Your New Year’s Resolution: Try This Easy Exercise for a Healthy Body

Some kinds of exercise are especially effective at helping you cleanse. For example, it’s important to exercise the lymph system when you are detoxifying. It has no pump like your heart, so you must activate it through movement.

Getting Started on Your New Year’s Resolution: 5 Simplified Exercise Tips

1. Try to get at least 30 minutes of moderately intense exercise (an activity you can do while breathing harder than normal) a day.

It doesn’t work to follow the “weekend warrior” method of cramming an entire week’s exercise into Saturday and Sunday. Overzealous weekend exercise often results in injury and undue stress.

Want to eat to fuel your workout? You can find our healthy, energizing, and delicious Body Ecology recipes here.

2. Choose forms of fitness that make you happy.

Many people have mixed feelings about exercise because of how we were introduced to it as children. You may have felt humiliated rather than encouraged, or you might have been alienated by the intense competitiveness of team sports. And the “no pain, no gain” philosophy of many fitness programs makes exercise sound more like an ordeal than a pleasure.

If you are coming to exercise later in life and don’t know where to begin, you may feel self-conscious about trying something new. Don’t despair! Everyone can enjoy some kind of exercise, whether it’s walking, biking, Pilates, or ballroom and belly dancing. Experiment and then select those activities that you most enjoy and can excel at.

3. Set step-by-step, small goals and gradually challenge yourself more.

It can be elating to achieve a health or fitness goal, whether shedding a few pounds or completing a marathon. Listen to your body and follow your own unique pace.

4. Mix it up.

It’s important to give all of your muscles a workout with a good blend of cardio, strength, and flexibility exercises. This can be accomplished through cross-training. If you’re a runner, consider complementing your runs with some core exercises by taking a Pilates or stretching class for flexibility. If you’re an avid golfer, you might consider rounding out your routine with a more cardiovascular-oriented activity such as swimming or biking.

As you get in touch with what your mind and body need, you may find that you choose different types of exercise at different periods of your life. Walking, yoga, and tai chi are three types of exercise that are excellent for longevity and can be pursued no matter what your age.

5. Stretch and warm up.

As we age, our muscles get sore faster and stay sore longer. Heating cold and stiff muscles with 15 minutes of warm up exercises or stretching not only prevents soreness, it also protects us from injury and allows our muscles to repair themselves more quickly.

A new year, a new you. Learn how to master your health, overcome illness, lose weight, balance hormones, improve mood, and more at Body Ecology U.

Ready to get started? For exercisers at any fitness level, we recommend the Bellicon, an excellent-quality rebounder from Germany. But any exercise that results in movement followed by ample hydration and healthy elimination through your intestines (through a normal daily bowel movement or colon therapy) can facilitate cleansing of your lymph system.

Here’s why this is our favorite rebounder:

• High-elastic bungee bands make Bellicon the softest rebounder on the market, compared to other rebounders that use metal springs.

• Bellicon rebounders are quiet. For anyone used to rebounding, you know how noisy those metal springs can be. The bungee cords on the Bellicon make the experience much more pleasant for you and the people in your home.

• The Bellicon rebounder helps you avoid pronating by offering better absorption upon impact.

As simple as it sounds, rebounding has a lot of research behind it. A 2014 study showed significant improvements in the posture of elderly women, just from regular rebounding.¹ The New York Times also confirmed jumping to be the best exercise for building bone density in 2009.²  And NASA published one of the most popular and most-cited studies on rebounding in the Journal of Applied Physiology in 1980. When NASA scientists asked eight young men from the ages of 19 to 26 to walk, jog, and run on a treadmill at four different speeds and then jump on a trampoline at four different heights, rebounding was found to be one of the most efficient and effective exercises yet. “The magnitude of the biomechanical stimuli is greater with jumping on a trampoline than with running,” study authors wrote.³

Safe and Effective Rebounding: How to Avoid Pronating

Rebounding is more than simply jumping on a mini trampoline. This small, yet powerful fitness tool strengthens and supports virtually every major system in your body. Jumping on a rebounder can help improve your blood and lymph circulation and help detoxify your body.

Wondering where it all began? Here’s more information about Body Ecology’s creator Donna Gates.

Even if you are tired or suffer from chronic fatigue, rebounding is a gentle, easy form of exercise that is so much fun, you just might feel like a kid again!

Unlike running, rebounding dramatically reduces the impact on your joints, so it’s gentle enough for anyone.

Rebounding, though, should be practiced mindfully in order to prevent over (or under) pronation of your feet. So what is pronating, and why is it bad for you?

Pronation or Supination?

By definition, everyone pronates a little bit. Pronating means that your foot rolls inward to disperse the shock upon impact. But it is over-pronating and under-pronating (called supination) that can be painful and cause injury to your joints, ankles, knees, and back.

Here is what you need to know about pronation vs. supination:

Signs of Pronation

• Pronating is far more common, especially for people with flat feet.
• Pronating occurs when there is an excessive inward twist of the foot, putting stress on the feet, ankles, shins, and knees.
• It’s easy to find out if you pronate – look at the soles of your sneakers! If the soles are more worn out along the inside of the ball of the foot, then you know you have a tendency to pronate.

Signs of Supination

• Supination is less common but tends to affect people with very high arches.
• Supination occurs when there is an insufficient inward roll of the foot after landing. This places extra stress on the foot and can result in Achilles tendinitis, plantar fasciitis, and iliotibial band syndrome of the knee.
• If your sneaker soles wear out quickly on the outside edge, you probably have issues with supination.

Symptoms of pronation or supination include: hip pain, back pain, shin splints, corns, calluses, knee pain, and Achilles tendonitis.

Although a regular rebounding routine won’t cause you to start pronating, the nature of this exercise can heighten your awareness of the habit. Purchasing the right rebounder and practicing proper technique are critical in managing pronation issues. This is one time when practice makes perfect. Mastering any new skill may take repetition. Remember those elderly women from the 2014 rebounding study on posture? The women saw significant improvements in their postural balance after only 12 weeks of training. Stick with rebounding, and you’re going to see a difference in your health, your body, and your fitness within just a few months.