Playing sports is important for many different reasons. Whether this is team sports or single person sports. They are all just as important as each other and we should ensure we are doing at least one a week. I’m here to tell you why.

Keeps Us Active
Playing sports every week helps to keep us active. In theory helping to keep us fitter. It is important to stay active to help our fitness and keep us healthy physically.

Interactions
Playing sports also helps us with our interactions with other people. Most sports encourage you to talk to other people. Helping you build up trust in others and work as a team.

Mental Health
It is also known that playing sports can help with our mental health. It helps to clear your mind and ease any stress you may have. This can be because the sport is physical, or just being out in the fresh air.

There are lots of things to consider when deciding what sport you want to get in to. In this article, we are going to look at some of these and help you choose the right sport for you!

The first thing you need to consider is whether you would like to play as an individual or part of a team.
Individual sports include; swimming, cycling, golf, horse riding and archery.
Team Sports include; football, rugby, basketball, netball and hockey.

Individual sports are perfect for people who like to take things at their own pace. These sports are generally much more relaxed and less competitive.
Whereas, team sports you need to be good with communication. You need to have lots of energy to keep up with the whole team. It will also be handy if you are competitive.

Once you have looked into these factors, it will become easy to choose a sport that is right for you.

Adding some yoga to strength or weight training can be a good idea, and it’s because your body deserves some love and attention. With yoga, you stretch your muscles and become more flexible, and that’s extremely important if you’re only currently looking at gaining muscles. Think about your body and what you put it through in a weight training routine. It’s so much more rewarding when you combine both and get the best of both worlds. What’s so great about looking like The Rock if you’re not able to touch your toes or perform some very basic flexible movements? It’s important to get some sort of balance and you can certainly do that with a harmony of strength based gym work and yoga lessons. Yoga is a nice exercise to perform after strength training and it’s a great way to unwind and cool your muscles down.

When you’ve had some time out of the gym, it can be quite risky to go back to the weights, hitting the same limit of reps as you did before. We advise that if you have had some time out you will need to let your arms get back into the swing of things, so work your way up slowly. Start off with a weight that’s quite light and focus on high reps, then as you build your strength, consume protein and take some recovery days, you can begin to lift more and get bigger. Going back to full strength does take time, but if you ease back in to weightlifting your arms will thank you for it, as will your chest, legs and back. Another important aspect when you’ve had some time out is to ensure you’re eating the right types of foods, such as good fibre, nutrients, protein and carbohydrates, which give you energy to complete your workouts.

You may have heard of interval training or HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training), but what is it? And how can it help improve your fitness?

Interval training is a great way to burn off fat, and improve your overall stamina. Pushing your body to its limits for short bursts, followed be a rest period or gentle exercise. This type of workout gets your heart pumping during the intense sections and should just be slowing down during the rest periods, challenging your fitness and improving the muscles of your heart.

HIIT training can be incorporated into running, using sprints as the high level and jogs as the rest period. You can also use HIIT training in any type of exercise from abs to leg workouts. There are many fitness trainers that you can follow online that promote HIIT training. You need to have a basic level of fitness before starting a HIIT training program, so always consult your GP if you want to check you are healthy enough to start a new fitness regime.

Maintaining a healthy lifestyle requires a combination of a good balanced diet with a regular exercise regime. Exercise can vary, depending on the individual and their own personal goals.

Before you can follow a good fitness regime, you have to know what your primary goals are. Your goals could be weight loss, muscle building, flexibility or stamina. With a clear goal in mind you can work out what exercises will work best for you to achieve your goals.

For weight loss, high intensity training and cardio workouts work best for fat burning, while weights and core exercises will help improve muscle building. Yoga or Pilates can help improve flexibility, while long distance running and cycling will be sure to increase your stamina.

That said, you are not tied to one area of exercising. You can do a little of all groups whilst doing your goal exercises at a higher frequency in one week.

Exercise is essential to helping you maintain a strong and healthy body, that’s why introducing new types of fitness is so important. Boxercise can be a very challenging yet reward exercise and can certainly take your fitness to the next level after a few sessions. Boxercise is a combination of cardio fitness and strength, using both to maximise your own abilities, for both women and men.

The type of activities within a boxercise session involve engagement of the entire body, burning calories fast. A great exercise for those looking to shed some weight. It also involves skipping, balance, power, agility and boxing punches too.

Boxercise is not only good for the body, but also the mind. The sessions help relieve stress and anger as you can take your frustrations out on a punch bag. Any type of new exercise class is a great way to meet new people, who love to keep fit just like you.

Whether you need a summer body or simply want to keep fit, your fitness regime should include a mixture of exercises. How about adding swimming into your fitness regime? There are several reasons why doing so will be of great help.

To start with, swimming is fun. The fact that you are working out while at the same time having fun is comparable to none. It helps boost your morale in the process.

Swimming ensures a full body work-out. It doesn’t impact the joints but it is a major cardio workout of the whole body. Swimming also decreases stress levels, after a good a good swimming session, stress levels decrease making it a great fitness tool.

High impact workouts like trail running are good for losing calories but they are intense. Swimming is low-impact and is favourable for people who aren’t used to the gym. Swimming is a great addition to your fitness regime and you may talk a fitness trainer about the best ways to add it in to your routine.

Having your own gym at home is a great way to keep up your fitness, as you don’t have to travel far or pay for a gym membership. With a gym right at your door step, you will have no excuse to not keep fit.

A great place to set up your own home gym is in your garage, providing it is not already occupied by your car. The first step to setting up your own gym is preparing the garage floor, clearing it from dust and debris. Secondly you may want to consider adding a flooring to the garage too, this can be laminate flooring or even floor paint will do the good. Adding a large wall mirror really helps in a gym as you can see yourself workout, and monitor your personal progress too.

Buying fitness equipment can be a little bit expensive, however you could try search online for second hand items. Starting with a few weights, and running machine and a bench, and the expand from there.

With just a few games remaining the Premier League, it looks like it’s Chelsea’s turn to clinch the title once more. The only other team close to Chelsea is Tottenham, but they’re still 4 points behind, which is really a considerable gap when you look at the few games that are left to play.

Chelsea may slip up but their recent form has been quite spectacular, and that’s even when Hazard has been marked out of the game. The neutrals will of course want Tottenham to close the gap to make the title race a little more interesting, but it seems as though the most exciting chase is for the top four spaces. Arsenal, Liverpool, United and City will be fighting for positions 3 and 4, but Liverpool have an easy run. That said, they are capable of slipping up against some of the smaller teams so this will no doubt produce an interesting finale to the 2016-17 Premier League Season. Let’s hope that more excitement comes from the remaining games, and it will be interesting to see which team miss out on Europe.