When you hear the words "Low-Impact Exercises", you probably think of senior water aerobics classes or yoga or maybe pilates springs to mind. While low-impact exercises might sound less hardcore and may give you the impression that they are less effective than their more intense counterparts, you will find that with the right application, these exercises can have the world of benefits for anybody of any fitness level.

What Is The Difference Between Low-Impact and High-Impact Exercises?
When we talk about impact, we generally mean how much force is put on the body when conducting a movement. In high-impact workouts, you will find lots of jumping, skipping and running. These moves usually require you to be off one or both of your feet and land with force. These movements are more stressful on your joints which means they have more impact. Low-impact exercises are the opposite in that they usually don't include both your feet ever leaving the ground at the same time. Examples of low-impact exercises include yoga, pilates and swimming.

Who Can Benefit?
Virtually anybody who deems their physical health important can benefit from low-impact exercises.

1. Injury recovery:
   They can particularly be useful for people who are recovering from injury or going through rehabilitation as these provide your muscles with the movement they need for recovery whilst keeping your joints safe and minimising the risk of more injury.
   
   
2. Fill In The Gaps:
   You can also use low-impact exercises to get in some movement on active rest days to allow your body to recover from previous high-intensity workouts you have done too!
   
   
3. Avoid Overtraining:
   Alternating high and low-impact training also prevents you from over-training which can result in you stressing out your joints.

Where do I start?
If you are not familiar with low-impact exercises, we would suggest signing up for a group fitness class such as yoga, pilates, or an aqua aerobics class to familiarise yourself with the kind of movements low-impact exercises entail.

Low-impact exercises are the perfect way to move and sweat a bit every day while keeping up with the consistency that is needed for you to see results from your training. Try a class or visit our Virtual Studio via our Mobile App to try some of our on-demand fitness classes to get you started.