7 Ways Exercise can help the Human Body

How does exercise benefit your mental health? This topic is an important one to me because I am very into fitness and exercise and I think it should be a floor to most people's schedules. There are so many benefits to exercise including even helping your brain stay normal. I will show how getting exercise can help you stay focused, help you have a positive mental state, and help with confidence. It is important because your brain is the most important thing in your body. Mental health is what keeps us sane and we want to be level-headed at all times. The good thing is the ASU library has sources about this topic to help me.

1. How fitness helped me

Giannis Transformation photo

This paragraph is a more personal one about someone who has been affected positively by fitness and exercise. I used to run track in high school and take Adderall every day as a prescription. This caused me to be a very skinny kid and made it hard to eat every day. Around the end of my junior year in high school, I stopped taking adderall and started going to the gym 3-5 times a week. It was frustrating at the beginning because you feel like you can’t move any weight at all, but it's a marathon, not a sprint for fitness. I think if I go to the gym, and I get 0.25 percent better every time, then in a year or two you can see significant gains.

2. How fitness helped me during covid

A simple home workout

Covid through the entire world through a storm last year and it was hard to get to the gym and exercise in. I could not get into any gyms and didn’t have a home gym so it was hard to figure out what to do for exercise. I ended up making up my own Murph workouts that consisted of wheeling around a heavy wheelbarrow, 300-400 push-ups a day, running, pull-ups, and regular squats. Getting this little stuff in every day gave me something to do while the entire world was stuck in our homes. I was worried too that I wasn’t gonna see improvement, but after the quarantine ended I ended up gaining more strength. In the rough times, the exercise gave me something to do, and it ended up making me work out 7 days a week during this time.

3. How fitness has helped my mental health

Brain Strength

My entire life I have been a kid who has struggled with anxiety. This was more so around the point in my life where I was taking Adderall every day, but going to the gym gave me life. Every day I leave the gym after an hour or so of sweating, I feel so much better in the head walking out. In high school, I learned a little bit about how it can help your mental health, but I am excited when we get into the research to see the hard facts and evidence from the ASU library.

4. How fitness has given me structure in life(organization)

Workout/Calendar to Fill

I would like to say I’m an organized person, but just like everyone in college, we will have our moments where we procrastinate and wait until the last minute. Sometimes I can get out of rhythm and be unorganized. Whenever I am going to the gym 4-5 times a week, it gives me something to do every day. The earlier I get in the gym, the more I feel fresh to start my homework and get ready for work itself if I have a shift. The gym made me get a calendar on my wall that I cross off every day and schedule around it.

5. How fitness can reduce stress

Releasing Anger

As a male, I tend to have more anger in my emotions at times, and sometimes men just want to go the physical route. Avoiding physical altercations is definitely a smart thing to do since we should always be positive. That being said, moving heavyweight around and grunting can really help get rid of some built-up anger. Building up anger, and holding it in will create more stress in your life to the point where you might want to see a chiropractor. The research will be exciting to see how it can actually help cope with stress. Whenever I workout, then steam after, I feel so much better walking out and can drive home without road rage.

6. How fitness has given me confidence(more extraverted)

Socializing at the Gym

Gaining confidence with the gym comes with patience, but even just going in itself makes you more confident. The fact you're giving yourself 1-2 hours every day to get better, what is not awesome about that. There will be millions of people in the world not getting that in, and you are because you want it more than others. The little gains you see on a month-to-month basis will give you confidence. Whether it's gaining 5 pounds of muscle, or losing 5 pounds of fat, it all adds up, and you will gain some confidence seeing these gains/losses.

7. How fitness helps your immune system

Getting active and increasing your cardio will help your cardiovascular system. Getting regular exercise every day will boost your immune system and it will come into play for fighting off infections. Some of the things it can do are reduce stress, increase antibodies, increase blood flow, and reduce inflammation. Your body will fight off the common cold easier too. Since I have been working out consistently, I have gotten sick way less. Also, when I got covid, I got very minimal symptoms and was able to fight it off with ease. Very grateful for that.

Conclusion

Overall there are so many benefits to getting active and staying fit. The only negative thing is getting potentially injured in the gym, but you can get injured anyway. Compared to all the things it can do to help you. Your head will be in a better place, you can see progress in yourself, fight off sicknesses, reduce stress, and even stay on a schedule. Beginning exercise and going to the gym is the hardest part. Everyone is accepted so all you have to do is get out there and put in the work.

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