From Cardio to Play: The Best Workouts for Your Health

Feb 7, 2025 - 11:03 Updated: Feb 6, 2025 - 20:05

From Cardio to Play: The Best Workouts for Your Health

Whatever your reasons for improving your physical fitness, there are countless options to explore—and adding play makes exercises enjoyable and sustainable.

When you hear the word “exercise,” what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Does it make you feel anxious, defeated, or overwhelmed? Or does it spark a sense of dread, like you’re already behind before you even begin?

Almost everyone can relate to any of these responses, but it doesn’t have to be this way.

Exercise can be fun and sustainable, and it benefits nearly every aspect of our health, so it’s worth finding ways to move that you enjoy. Let’s explore different exercise types and their benefits to inspire you to get out (or stay in) and keep your body moving.

Health Benefits

Regular exercise helps strengthen the heart, improves circulation, and lowers blood pressure. It offers metabolic benefits, like increasing insulin sensitivity and helping us maintain a healthy weight. Physical activity builds muscle mass and strength, improves bone density, helps boost the immune system, and lowers our risk of developing chronic diseases like heart disease, stroke, cancer, and diabetes. Staying physically fit also helps us live longer and improves our quality of life.

One 2018 review states that lifelong exercise not only extends our lifespan but also delays the onset of 40 chronic diseases, such as obesity, Type 2 diabetes, and stroke.

Kathryn Alexander is a personal trainer with a degree in kinesiology and a master’s in exercise physiology. She said each type of exercise has its benefits. Several types of exercises and their benefits include the following:

Cardio improves longevity and quality of life.
High-intensity interval training (HIIT) is good for conditioning and physique changes.
Strength training maintains our ability to carry out daily activities and age gracefully.
Mobility training hones functional movement.
“Play” is enjoyable and provides social benefits.

“Of course, it would be great if you incorporate all those different things because they all have specific benefits,” Alexander told The Epoch Times. She added that this is a good strategy as long as people are healthy and don’t have contraindications.

Physical fitness also has benefits that extend beyond the body. Scientists are now discovering its positive impact on the brain.

Wendy Suzuki is a neuroscientist and professor at New York University who has conducted extensive research on the effects of exercise on the brain.

In her TED talk, “The Brain-Changing Benefits of Exercise,” she discusses how aerobic exercise, or just moving our bodies, can stimulate the production of new brain cells (neurogenesis) in the hippocampus, a part of the brain integral to learning and memory. She also says physical activity increases the production of neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine, which improve our focus and mood and can protect the brain against neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s.

Cardio

When we think of exercise, we most likely envision traditional cardio—or increasing our heart rate.

Cardio, or aerobic exercise, strengthens the cardiovascular system, increases stamina, and improves our ability to burn calories. It also enhances the quality of our sleep, reduces stress, and boosts our mood.

Cardio helps improve the function of our mitochondria, which produce the energy our cells need. During cardio, blood flow increases, delivering more oxygen to muscles, which allows mitochondria to produce more ATP, the energetic currency vital to almost every physiological process in the body, from muscle contractions to DNA and RNA synthesis.

Cardio also stimulates the creation of new mitochondria (mitochondrial biogenesis) and facilitates the repairs or elimination of damaged mitochondria—a function known to be compromised in individuals with heart disease. Exercise also helps protect mitochondria from oxidative stress by improving their antioxidant capacity.

Mitochondria are essential to physical fitness as they provide energy for our muscles to function and for processes that sustain physical activity during exercise.

Some of the most significant benefits of regularly increasing your heart rate are the positive effects on cardiovascular health. Cardio improves circulation, lowers blood pressure, and helps manage cholesterol and blood sugar.

Aerobic exercise helps us maintain a healthy weight and stimulates the production of endorphins, neurotransmitters that make us feel good, alleviate pain, and reduce stress.

