With Gyms in England back open for just over two weeks, and data suggesting members have racking up a record number of workouts. How is it going?

Have you gone back to your old routine or have you tried to make up for lost time and increased your workouts?

Structured exercise is important, it helps us to build muscle and maintain it. It is also a big stimulus to burn calories and exercise gives us a better quality of life. Stronger muscles and bones give us a better chance avoiding falls, allowing the possibility of independent living in old age. If we increase the overload of exercise (work harder) it also can lead to more insulin sensitivity. This means your body is able use glucose more efficiently lowering the chance of Type 2 diabetes.

As you can tell I’m a fan of exercise, but I’m also a fan of looking at the big picture. I have written before about the importance of NEAT (non-exercise -activity- thermogenesis) basically your day to day movement that burns calories. This could be walking up and down stairs, a leisurely walk and even just being a fidget.

You may think that super hard workout, where the machine said you burnt 1000cals sets you up for sofa surfing for the rest of the day. First, don’t believe the calorie burn on the machine they are far from accurate. Second, being so tired that you can’t move off the sofa you are missing out the most important thing to help you stay healthy, daily movement.

We have covered why STRUCTURED (just capitals not my angry ones!) exercise is important, we need to push hard to create overload for the body to adapt so it can progress. However, those adaptions of increased metabolism are pretty acute, you actually burn more calories by moving doing NEAT stuff.

You need to be like Goldilocks and get your training volume “Just right”, enough to create a short-term overload but not too much that you are too tired to take advantage of a “Neat” benefit.

If you aren’t a mover and shaker around the home, maybe you do need to plan some low intensity movement into your day. I know NEAT is non-planned but if you find yourself sitting all day consciously adding a walk a day in would be beneficial.

Constantly injured, stressed or feel you are not progressing? Maybe doing less high intensity work and making sure you are doing more daily low intensity work might actually be the answer.

Looking for a training a nutrition program that works with your lifestyle? Drop me a line at laura@laurawoodley.com