If you are suffering from a slow metabolism, the reason could be down to your exercise routine. There are certain exercises which can really help you to boost your metabolism and that can bring a whole range of benefits for the body. So just what exercises are better for the metabolism and why exactly does exercise make a difference to the metabolism in the first place?

Exercises and Metabolism

The main reason why exercise helps with the metabolism is because it brings more oxygen into the body. This oxygen is turned into energy and it allows the metabolism to speed up and function properly. Also, when you exercise, you take deep breaths in which really helps to fill the lungs with more oxygen than usual. So, exercising basically helps to get more oxygen into the body which feeds the body systems and helps to speed up your metabolism.

Another way in which exercise helps with the metabolism is it helps you to build up extra muscle. The metabolism tends to work better the more muscle that you have, rather than fat. So, if you are burning off fat through cardiovascular exercise and if you are building up muscle through resistance training, your metabolism is likely to speed up and work as well as it possibly can.

Cardiovascular Exercise versus Resistance Training

So just which exercise is better for the metabolism – Cardiovascular or resistance? Well the answer is both.

Cardiovascular exercise includes things that really get the heart pumping. This could be running, aerobics, swimming, kickboxing or playing tennis for example. The faster you get your heart pumping the better and it can really help you to wake up your metabolism. People who do not get much exercise tend to have a fairly sluggish metabolism, so by getting plenty of oxygen into the body, it can really help you to get that metabolism working.

Resistance training on the other hand is what helps to build up your muscle. This will allow the metabolism to speed up and it will not have to work as hard to burn calories and fat as there will not be as much fat in the body to compete with. It is a well known fact that muscle burns off fat quicker and so the more muscle you have, the more fat you will burn and the quicker your metabolism will be.

The best resistance exercises that you can do include using the various machines that you find at the gym. Weights are generally good and you can use them to do repetitions. The main thing that you have to watch out for with resistance training however is that you do it properly. It is easy to rush into it and you may aim to do as much strength training as you can to begin with, but this is basically going about it the wrong way. It is about the quality of the resistance training that you do, not the quantity.

Overall resistance training and cardiovascular exercises should be combined if you want to boost your metabolism. Keeping the heart pumping and building more muscle is extremely beneficial when it comes to boosting the metabolism and it is not possible to get the full benefits from just one type of exercise alone.