The heart is a muscle and it needs some love too!

Valentine’s day is next week and while you’re showing the special people in your life some love, you can also look after your own heart too! You’ve heard us talking about the importance of preventing your muscles from regressing as you get older, but you need to remember that your heart is a muscle too, and it’s vital that you show it some love as well.

Promoting good heart health is super important for living that longer and stronger life you deserve. There’s many ways of keeping that ticker in tip top shape through things like nutrition, sleep, and stress management, but today I’m talking movement.

As I’ve mentioned before, your body needs different types of movement to ensure you have long-term mobility and vitality. Your heart is no different. Doing just one type of exercise isn’t enough to keep your body functioning at its best. If you want to promote longevity and not gradually decline as you age you need to be doing different types of movement and exercise. This not only benefits from moving muscles but your beautiful heart too!

Here’s the breakdown of the types of exercise you need to be doing every week and how they benefit your heart.

Balance and Stretching

Balance and stretching improve your overall flexibility and mobility. This means you can keep active more easily (which has obvious benefits to your heart - but it also helps to reduce stress and falls.

Chronic stress is a major factor in heart disease and so many of you are in a near constant state of stress and anxiety. Taking the time every week to do something to improve your balance and flexibility gives you a moment to be present in your body and take your mind off your busy life.

There’s bucket loads of research to show things like yoga, balance and stretching reduce stress levels and improve people’s resilience to life stress. 

All this helps reduce inflammation in your body and improves vascular health. This takes the pressure off your ticker, keeping it healthier for longer.

If you’re missing balance and flexibility from your weekly movement, we have classes you can join. Why not try Balance and Strength, or Stretch and Flow? Don’t worry if you’re a bit stiff, or wobbly on your feet. We tailor our classes to what you need, so you can progres without feeling left-behind.

Find out how to join our classes at the end of this blog!

Strength

Strength based movement is super important for heart health. Many of you forget the importance of building and maintaining strength especially as you age. Absolutely everyone needs to be doing strength based activity, no matter your current age, level or ability. 

Improving your strength has so many benefits for your body which also benefit your heart. Low muscle strength is associated with increased risk of suffering heart disease so pay attention and get strong. Here’s some of the other fab benefits of improving your strength:

• Control inflammation - reduces stress on your heart and lowers likelihood of heart disease. 
• Reducing type II diabetes - a comorbidity to heart disease.

• Reduces weight gain, osteoporosis, and muscle loss - all of which reduce your mobility particularly as you age. This in turn puts you at higher risk of developing heart disease.
• Stress reduction - which as I mentioned above is wonderfully beneficial for your heart.

In short, people who are stronger, have a much lower risk of developing heart disease and lowering stress.

There are lots of ways to get strong, it doesn’t need to be with big scary weights.The most important thing in getting stronger is you push yourself and keep progressing. If you don’t, you won’t get all these benefits. Our Lifters and Shifters class provides a really safe and friendly environment for you to explore strengthening your body and heart. More info on how to join classes at the end.

Cardio

When talking heart health, there’s nothing quite like cardio workout to get your blood pumping and heart working. It’s a sure-fire way of promoting good heart health now, and long-term. 

So many of us miss this one out and think just doing a daily walk is enough - sadly it’s simply not enough. You need to be doing something higher intensity that really gets your heart rate up, if you want to prolong your health and life. 

HIIT workouts are the best and quickest way of getting cardio exercise  into your routine. It’s fab at improving heart function and amazing at reducing organ fat (another huge risk factor in heart disease)

Exercising for shorter, higher intensity bursts for 5-90 seconds, uses anaerobic energy. When doing this type of exercise, you stimulate your body to;

• improve heart function
• reduce body fat
• increase muscle
• increase strength
• increase speed
• increase power
• make more mitochondria so you have more energy!

When you work anaerobically, you may get a bit sweaty and out of puff but look at the HUGE number of benefits you get!

Knowing what intensity is right for you can be tricky, but joining a class is a fantastic way of making sure that you are pushing yourself enough, without overdoing it. Our cardio based classes, like Huffers and Puffers, and VIGOUR Fit are tailored to you, your body, and your needs, so that you can get all these wonderful benefits without being overwhelmed and put off.

Don’t believe us, or think cardio isn’t for you? Here’s what Nancy said after joining Huffers and Puffers:

“I hadn’t done exercise to make me sweaty and out of breath for years. Joining VIGOUR classes has made me feel so much better about myself. It’s improved my mental wellbeing and overall fitness. I've even had the confidence to try other stuff like paddle boarding!” 

• Nancy (read the full story here)

Joining a class

The best way of making sure you get multiple types of movement into your week is by joining varied classes. Our classes are all about keeping you safe to explore your movement capability and holding you accountable to do it! You’re much more likely to stick to a health habit if you’re surrounded by a community of other people doing the same, keeping it fun.

You can view our class timetable here, to see what we offer. Our VIGOUR Health Club gives you access to these classes (and LOADS more stuff), so if you’re at all interested in joining classes you can email vigour@healthhub-kingsbridge, or call 01548 852 355 to get more information on how VIGOUR can help you, and find out how to sign up. 

“Since joining VIGOUR, my gradual decline of doing less has now stopped! I know ageing is going to affect me, but now I’m not worried, as I’m being proactive to keep myself moving and feeling fit and strong”

• Trevor  (you can read Trevor’s Success Story here)

If you’re not quite ready to join a class but want some help/advice, we’ve got you covered…

Want Some Help?

If any of this has given your heart a little prod but you still feel a bit unsure how to get going or if it’s right for you, simply give us a buzz. We will happily book you in for a FREE Discovery Visit with Abbie. She will find out a little about you, what your current problems and concerns are, find out what you want to achieve and then help you plan what you can do to start ensuring your health is the best it can be now and in the future. It’s so simple. Call us on 01548 852355 or email [email protected] to find out more. There is no obligation to sign up to anything. We just want to make sure you start in the right way.

Be wise; get strong, fit, and flexible. If you really do want to live a longer, stronger, happier, and healthier life, it’s time to take your heart health seriously and prioritise improving it. What better gift to give yourself and the people who care about you this Valentine’s than a life of health and longevity?

Have a great week,

Niamh

and the HealthHub team

PS if you’re looking for a special something to show someone you care, why not gift them one of our gift vouchers? They can be used for getting treatment, a relaxing massage, or some of our lovely REN products.