With so many options for getting fit and healthy, it can be a puzzling thing to know how to choose the best one for you. Is a gym membership the right choice? Or how about a home workout machine that promises you only have to use it for 4 minutes a day? Should you get into weightlifting? or gymnastics? or Barre? or Pilates? While almost ANY type of fitness is better than NO fitness at all, here are the top reasons from Boot Camp San Francisco on why outdoor fitness is a strong option for your optimal wellbeing.
Humans belong outside
Yes, we all need shelter from the elements, being the naked, hairless beings that we are. However, for thousands of years, humans have spent most of their time outside. If you look at other cultures, people still spend a huge proportion of time outside. It is only recently (and primarily in Western cultures) that people have made the transition to spending most of our time indoors. Our bodies are optimized for experiencing sunshine and breathing fresh air, but many people have lost that almost completely. We have houses and office buildings and vehicles that are sealed off from the outside air, so the only time we spend outside is walking from the house to the car and the car to the building. It should not be weird to us to go outside. It should be weird to us that we spend so much time inside.
Going Outside Gives You Fresh Air
One of the main reasons that so many people get sick in the winter is that we’re all constantly breathing recycled indoor air. What could be better than going to a boot camp workout at our Marina location and breathing in the intoxicating fresh sea air? While there is still room for even better air quality in our city, we can all still benefit from going outside and breathing fresh air. Some of that oxygen might have just been released from the nearest tree leaf and you’re the first one to breathe it in. So go outside, breathe deeply, and feel great about the fact that you’re bucking the indoor trend.
Going Outside Gives You Vitamin D
Vitamin D deficiency is on the rise, and more and more people are taking vitamin D supplements and looking for ways to increase their body’s vitamin D. The timeless, failproof source of natural vitamin D for your body is not through a pill. It’s through sunlight hitting your skin. It’s amazing but true that just like sunlight hitting plant leaves can produce glucose through photosynthesis, sunlight hitting your skin cells can produce vitamin D through…well…vitamin D synthesis. Very few foods in nature contain Vitamin D, making sunlight our primary source of this essential health substance.
Medical science is still not exactly sure of all of the subtleties and long-term effects of denying ourselves the amount of outside time that our bodies crave. However, you can be one of the ones that gets outside on a regular basis when you choose an outdoor fitness program with one of our Boot Camp San Francisco workouts. Join BCSF today!