The challenge of keeping Australians active is not as easy as it looks. A staggering number of people who start a new fitness program quit going after six months. So what is the difference between people who succeed and those who fail? The answer may be easier than you think: location.
Being close to a gym in your local area or at work makes all the difference in whether you will continue to go. The numbers also agree. People who have easy access to exercise facilities have lower rates of heart disease, better mental health, and even healthier cognitive functions with age. There is a huge difference between exercising and training. The difference is worlds apart.
The Science Behind Exercise and Mental Health
Your brain is working when you exercise. It starts to increase the amounts of things like serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine. These things control your mood, attention, and motivation. But the great benefits of exercise do not simply end there.
Exercise also increases the amount of BDNF, a protein that assists your brain in forming new connections and keeping healthy neurons. Some studies have even indicated that exercise is just as effective as antidepressants in people with mild to moderate depression, and the exercise group had similar results. Brain scans have also shown that there are real differences between people who exercise on a regular basis, especially in the hippocampus, which is where memory processing occurs.
The problem is, one bout of exercise will not affect your brain. It takes a couple of weeks of regular exercise before this happens. What is the difference between knowing that exercise is good for you and actually feeling the effects for your mental health? Consistency.
Physical Health Gains of Regular Exercise
Your body changes in ways that doctors can measure because of your aerobic exercise. Your heart beats slower. Your blood pressure decreases if you have high blood pressure. Your blood vessels function better. These are very significant changes because heart disease is still the number one cause of death in Australia.
Your cholesterol levels improve. Your good cholesterol (HDL) rises, but your triglycerides fall. Your bones become stronger from weight-bearing exercise, and this becomes significant as you age and the risk of osteoporosis develops.
Muscle loss happens in people who don’t exercise to keep their muscles. You lose muscle mass every year past a certain age unless you do something to prevent it. Your metabolism improves because of regular exercise. Your body becomes more receptive to insulin, which is a significant factor because so many Australians have type 2 diabetes or are on the brink of developing it. Even your immune system seems to strengthen, although scientists are still trying to figure out how this occurs.
How Community Gyms Help with Consistency
Social factors are a more important aspect of exercising than most people believe. When exercising in a group, the situation is not the same as exercising alone. People exercising in groups have a greater chance of continuing their routine than those exercising alone.
You also don’t have to make friends with everyone at your gym. Just being known by the staff and seeing familiar faces every week is enough to keep you on track. You won’t want to miss a workout if you know people will notice you’re not there. Group fitness classes take this to the next level because you’ve committed to being there at a certain time of day when other people are counting on you.
The benefits of exercise range from heart health to stress relief. For North Shore residents, exercising at a local gym like Chatswood Gym will make it easier to keep up these habits without upsetting their work-life balance.
Removing barriers is more effective than trying to rely on motivation. Motivation is a fleeting thing that comes and goes depending on how well you slept or what kind of day you had. But a system that makes it easy to show up? That sticks around even when things get tough. Ease of access genuinely makes a difference in whether people can stick with exercise in the long term.
Stress Relief with Exercise
Your stress hormones have patterns in response to exercise that will amaze you. One bout of exercise can actually lead to a temporary increase in cortisol. But exercise regularly for a few months, and your resting levels of stress hormones will change. Your body will respond to stress in a different way at a biochemical level.
Your autonomic nervous system, which is the part of your body that controls your fight-or-flight response, will also be impacted. Heart rate variability will increase, which is a measure of stress resilience that doctors look for. This is important because so many Australian workers are dealing with chronic stress in the workplace, according to workplace surveys.
People who exercise on a regular basis sleep better. This is one of the most consistent findings that scientists have made. The way that brain waves are functioning changes, especially the rumination circuits that are involved in anxiety. These stress-buffering effects add up over time. People who exercise on a regular basis not only feel like they are handling stress better, but they actually are.
Time Efficiency and Local Access
Distance is the death of fitness programs. It’s the single biggest killer of exercise routines. The proximity of your home to a gym is a direct predictor of gym use. It’s such a strong correlation that it appears in study after study.
Australians in suburban areas already spend large chunks of their day commuting. Throw gym commutes into the mix, and then work commutes and school pickups, and it’s just not feasible. Consider people who have been exercising for five or ten years. They always have easy access to a gym. It’s a trend that becomes clear once you see it.
There’s the time factor, of course. But there’s also this mental math that happens every time you consider whether to go to the gym. “Is it worth the drive today? ” Some days, particularly when you’re tired or it’s raining, the answer is no. Urban planners are beginning to treat gym access like parks and bike paths, recognising that its infrastructure impacts public health.
