Fitness Hobbies: Activities That Get The Heart Racing

The key to losing weight is keeping your heart rate above a certain threshold. The body needs to be shocked and told to wake up in order for the fat cells to begin burning. No matter how long you are working out, if you don’t push yourself to a point where you can feel your heart thumping in your chest, you’re not going to achieve your fitness goals quickly. Why would you?

The body might be going through some demanding activities, but since your heart rate isn’t up, then the brain doesn’t need to send frantic signals to your muscles to put the ATP process in motion. The more energy your muscles need, the more fat will be burned. Hence, the cycle of losing fat needs to be triggered. Sure, you could do a workout routine, but people often fall off this wagon. You might find that you can stick to your fitness goals better when you have an activity that you can have fun doing and makes your heart race.

Peddle for the hills

One of the most exciting yet easy to get into sports is mountain biking. Everyone’s heard about it, it’s easy to understand, and you know exactly what’s in store. Unlike getting on an exercise bike and peddling away, here you have more tangible goals. You ride up mountains and hills with the aim of getting to the top as quickly as you can and then peddling down them to get to the base as quickly as you can, too.

However, as you can imagine, mountain biking has changed since it first became popular in the 90s. Now, there are clubs you can join for people looking to get fit and don’t know much about mountain biking. All you need is your own bike and safety gear, such as a helmet, knee and elbow pads and perhaps some gloves, too.

You will ride through uneven and bumpy terrain, which can be in the woods, up a hill, on the side of a mountain, along a river or even through a set course. The friction and the gradient changes of the surfaces you ride on put stress on your body to pump faster and harder in order to overcome them. Your blood pressure can be controlled better with this kind of workout, and it can increase the health of your lungs, too.

Besides running and swimming, biking is the next best way to involve almost every muscle in your body in your workout. Follow some of the Best Fitness People on Instagram who actually do mountain biking, such as Garrett Chow. People like Chow show great tips on how to improve your riding, get fitter and lose weight.

Batting away the fat

Sports that are easy to learn yet can take years and years to master are often the most fun. Anyone can join in and do them, but to get really good, you need to dedicate yourself. The more you dedicate yourself to the sport, the more active you will become. It’s a kind of self-perpetuating prophecy. Tennis is easy to do, but even at the novice levels, it gets harder and harder. This is because the court is so large, and many different shots can be played to make someone who is a novice at the game lose quickly.

Badminton, on the other hand, is much like the comparison of tennis to table tennis. It looks simple to begin with, but when you reach another level, you can often end up sweating buckets and feel like your heart is pumping a gallon a second. It’s also not as expensive to learn as tennis; it can be played in a small space, which is why just about any kind of gym or fitness centre has a badminton court. The rackets are much cheaper also as well, and the shuttlecock is inexpensive.

The short, sharp swings and the constant chasing of the shuttlecock and preventing it from floating to the ground will keep your body in a high state of alert. Since it takes a lot of energy for your fast twitch fibres to activate, when you use them over and over, it forces the muscles to burn glycogen. This makes the sport intense and also keeps your heart rate high all throughout the match. The matches are shorter than tennis, but the intensity level is higher for longer.

Speed on the ice

To get fit through sport, perhaps the best option is to pick up something that is accessible. However, sometimes, you should try to venture out and do something that isn’t so normal. Doing such a sport as speed skating is one of those activities that look like great fun but do cost a little bit more than average to get involved with. And yet, the reward is great because you learn a skill that is unique and not many people around the world can do.

Anyone can ride a bike, anyone can play badminton, but not just anybody can clock 20 to 25 mph on the ice speed skating. You’ll be using the largest muscles in the body, those being your quadriceps. You can go around the short track, which is around 100 meters, or you can go around the long track, which is around 400 meters.

The styles are different for each track, as short bursts of acceleration are required on the short track with more balance as the turns are sharper. However, for the long track, you need consistent speed and the ability to carry that speed through the long swooping corners. Once you get the motion down, you can really end up burning a lot of fat on your waist and around the midsection.

Fitness doesn’t always have to be about aerobics and running. Great health can be achieved by doing sports. Don’t get put off by that notion because many sports are easy to get a hold of and learn. Mountain biking is especially easy to get into and become quite good at doing. The more you keep your heart rate up for longer, the more fat you will burn from your body and achieve that figure you want or come back down to a healthy weight.

This is a collaborative post.