How Exercising Outdoors Can Boost Your Workout

Yet green exercise has appealing advantages: it's often cheaper and easier than a gym or fitness club, usually provides a better visual and sensory experience than being inside and may be more easily adapted to your changing interests and needs. What's more, exercising in a natural environment—rather than indoors on a treadmill—produces higher levels of positive emotions, with less tension and stress, and encourages you to exercise longer.

Outdoor classes are now springing up around the United States, bridging the gap between gyms and green exercise. Fresh-air exercise sessions use body weight, resistance tubes and exercise balls to work out in public places such as parks, playgrounds and trails.

A daily dose of nature, gained in as little as a 10-minute walk, is important for the health of adults and children alike, Dr. Faber Taylor believes. "We need to raise the priority of getting into nature," she says.

Breathing easier

Maybe outdoor exercising sounds lovely to you, but you're worried that being in nature will trigger your allergies, asthma or other breathing problems. Talk with your health care provider about coordinating your activity interests with your health condition. Then consider these suggestions to help make exercising outdoors like a breath of fresh air for your body and spirits:

• If you have asthma, use your medications before exercising, in the manner prescribed by your physician. Do a five- to 10-minute warm-up. With the right treatment and management plan, people with exercise-induced asthma can participate safely in exercise, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.
• Walking is a good exercise choice over activities that cause you to breathe faster, such as running or soccer.
  • Higher ozone and pollutant levels can cause breathing problems, so check levels before exercising outdoors. Many online and print weather forecasts now report air-quality levels:
    
    1. 0 to 50 is good;
    2. 50 to 100 is not harmful, but could cause breathing problems for some people with asthma;
    3. above 100 is unhealthy if you have lung or heart disease and other conditions;
    4. above 150 is unhealthy for everyone.
• Exercise in the early morning or early evening, when pollution levels are lower.
• If you have breathing problems, avoid exercising outdoors in very cold weather.