We all work hard to get back in shape when we see summer approaching. Fearful of the beaches and the “swimsuit test,” we all work hard to get back in form. But when this season is far away, and winter is approaching, like bears preparing to hibernate, we always tend to put on a few pounds and not particularly keep an eye on the scales. So, almost without realizing it, we can suddenly wake up with several extra pounds on our rump. Kilos that we do not like and would like to dispose of.
Of course, losing weight isn’t easy. It takes time, willpower, and endurance. We tend to seek external help, which can support our motivations. Friends, colleagues, partners can give us a relevant hand, even if, in the end, everything still depends on us. But finding fun activities can also be a good help. Eating little and running on a treadmill can be tedious and tedious, but running inside a ball while having fun can be just as useful for the line.
Sport allows you to do good physical exercise without suffering the boredom (and in part the fatigue) of effort. Yes, but what sport to do? Which is more useful for losing weight? Drawing up a definitive ranking is almost impossible because every joke is effective depending on the effort you put into it and the area of ​​the body on which you intend to intervene. There are some. However, that involves the whole body and having their effectiveness even if faced at a slow pace. Here they are.
Swim To Develop And Tone The Whole Body
Let’s start with what our mothers have always presented us as the complete sport: swimming. And they weren’t wrong. Even the laziest swimmers use every muscle in their body to stay afloat and propel themselves forward, from the neck to the feet. Thus, this activity strengthens the tone of the whole body and improves, among other things, the posture and flexibility of our joints.
The beauty, then, is that you don’t have to be very young to practice it. Of course, if you are overweight, the first laps will be particularly burdensome.
Still, in the long run, you will experience a feeling of well-being, deriving both from muscle tone and strengthening your aerobic capacities. To lose weight, the most important advice in the pool is to increase your pace a little at a time, both by taking less time to complete a lap and by extending the length of the training session. However, we must proceed gradually. Scholars say that if you keep a good pace, you can lose up to 11 calories per minute and therefore easily more than 600 per hour, although this estimate also depends on the weight and build of the athlete. In short, a sport to try.
Parkour
You all knew swimming and our presentation of that sport probably showed you nothing completely new. Parkour, however, maybe that many of you do not know, because it is a very special and recent activity. Sport spread for the first time in the 90s, particularly in large French cities, and consists in crossing a city path trying to overcome obstacles by adapting one’s body to the environment.
Thus, it seems something transcendental and ambiguous, but it is much simpler than expected. In practice, the “trackers” (because this is how athletes are called) must overcome obstacles – walls, stairs, bottlenecks, architectural barriers of various kinds – by performing jumps, vaulting, somersaults, and climbing. All in the most dynamic way possible, as if they were going through a military training course, with the difference that the city offers the obstacles.
The level of activity for the body is very high because different movements are required that involve different body muscles from time to time. Running is also engaged, alternating with jumping, sliding, climbing, and other activities. It is probably the most complete and challenging sport for weight loss when done at the highest intensity levels.
Cycling: For The Legs And More
Let’s go back to more popular and practicable sports at all ages with cycling, an activity that – as we said at the beginning – bears fruit whether you dedicate yourself to it intensively or practice it more gently. By bicycle, you can go climbing the hills near home, but you can also go to work, you can go on a group excursion and alone. This extreme flexibility has always made it a very popular sport.
On the other hand, pedaling has its undoubted value in everyone’s diet. It allows you to burn calories pretty quickly, but it is also good for your health and improves breathing, stamina, and muscles throughout the body. When it is hard, we do not push on the pedals only with the legs, but we use the abdominals, the back, the arms with which we attach ourselves to the handlebars, and so on.
However, above all the legs, it benefits greatly from this activity. Quadriceps, glutes, hamstrings, and calves will be more and more modeled and sculpted as you intensify this type of training. In general, we can see it as an excellent alternative to jogging. If running around the city scares you or bores you, cycling a few kilometers every day can give you similar benefits but with greater safety and variety.
Squash
The top three sports we’ve featured on this list may very well be done solo – although Parkour is best done in the company. Even the last one, cross-country skiing, belongs to individual sports. However, some of us need something different, something that stimulates competition and the challenge against the other rather than against ourselves. For people of this genre, squash can be a great solution.
Few of you will have practiced it, but many will have seen it in some American movie or TV series because it enjoys great popularity in the United States. It comes from tennis, which represents a more extreme variant from the cardio-muscular point of view, so much so that it allows you to burn calories rather quickly. It is estimated that with half an hour of play, it is possible to reach almost 400 calories burned: and it is no coincidence that precisely because of its excellent performance in a short time, it is often practiced in gyms during the break from the office.
Compared to other similar sports, squash has no downtime. It requires great physical endurance and good muscle tightness; sweating is also notable. It is played indoors, in a fairly small space bordered by walls on which the rubber ball has to bounce. Beginners usually play with a ball that reflects a lot and therefore keeps the pace of the game high, but as you improve, you then move on to less elastic balls, which heat up and increase in speed during the game.
Constant Pace And Guaranteed Weight Loss
Some of the sports we have presented are indoors, others outdoors but are generally practicable all year round. Cross-country skiing, that is the activity with which we close our list, is instead a typical winter sport and, unless you live in the mountains, you can practice it only in certain weeks of the year, during the holidays that you can enjoy in the Alps. However, I don’t think this is a particularly expensive activity, nor is it forbidden for beginners.
Unlike downhill skiing, you do not have to consider the cost of the ski lifts, nor do you risk breaking a leg on the first descent. Cross-country skiing is an activity that you can do at the speed you want: you can hire a teacher to teach you the rudiments of the training, but it is enough to have a friend who has already practiced it to be able to venture into some simple path.
The activity is quite demanding from a physical point of view, so much so that you sweat a lot and burn calories. All this, however, at a constant pace, without too many changes, allows you to practice this activity even when you are no longer very young. Furthermore, while skiing, you can admire the beauty of nature because the cross-country trails often pass through woods and offer breathtaking views.
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