Benefits of Jogging

The benefits of jogging are tremendous and will not only help you lose weight but improve your cardiovascular fitness and strengthen your muscles. Jogging really can make a difference in your life and your health.



Here are some of the terrific benefits and advantages you can enjoy when you start jogging regularly.

Weight Control

Clearly, one of the biggest benefits of jogging is losing weight because jogging helps our bodies consume oxygen. The volume of oxygen consumed or extracted from the muscles is important. Muscles, like engines, burn fuel only they burn carbohydrates and fat. Once oxygen is inside the muscle it burns the fat and carbohydrates to keep the muscles going. It has a domino effect: the more efficient our muscles become at consuming oxygen, the fat and carbohydrates we burn, the more fit we become and the longer we can exercise.

You'll have more endurance because your muscles won't run out of oxygen as quickly as someone who is not jogging regularly. This is a great benefit of jogging because losing weight will help you build confidence and feel good about yourself.

Stronger Muscles

Jogging will strengthen your muscles because it's a weight bearing activity. Your muscles will also burn more calories. The more muscle mass you have the more calories you'll burn even when you're not jogging.

Studies estimate that you'll burn 35-50 calories per day for each pound of muscle you add to your body. So an extra five pounds of muscle will burn between 175-250 calories a day or it'll burn an extra pound of fat every two weeks to twenty days. It pays to build muscle!

Stronger Bones

It's not known precisely how much exercise will strengthen your bones, but regular moderate jogging will help to keep your bones strong. Resistance strength training will also help keep muscles and bones strong and keep your joints in good condition.

Better Skin

An exercise like jogging boosts circulation and the delivery of nutrients to your skin which helps to detoxify the body by removing poisons from it. As oxygen is delivered to the skin, there is an increase in the natural production of collagen, the connective tissue that plumps skin. No you won't need botox, just regular jogging will do the trick! Another great benefit of jogging is that your complexion will improve after you exercise because of the increase in blood flow.

Less Stress

A terrific benefit of jogging is the reduction in stress hormones in the body thereby slowing the heart rate and lowering blood pressure. With less stress hormones coursing through your body, you'll relax more and cope better with life's daily stresses.

Improved Mood

Regular jogging reduces the symptoms of depression and can help beat the blues. Endorphins are hormones released by the brain and are associated with happy, positive feelings. During jogging, plasma levels of this substance increase. The benefits of regular jogging are that you're less likely to experience depression.

Fewer Colds

By jogging regularly you'll jump start your immune system, have more energy and reduce the number of colds and other viruses.

Stronger Heart

One of the leading benefits of jogging is developing a stronger heart that can pump more blood with each beat. Conditioned hearts are bigger (the heart's a muscle too and gets bigger when you exercise it), and they pump efficiently enough to allow for greater filling time. This is a good thing because the more blood fills the chambers the more blood gets pumped with each beat.

Increased Heart Stroke Volume

The higher the number of strokes your heart beats means it doesn't have to pump as fast to meet the demands of exercise. Fewer beats and greater stroke volume mean greater efficiency. Think of elite runners and how efficiently their hearts beat. They often have resting heart rates of 40 beats per minute where the average person's rest rate is between 60 and 80 beats per minute.

Mitochondria Anyone?

These guys are the powerhouses of your cells. They do all the heavy work to keep you moving and they increase in number and activity by 50% in a matter of days or weeks in response to regular jogging or aerobic activity. This is both an effective and wonderful benefit of jogging since they are the ones that burn the fat and carbohydrates that make us go.

Burn The Fat

Of course you need more oxygen to burn fat since it's denser but the benefits of jogging regularly gets your heart pumping more blood, your muscles consuming more oxygen and that ever building mitochondria making you an efficient fat-burner!

So you can see there are a lot of reasons to begin jogging. Your body and your health will thank you for it!

Benefits of Jogging Back to Jogging101

Sources (opens a new window):
WebMD
Medicinenet.com