Hiking comes with plenty of perks, including the nice smells, sounds, and sight of nature. But this activity is also good to your physical, social and mental health.
Cardio Workout
Consider hiking and trailing if you’re living a sedentary lifestyle and you want a powerful aerobic exercise. This exercise boosts you cardiorespiratory fitness, which in turn, strengthens your muscles and improves your blood flow. Basically, a powerful cardio workout:
- Improves blood sugar and pressure levels
- Helps you lose weight
- Improves balance
- Lowers your risk of cardiovascular diseases, such as heart attack
- Reduces the levels of bad cholesterol
Improves Sleep
How do you feel after a long day of working out? Tired? Hiking works similarly in that it will tire you out and provide you with a natural and cheap remedy to insomnia and restless leg syndrome. Additionally, it resets your natural sleep-wake cycle by raising your body temperature and then lowers it to trigger sleepiness later in the da
y.
Boosts Mood and Relieves Stress
A simple hike is a therapy for severe depression. It’s one easy way to break from the normal day-to-day activities to enjoy nature and reflect on your life. This helps you relieve stress and be happy. Studies also show that aerobic exercises can help improve your mood.
Bolster Relations
Whether it’s your boyfriend, spouse or workmate, hiking brings you together, improves the chemistry between you, and encourages teamwork. Imagine getting stuck in the woods and putting your minds together on the best way out. Or maybe when trip and fall, and then your partner helps you up, or when they sacrifice the little water or food they have just for you. Also, this activity helps you know the person you’re committing your life to. Hiking has funny way of bringing out the real and true soul in people. How long can your partner endure hardship, let’s say you run out of water? And how do they come out of this situation?
Inspires Creativity
Hiking is more than strapping on your boots, walking for two and a half hours, and then sit down for a cold sip of soda. You need to calculate the length of period you’ll be in the woods and know the best techniques to climb rocks and hills. Being creative helps you understand how to make fire and find water sources in the wilderness.