Type of Workouts
When you think of exercise, you may imagine strenuous activities such as running or biking — the ones that make you breathe hard, turn flush and drip with sweat. But aerobic activity is only one type of exercise, and although it is critical for boosting fitness, there are actually three other types of exercise that are also important: strength training, balance training and flexibility training.
Each type of exercise is important in its own way, and doing all four types is the way to maximize your fitness and prevent injury, experts say.
"While aerobic exercise is very important, it's not as effective for overall health" when done alone compared with when people include all four types of exercise in their routine, said Dr. Edward Laskowski, co-director of the Mayo Clinic Sports Medicine Center in Rochester, Minnesota. "They all kind of go together" and complement each other, Laskowski said
For example, strength training makes muscles stronger, which, in turn, helps to support and protect joints — and this could help prevent injury during aerobic exercise. Meanwhile, balance exercises use muscle strength in a coordinated fashion to stabilize your movements, and can reduce the risk of injuries such as ankle sprains, Laskowski said.
In addition, you could be very fit aerobically, but "if you're not flexible, you're still going to pull something when you're training," said Kelly Drew, an exercise physiologist with the American College of Sports Medicine. Flexibility also helps you do strength training, because it improves your range of motion around your joints, ensuring you can perform lifts and other strength moves effectively, Drew said.
To dig up the most important information on these exercise types, Live Science spoke with experts and reviewed the latest scientific research. Below, we’ve linked to our detailed articles about the four types of exercise. Each article discusses the benefits of the particular exercise type, as well as how much you need to do and how to avoid injury during the activity. Finally, we'll provide ways to incorporate all four types of exercise into your workout regimen.
Aerobic exercise
Aerobic exercises, such as running, swimming or dancing, are activities that work your cardiovascular system — they get your heart rate up and make you breathe harder. This type of exercise can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure, and may even lower the risk of cancer
Aerobic exercises are activities that work your cardiovascular system — they get your heart rate up and make you breathe harder. They are what people often think of when they hear the word "exercise."
Examples of aerobic exercise include:
- Brisk walking
- Running or jogging
- Swimming
- Playing a sport such as tennis, soccer or basketball
- Dancing
- Chores such as raking leaves or mowing the lawn
- Improved health of heart, lungs and circulatory system. Aerobic exercise strengthens the heart so it pumps blood more efficiently, and also lowers your overall resting heart rate, according to the Mayo Clinic. This type of exercise also increases levels of "good" cholesterol and lowers levels of "bad" cholesterol, which, in turn, can reduce the buildup of plaque in the arteries.
- Reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, including stroke
- Lowered risk of type 2 diabetes
- Lowered blood pressure and improved blood fat levels
How much aerobic exercise do you need?
According to the most recent physical activity guidelines from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), adults should do at least 150 minutes (2.5 hours) of moderate-intensity physical activity (such as brisk walking) per week. There are many ways to divide up those 150 minutes over the course of a week, but most experts recommend breaking up that time into 30 minutes of physical activity, five days per week.
If you pick a vigorous type of activity, like running, for your workout, you don't have to do quite as much. The HHS guidelines say that 75 minutes (1 hour and 15 minutes) of vigorous activity per week is equivalent to 150 minutes of moderate-intensity activity per week.
How can you avoid injury when doing aerobic exercise?
The main risks of aerobic activity come from exercising too hard and too fast at the start of a workout, said said Kelly Drew, an exercise physiologist with the American College of Sports Medicine. When starting out, people should stay at a pace that feels comfortable, she said.
Dr. Edward Laskowski, co-director of the Mayo Clinic Sports Medicine Center in Rochester, Minnesota, recommended that people use the mantra, "start out low, and progress slow." This means starting with a level of activity that's fairly light, and gradually increasing the duration and intensity of your exercise sessions. People with joint problems should also avoid high-impact exercises, such as exercise that involves a lot of jumping. Instead, they should stick with low-impact exercises, like riding on a stationary bicycle, using an elliptical machine or doing water exercises, Laskowski said.
Strength exercise
Strength exercises, such as weight lifting, push-ups and crunches, work your muscles by using resistance (like a dumbbell or your own body weight.) This type of exercise increases lean muscle mass, which is particularly important for weight loss, because lean muscle burns more calories than other types of tissue.
Strength exercise, or resistance training, works your muscles by using resistance, like a dumbbell or your own body weight. This type of exercise increases lean muscle mass, which is particularly important for weight loss, because lean muscle burns more calories than other types of tissue. When people drop pounds, they can also lose muscle, so it's important to do resistance training to keep that muscle mass.
"You can lose weight quickly [by] doing other stuff, but you're not going to keep it off [in the] long term if you don't maintain lean muscle mass," said said Kelly Drew, an exercise physiologist with the American College of Sports Medicine.
People also naturally lose muscle mass as they age, so resistance training is important for older adults. Having strong muscles can make it easier to do everyday activities, like gardening or taking your suitcase out of an overhead bin on an airplane, said Jason Schatzenpahl, a fitness specialist at CU Anschutz Health and Wellness Center in Aurora, Colorado.
Examples of strength exercises include:
- Lifting weights
- Using resistance bands
- Using your body weight for resistance, by doing push-ups, pull-ups, crunches, leg squats or push-ups against a wall
- Using weight machines at a gym
- Increased lean muscle mass (or prevention of its loss)
- Increased bone density and reduced risk of osteoporosis
- Increased metabolism to help with weight loss or weight maintenance
- Increased muscle strength to make everyday activities easier
- Lowered risk of injury (by allowing the muscles to better support the joints)
How much strength exercise do you need to do?
The HHS' physical activity guidelines recommend doing resistance-training exercises at least two days per week. These exercises should work all of the major muscle groups in your body — your legs, hips, back, chest, abdomen, shoulders and arms.
