FYEX

Flexibility exercises stretch muscles to help your body move better. The best time to stretch is when your muscles are already warm, so it is best to stretch after endurance or strength exercises. However, you can do a few minutes of easy walking to warm up if you are doing a flexibility only exercise like yoga. 

Stretches should be held 10-30 second and repeated 3-5 times/session. You should slowly ease into a stretch as bouncy stretching can actually cause injuries. A mild pulling feeling is normal. A sharp or stabbing pain is NOT, and you should ease off if you feel pain. 

Examples of flexibility exercises:

• Stretches
• Yoga
• Pilates

Why increase muscular strength? Not only can it help you in daily activities, but strong muscles an also increase your bone strength and help your body burn fat more quickly. According to the Center for Disease Control:

To gain health benefits, you need to do muscle-strengthening activities to the point where it’s hard for you to do another repetition without help. A repetition is one complete movement of an activity, like lifting a weight or doing a sit-up. Try to do 8-12 repetitions per activity, which counts as 1 set. Try to do at least 1 set of muscle-strengthening activities. To gain even more benefits, do 2 or 3 sets.

Examples of muscle-strengthening activities:

• Lifting weights
• Working with resistance bands
• Doing exercises that use your body weight for resistance (e.g., push-ups, sit-ups)
• Heavy gardening (e.g., digging, shoveling)
• Some forms of yoga and pilates

What is muscular endurance? It is the number of repetitions of a single exercise you can do without needing to stop and rest. This may involve using lighter weights than for strength-building exercises, but doing more repetitions of that weight. You may choose a weight that is half the maximum that you can push/pull/lift at one time. Muscular endurance can be helpful with completing everyday activities as well as help improve blood sugar and insulin levels for people with type 2 diabetes. 

Examples of muscular endurance activities:

• Doing exercises that use your body weight for resistance (e.g., push-ups, sit-ups)
• Resistance exercises
• Lifting weights

NOTE: Ease into exercising and do not let your heart rate go above the maximum. There are different ways to measure maximum heart rate, but the most common charts that you'll see on treadmills and basic website were created based only on studies of people assigned as male at birth. Women should consider other calculations for safest heart health. 

Moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity means you’re working hard enough to raise your heart rate and break a sweat. Some activities that require moderate effort include:

• Walking fast
• Doing water aerobics
• Riding a bike on level ground or with few hills
• Playing doubles tennis

Vigorous-intensity aerobic activity means you’re breathing hard and fast, and your heart rate has gone up quite a bit. Some activities that require vigorous effort:

• Jogging or running
• Swimming laps
• Riding a bike fast or on hills
• Playing singles tennis
• Playing basketball