10 Amazing Physical Benefits of Kayaking!
Written by: Calvin Furrow
Site: kayakfisherly.com
Are you wondering about such sports that could improve your mental and physical health? Kayaking could offer you these benefits with a lot of fun and enjoyment. You could not only keep your heart, brain and body healthy but also explore the natural beauty as well as discovering new places which you didn’t know existed. These benefits are enough to inspire you for going out on a kayaking experience with the best pedal kayak out there!
Proven physical benefits of kayaking:
1. Helps you achieve an ideal body weight
Kayaking is like an exercise that could help to reduce some weight. Through paddling at five mph, you could burn almost 500 per hour. Maybe you are thinking that you could burn more than this by doing other exercises like running but kayaking is worth the time as you would find more fun and enjoyment than using a treadmill.
Most people do kayaking for the whole afternoon that indicates burning calories about 1600 per session. If you want to lose weight, kayaking would be great for you and keep kayaking a few days per week until you attain your desirable weight.
2. Increases your muscle strength
You have to use your arms when kayaking and thus, your body parts could become toned. The exertion when kayaking would extend the upper muscles like your shoulders, chest and back. Paddling more could help exercising these muscles.
For traveling miles, you would need doing 500 strokes per mile and this depends on some factors. If you just travel two miles, you have done about 1000 repetitions that could increase the strength of the upper body muscles.
3. Develops toned leg
Although kayaking can develop your shoulders, back, and arms, it can also affect your legs. You use your legs when kayaking, and the movements impact your lower limbs as well as your upper ones.
Your legs should be pressed to keep balance on your kayak when kayaking. You may loosen and tighten your leg muscles while maneuvering or turning the kayak, and you may not know this!
4. Strengthens the core muscles
Your oblique, lower back and abdomen are engaged when you do kayaking. You would contract the abs in per stroke and contract the muscles on your lower back while you pull. Any twisted motions would engage the oblique. Another effective way for keeping balance is to sit upright or sit on. Thus, kayaking could help to keep the core muscles engaged through the entire activity.
5. Increases endurance
As you do kayaking for hours could improve your stamina, which means you can endure long periods of exertion even without getting fatigued easily. Kayaking for 3 times per week could increase the energy levels up to 20 percent. This may enable you doing your activity longer as well as increase your energy that you could spend on the daily activities.
6. Improves your heart health
Kayaking is a well known aerobic sport that is called cardiac exercise. This workout could strengthen the muscles of your heart and improve the effectiveness to pump your blood. Kayaking also improves the efficiency of the blood circulation and increases the red blood cells amount in your body. It keeps the heart level in control. By doing this workout consistently, you would be working out the heart regularly and make it more robust.
7. Triggers Vitamin D production
You may find vitamin D in some foods like cheese, fatty fish and beef liver but the area of consuming vitamin D is not limited. We all have vitamin D in our body’s system but remain inactive. Thus, you need to expose yourself to sunlight to exhibit its effect.
It is important for strengthening bones, boosting the immune system, promoting brain development, supporting muscle function, and keeping the heart healthy. Luckily, kayaking enables anyone to bask in the sun’s rays, which allow the body to exhibit vitamin D.
8. Helps build an optimistic self-image
While paddling a long distance, you could build your confidence level as well as positive self-image. When you face the wilderness of the sea, you find solutions on your own to get rid of problems and this would increase your self-satisfaction and confidence as well as increasing your social skills.
9. Reduces stress
Kayaking is a great way to reduce your stress. You watch your kayak moving by the water through your effort, spend hours under the beautiful sky, see the blue colors of the water, and watch the natural beauty of greens, browns and grays- all of these things could relax your mind and give you an enjoyable experience. You would start to feel amazing even when you are all alone!
10. Improves your mental health
Kayaking positively affects your overall mental health. As your entire body works together for navigating the water, you would be able to clear the mind of negative and unwanted thoughts. Kayaking releases such chemicals into your body that could lift the self-worth, mood and confidence and also provides the sense of keeping your body and mind healthy.
The physical benefits of too many to describe and I have tried to give some of them here. I hope you could easily understand them and start kayaking as a form or aerobic exercise and connect yourself with nature!
Enjoy the Benefits of Colorado River Kayaking with Blazin’ Paddles!
If you’re in Las Vegas and looking to escape the heat, Blazin’ Paddles offers Colorado River kayaking tours that allow those to see and experience the Hoover Dam from a completely unique perspective.
For information on the half-day tour, click here.
For information on the full-day tour, click here.
For information on the twilight tour, click here.