5 Reasons to Exercise Outside

Do you commute to the gym to workout?

Have you ever considered what you’re missing out on by not exercising outdoors and in nature?

Do you love that feeling you get during and after doing outdoor activities?

Outdoor exercise is where it's at! Cardio can be done on or off the road, on a bicycle, in the pool or ocean, or even with a jump rope in the backyard. Turn your weights session into an outdoors calisthenics routine a couple of times a week. Here’s what's great about exercising outdoors:

You’ll increase your happiness and kick sad feelings

Being outdoors in nature makes people feel a greater sense of well-being. Several studies published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology have shown that participants who enjoyed outdoors activity more scored significantly higher on tests measuring vitality and energy, and lower in anger and depression.

You’ll burn more calories

Being outdoors means you’re less likely to think about whether you’re tired, how long you’ve got left to go, and whether you want to call it quits. As a result people who exercise outdoors generally burn more calories and work out an average of 12% harder due to not being stuck in a stationary gym setting.

You’ll clean your lungs and release toxins

Breathing fresh air helps to clean out the lungs and increases oxygen supply to your cells. Exhaling is extremely cleansing, and helps to remove airborne toxins from your body. Fresh quality air and oxygen can boost your immune system, and energize you more than a cup of coffee!

You’ll get vitamin D & soak up the sun!

Getting exposed to sunshine can help you to sleep better, improve immune function, and increase endorphin production (the feel-good hormones!). On top of this, Vitamin D is not only THE most important supplement, it is one of the most forgotten. Without Vitamin D, we’d be dead. Vitamin D acts on over 1000 different genes, and is the surface on which testosterone, estrogen, and human growth hormone are built.

You’ll save money

Over 70% of people overestimate how much they’ll use the gym when they purchase their membership. That means that only 30% are hitting all your gym targets! Wasted money? Being outdoors is free. Nature doesn’t cost anything. Even if you were to go without your gym membership for only 6 months of the year, you could save hundreds or thousands of dollars.

When you're putting together your New Years resolutions for 2017, how about adding more outdoor exercise to your list?