls, bench presses, and sit-ups are all forms of isotonic exercise.

Sign up for Body Shaping class on Thursday (12pm with Michael).

Stretching exercises keep your muscles and tendons flexible, preserve your posture, and improve mobility, especially as you age. Stretching can be done every day.

Balance exercises call on the various systems that help you stay upright and oriented, such as those of the inner ear, vision, and muscles and joints. Tai chi and yoga are great forms of balance exercises that can help you avoid falls and stay independent well into your senior years.

Take up Body Balance class on Friday (1pm with Wills).

How much exercise do I need?

How much exercise you should be getting depends on several factors, including your current level of fitness, your fitness goals, the types of exercise you're planning to do, and whether you have deficits in such areas as strength, flexibility, or balance.

As a general rule, 150 minutes of moderate intensity aerobic activity (or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise) is recommended as a weekly minimum. As you become more fit, you'll want to exceed that in order to reap maximum benefit. A natural way of splitting up the 150 minutes might be to do a 30-minute session five times per week, or you can break it up and do two 15-minute sessions during a single day. Adopt whatever schedule fits your lifestyle.

For strength exercises, aim to work all your major muscle groups twice to three times each week, leaving 48 hours between each workout for recovery. If you do total-body workouts, that's two sessions per week. If you choose to split your workouts to target a specific muscle group (for example, "leg day"), that will require more frequent workouts. Just make sure you're leaving 48 hours of rest before you rework a major muscle.

It's best to stretch after you have warmed up for a few minutes, or perform stretching exercises after you completed your workout. When stretching each muscle group, take it slow and steady, release, repeat again.

But how much exercise is too much? You should expect a little muscle soreness after workouts, especially in the beginning. But if you find that your body is simply not recovering between workouts, you may be overtraining. With the exception of "welcome" muscle soreness, an exercise program should make you feel good. If it doesn't, you're probably overdoing it. That doesn't mean you should quit, only that you should dial back the intensity or frequency of your workouts until you hit the sweet spot in which you've tired out your body but then recovered enough to tackle your next session with enthusiasm.

MAY Fitness be with you – in F09 – Not So Far Away!

It's an opportunity to take back some control in areas where we have all felt a bit powerless, set goals and create healthy routines that are focused on ourselves. 

Cleaneating and Cookworkshop with our very own Eva Nevinova 

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