In comparing traditional cardio and resistance or weight training, one study of healthy adults found that doing 60 minutes of cardio produced three times more fibroblast growth factor 21 (FGF21), a hormone involved in improving weight loss (fat oxidation) and insulin sensitivity by regulating energy metabolism.

Alexander said that cardio training improves longevity and quality of life and strengthens blood vessels, the heart, and the lungs. She added that cardio doesn’t have to be intense and can be performed at a slower pace, which some call “Zone 2.” Sustaining activity in this zone makes blood vessels more pliable.

There are five heart rate training zones. Zone 5 is the most intense and requires working out at your maximum heart rate (90 percent to 100 percent), while Zone 1 is more for warming up (50 percent to 60 percent). Zone 2 is working out at a steady pace that is easy to maintain and keeps your heart rate between 60 percent and 70 percent of your maximum. Exercising in Zone 2 is used to burn fat and improve overall cardiovascular fitness.

Alexander added that cardio has additional lifetime benefits.

“You’re less likely to have cardiac events in the future; you have greater VO2 max, which is basically the volume of oxygen that’s also associated with longevity,” she said.

High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)

HIIT involves several high-intensity bursts of activity interspersed with brief recovery periods. Studies have found that HIIT can get you to your fitness goals in less time, making it an excellent option for those with limited time to invest in an exercise regimen.

A study on older women living in nursing homes compared the effects of HIIT, moderate-intensity interval training (MIIT), and moderate-intensity continuous training (MICT) on various health measures, including body composition, resting blood pressure, heart rate, and functional performance. The results showed that HIIT outperformed both MIIT and MICT, improving body composition and functional performance. The study also revealed that women who participated in HIIT experienced less detraining—the loss of fitness adaptations gained from exercise—than those in the other groups.

Of note, MIIT refers to alternating periods of moderate-intensity exercise with shorter periods of rest or low-intensity exercise, while MICT refers to maintaining a steady, moderate level of intensity for a longer duration, typically between 20 and 60 minutes.

“Anytime people need to do something fast, or if you’re in athletics, that high-intensity training will help. It’s also pretty potent in pushing physique changes,” Alexander noted.

A study in Aging and Disease found that high-intensity training benefits the brain, too.

The study explored how different exercise intensities (low, medium, and high) affect the hippocampus—an area of the brain associated with learning and memory—in healthy older adults between 65 and 85 over six months.

Researchers found that HIIT outperformed the other types and significantly improved memory and learning. MRI scans also showed that HIIT halted age-related shrinkage of the hippocampus and enhanced connectivity between different brain networks—changes not observed in the other groups. Additionally, the improvements in the hippocampus function in the HIIT group lasted for at least five years after the initiation of the exercises. The study authors concluded that these exercise-based interventions can protect the hippocampus from age-related learning and memory decline.

While engaging in diverse exercise types is beneficial, if time is a constraint, HIIT may give you more bang for your buck in terms of results in the least amount of time.

Weight Training

Like HIIT, weight training is anaerobic. HIIT and weight training contrast with cardio, which is aerobic.

The difference lies in how the body uses energy. Anaerobic exercise, like weight training, is high-intensity, involving short, intense bursts of physical activity, but usually cannot be done for extended periods because you are using energy or glucose already stored in your muscles. Another example of weight training is calisthenics, which rely on body weight.

Aerobic exercises like running, swimming, or biking are low-intensity but can be done for extended periods because your body uses oxygen for energy, which you get continuously from breathing.

Weight training benefits almost everyone because it builds and strengthens muscles while preserving lean muscle, which declines naturally after our 30s. This decline, called sarcopenia, is the gradual loss of muscle mass, strength, and function. Although frustrating, sarcopenia is not inevitable. Regular strength training can slow its progression and even reverse its effects.

Scientists have found that for older adults who struggle with obesity, both exercise and weight loss reduce frailty and improve physical function, but using both in combination may provide even more significant improvement and help older adults with obesity stay functionally independent.