For each muscle group that you exercise, you should try to do at least eight to 12 repetitions of an activity (like lifting a weight), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. To get the benefits from the exercise, you need to work the muscles to the point where it's difficult for you to do another repetition, the CDC says.
But you shouldn't exercise the same muscle group two days in a row, because your muscles need time to recover, according to the National Institutes of Health.
How can you avoid injury when doing strength training?It's very important that you have the correct form and body position when you do resistance training. "If you do some of these exercises poorly, with bad technique, you can injure yourself," said said Dr. Edward Laskowski, co-director of the Mayo Clinic Sports Medicine Center in Rochester, Minnesota. You may need to work with a professional trainer, or watch exercise videos online, to make sure you use the correct technique.
If you're just starting out, you should use a light weight that you can lift or push at least eight times, the NIH says. Once it becomes easy to lift this weight, gradually add more weight. The American College of Sports Medicine recommends that when you are comfortable lifting a certain weight, you should increase the weight by about 2 to 10 percent, and then work on lifting this heavier weight until it again becomes comfortable.
Balance exercise
Balance exercises improve your ability to control and stabilize your body's position. This type of exercise is particularly important for older adults, because balance gets worse with age.But balance exercises can be beneficial for everyone, including people who have gained or lost a lot of weight or those who become pregnant, which can throw off your center of gravity, Drew said.
Balance exercises improve your ability to control and stabilize your body's position. This type of exercise is particularly important for older adults — as you age, your ability to know where you are in space, called proprioception, gets worse, which contributes to a decline in balance, said said Kelly Drew, an exercise physiologist with the American College of Sports Medicine.
But balance exercises can benefit people of any age, including people who have gained or lost a lot of weight or those who become pregnant, which can throw off your center of gravity, Drew said.
These exercises are also important for reducing injury risk. For example, if you sprain your ankle, you could be at risk for reinjury if you don't retrain your balance, said said Dr. Edward Laskowski, co-director of the Mayo Clinic Sports Medicine Center in Rochester, Minnesota. That's because when you sprain your ankle, the muscles around the joint stop contracting in a coordinated fashion, and this destabilizes the joint, Laskowski said. If you do balance exercises after the injury, it retrains the muscles to contract together, which better stabilizes the joint during movements and prevents reinjury, he said.
And most athletes can benefit from balance training to help them maintain balance during their sport activity. "[In] almost all athletic endeavors, you're going to be on one foot at a time while you're doing things," said , said Jason Schatzenpahl, a fitness specialist at the CU Anschutz Health and Wellness Center in Aurora, Colorado.
Examples of balance exercises include:
- Shifting your weight from side to side
- Standing on one foot
- Walking heel to toe
- Using a balance board or stability ball
- Doing tai chi, yoga or Pilates.
- Prevents falls
- Reduces the risk of lower-extremity injuries, such as knee and ankle injuries
- Improves proprioception (the ability to know where you are in space)
There's no limit to how much balance training you can do safely — you can do it every day if you want, Laskowski said. A 2015 review study found that doing three to six balance training sessions per week, with four balance exercises per training session, for 11 to 12 weeks was effective in improving people's balance.
How can you avoid injury when doing balance exercise?
The main risk of doing balance exercises is that you might fall, Drew said. Make sure you have something close to you that you can hold on to if you start to fall, Drew said. If you use equipment such as a stability board, you should make sure you are on a flat, stable and nonslippery surface, according to the American College of Sports Medicine.
Start with an easy balance exercise, like shifting your weight from side to side or standing on one foot for a few seconds, and gradually make your sessions more challenging — for example, by increasing the time you spend on one foot, the ACSM recommends. Also, you should start on a stable surface and in a single position before adding any movements or balance exercise equipment.
Flexibility Exercise
Flexibility exercises stretch your muscles and may improve your range of motion at your joints. There are two types of flexibility exercises: static stretching, in which you stretch a muscle without moving, and dynamic stretching, which combines stretching with movements.
Examples of static stretches include:
- Stretching the hamstring muscles by sitting on the ground with your legs straight, and leaning forward
- Stretching the calves by stepping forward with one leg, and shifting your weight toward the front leg
- Stretching your thigh muscle by bending one leg back toward your buttock, and holding on to your foot
Also, you should start with a slowed-down version of a dynamic stretch, and then, as your muscles warm up, you can increase the speed of the movement. As with strength training, you may want to work with a personal trainer, or watch videos online, to learn the proper technique for dynamic stretches.
Examples of dynamic stretches include:
- High steps: Raise your knee toward your chest, hold on to your shin and then bring your leg back down. Then, do this with the opposite leg. You can do this while standing in one place or while walking.
- Ankle stretch: Raise one foot up slightly off the ground, keep your leg straight and flex your foot with your toes pointed up. Repeat with the opposite foot.
- Arm swings: Start with your arms straight out in front of you, with your palms facing down. Walk forward, and swing your arms together to the right so that your left arm goes across your chest. Then, swing your arms the opposite way as you keep walking, and repeat a few times.
- Arm circles: Hold your arms straight at your sides, parallel to the floor. Do arm circles in each direction, making bigger circles as you get more flexible.
Ideally, you should include all four types of exercise in your workouts. But that doesn't mean you have to do four separate workouts, Drew said. You can combine some exercises together, like strength and balance training. For example, you could do bicep curls while standing on one leg. Some workouts, such as yoga, incorporate strength, flexibility and balance exercises.
A sample workout might include running or walking briskly for 30 minutes on a treadmill for aerobic exercise, then doing strength and balance exercises combined, and finishing by doing some static stretches, Drew said. "Your exercise program should include a bit of all four
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