Building Sustainable Wellness Habits
Most people misunderstand habit formation. How motivated you are at the beginning doesn’t mean anything for the end result. It’s the strength of the habit that matters. It has been found that it can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months to make exercise a habit.
It’s better to start small than to start big every time. Two sessions a week that you stick to are better than a five-day program that you quit by March. For Australians trying to balance work, family, and aging parents, the best plan always beats the perfect plan.
There’s a thing called implementation intentions. Instead of saying, “I should exercise more,” you say, “If it’s Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, then at 6:30am I will go to the gym that’s near my office.” This is much more effective. You’re not trying to decide whether and when to exercise, but whether to stick with your plan. Having a gym near your office makes it easier every single time, whether it’s in Chatswood or anywhere else.
Social Connection and Accountability
Exercising with others changes what you’re actually doing. Even if you’re not really interacting with other people, exercising with them changes how long you exercise and how hard you exercise.
For people working from home, retirees, or anyone who doesn’t get much social interaction, the gym is more than just a place to get fit. Those few minutes with the staff and regulars may be the only time some people see other human beings all day. Studies on social isolation and health show that these kinds of causal links are more important than you think.
Group fitness classes sell two commodities at once: shared goals and commitment. When researchers ask people why they keep coming back, they say it’s for accountability and fun, in roughly equal measure. Both are good predictors of whether people will keep exercising over the long term. The social benefits are not just a nice addition. They’re a critical part of what keeps people exercising over time, when they would otherwise let it lapse.
Mental Clarity and Cognitive Function
The blood flow to your brain increases significantly during exercise, and your brain gets more oxygen and glucose. The effects are immediate and quantifiable. Your mind becomes clearer, your processing speed increases, and tasks requiring concentration become simpler. These effects last for several hours post-exercise.
The long-term implications for your brain are even more exciting. Studies of individuals over several decades have shown that regular exercise reverses the aging process for your brain. Exercisers’ brains maintain more tissue in areas that normally atrophy with age. Aerobic exercise has a direct and significant relationship to maintaining brain structure in the face of aging.
There is a clear implication for Australian workers and students. Structuring cognitively demanding tasks immediately post-exercise may exploit these cognitive benefits. As the Australian population ages, with substantial demographic shifts forecasted by the Bureau of Statistics to favor the 65+ age groups, the relationship between exercise and dementia prevention becomes increasingly important at a population level.
Several things are happening simultaneously in this situation. New neurons are being created, new blood vessels are being formed in the brain, inflammation is being reduced, and growth factors are being increased. Your brain is literally maintaining better structural integrity because your body is moving.
Practical Steps to Start Your Journey
According to the Australian Department of Health and Aged Care, adults aged 18 to 64 require 2.5 to 5 hours of moderate exercise per week, or half of that amount if it is vigorous exercise. It is more important to begin with low volumes than most people believe. It prevents injuries and retains members, which is more valuable than good programming.
Brisk walking for twenty or thirty minutes is a good beginning. Perhaps some easy cycling. Moderate intensity simply means that you are working hard enough that you are breathing a bit harder, but you can still hold a conversation. For weight training, begin with light weights and focus on technique before you focus on weight.
Schedule times to go, rather than trying to get there by accident. Pick a gym that is conveniently located close to where you live or work, thus eliminating one known obstacle. Before trying to exercise, talk to your GP if you have ongoing health issues, are over 50, or have any health concerns. This is more than simply protecting yourself legally. It is simply good common sense.
Tempo your goals based on where you are, rather than where you think you ought to be. Australians who require the assistance of exercise professionals when beginning exercise are lucky, but it is not mandatory. The most crucial thing is to begin in a manner that you can sustain.
Making Evidence-Based Wellness Choices
The rewards of regular physical activity are real, and the science behind this is extensive and sound. Positive changes in cardiovascular function, metabolism, mental health, cognition, and meaningful shifts occur in all of these areas.
However, to reap these rewards, regular engagement is required, and this is what most people find difficult. Being close to facilities for exercise rears its head again and again as a consideration that determines whether regular exercise can be maintained. It is also a consideration that can be altered, unlike genetics or age. By making regularity easier, regularity can be improved, which in turn allows these health changes to be made.
Having access to community gyms is a social support mechanism that helps to maintain changes in behavior. Starting off with what is realistically possible and then gradually increasing is consistent with what exercise science and habit change research indicate is effective. For Australians who want to make healthy changes that last for years, not weeks, a strategy that has real science behind it is to select a gym that is easily accessible. The best exercise program is always the one that can be maintained, and location is a much more important consideration in this regard than most people realise.
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