Research has also shown that we continue to burn calories for up to 72 hours after weight training due to a process called excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC), which is sometimes called an “afterburn” effect. This process increases significantly with exercise intensity, meaning that the harder you exercise, the more calories your body will continue to burn after your workout.

Alexander said strength training also improves quality of life. “When you are stronger, then all your activities of daily living are less challenging for you. So you‘ll go through life with more energy, fewer things will tire you out, and, of course, you’ll age gracefully.”

Mobility

Mobility exercises involve moving our bodies to increase flexibility, improve our balance, and enhance our coordination.

Good mobility is vital for preventing injuries, maintaining the health of our joints, avoiding pain and stiffness, and keeping our full range of motion. Having good mobility ensures that as we age, we can continue doing things like tying our shoes, going up and down stairs, bathing ourselves, and other necessities like cooking, cleaning, and getting dressed.

“Mobility and play—things where you move and twist and rotate and bend over and round your back—are so helpful and so injury preventive,” Alexander said.

Some examples of disciplines that improve mobility are:

Martial arts
Pilates
Yoga
Tai chi and qigong
Dance
Parkour
Swimming
Rock climbing
Obstacle courses
Dynamic stretching

A meta-analysis found that stretching exercises significantly reduced arterial stiffness, resting heart rate, and diastolic blood pressure in middle-aged and older adults.

Another study found the Korean martial art tae kwon do improved balance and walking ability in older adults.

Mobility exercises also help improve proprioception, our awareness of our body’s position as we move through space. Proprioception affects balance and how we move and naturally declines as we age because we become less physically active, and the nervous system responds more slowly to stimuli. Diminished proprioception significantly increases our risk of injuries and falls, especially as we age.

Play

Play is an often overlooked aspect of physical fitness that transforms exercise from a chore into a fun and sustainable activity. Introducing play into our exercise routines helps reduce stress and boosts mental health.

“Play is always more fun,” Alexander said. “If it feels like fun and not work, that gets us out of the gym, and that play gets us into working all kinds of angles—and there’s often a social component, which is huge for quality of life.”

Play helps keep the mind engaged and protects against the boredom that can often set in when we are doing monotonous things we don’t enjoy (like reps at the gym). Introducing play into our exercise routines also helps foster social connections, encourages creativity and adaptability, and improves coordination. In addition, fun and novelty ensure our physical activities are sustainable.

According to Patrick Ayres, a board-certified exercise physiologist with the American Society of Exercise Physiologists, “Play is whatever feels good; if it feels good, do it. If it hurts, stop.”

Personalize Approaches

For those with injuries or health conditions, a targeted approach to exercise is recommended, which means focusing on movements that support and strengthen the affected areas while avoiding activities that could exacerbate the issue. Working with a qualified professional and knowing your limits are key to ensuring safe and effective progress.

Ayres works in a hospital, primarily with cardiac patients. He said the last thing he wants is for his older cardiac patients to start working out with kettlebells or doing hot yoga, noting that tailoring exercise routines to individual goals, health conditions, and preferences is crucial.

“I want to ask a person what their goals are because exercise is not one size fits all, right? And the way that exercise is marketed nowadays is confusing for people,” he said.

“I don’t need one of my cardiac patients going out and buying a kettlebell. I need them to do what I told them to do, which was: ... walk for 20 minutes tomorrow because our focus for them right now is cardiovascular fitness and improving their heart health, not the kettlebell,” Ayres added.

No matter your stage in life, improving physical fitness is within your reach. Whether you’re a seasoned athlete aiming to enhance your performance or a senior seeking more energy to enjoy time with your grandkids, there are countless ways to boost your fitness.

If you have injuries or health concerns, ensure you consult a professional to create a safe and effective plan. And remember, the key to long-term success is keeping it fun and enjoyable; choose activities you love so staying active becomes a lasting habit.