Velocity Fitness

This is one of my favorite studies so far this year – even if it’s no big surprise – as it underscores one of my basic exercise beliefs: working out outside, especially amid lush greenery,  is great for you.

We all know what a shot in the arm a good workout can be for your mood, and now recent results of a series of studies published in the Journal of Environmental Science and Technology says that working out outdoors in a naturally green setting is an even greater boon for your mental health, and also improves self-esteem. 

In a group of studies,  U.K. researchers put 1252 people in outdoor, naturally green settings and had them perform physical activity while they measured the intensity, the exposure and duration of the exercise, and also analyzed subjects’ gender, age group, subjects’ starting health status and the habitat in which they worked out.

The result: those who went green with their workouts got big benefits almost immediately during exercise. Both men and women showed the same amount of benefits in the same time period. For self-esteem, the young reaped the biggest boost, and for mood change, the young and old age ranges. Those dealing with mental illness showed one of the highest improvement responses in self-esteem of all subjects.

But wait, there’s more: add in a water feature, and both the self-esteem and mood responses increase.

If you can catch a river, stream, LAKE, pond or puddle along your run, walk, hike or ride – toss in some tall, wavy grass, or just a well-tended lawn into the mix, your environs will go the distance to deliver more of what you  already know is a good thing.

I’ve got more to say about outoor workouts, so stay tuned.

Stay strong…and get out there!