We all know that exercise is important. But if you aren’t used to maintaining a routine, it can be tricky to know where to start. We answer your top exercise-related questions to help you get started – without splashing out on an expensive gym membership

Whether you’re looking to refocus on your exercise routine to help reach a specific goal, or are hoping to start living a healthier lifestyle, finding ways to exercise in your already busy schedule can be tough. Not to mention ensuring you’re in the right place mentally to move past the initial excitement and create a sustainable routine that works for you.

It can be easy to fall into the ‘New Year, new you’ mentality. As a new year approaches, setting resolutions can feel uplifting, encouraging, and like a big motivator. What better way to start the year, than with a big change? But the thing is, this all-or-nothing mentality can be more harmful than good.

According to research, just 16% of us stick to our New Year’s resolutions. Experts believe that this is often due to us focusing on a specific outcome – “I’ll reach X weight next year!” or “I want to be a size X by this time next year!” This can result in us treating our goal as a sprint rather than a marathon, meaning we ignore or underestimate the time, effort, willpower, and continued effort we need to put in to turn our end goals into an attainable, achievable, sustainable process.

Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapist and Hypnotherapy Directory member, Morag Stevenson, explains more.

“A resolution is a new habit that we want to create. To make your resolution stick, you need to understand how to shift a new habit from a wishy-washy thing that might or might not happen to a firmly rooted routine in your life. What could make the difference? What could help you not only start a new habit but stick to it? Be precise, be clear, and be realistic.”

So before you get started on your journey to exercising more, it’s worth asking yourself: Why do I want to do this? What do I hope to achieve? And how am I going to measure my success? Having smaller, attainable milestones towards a larger goal can be a big help in keeping motivation high.

Why is exercising important?

Exercise is essential at every stage of our lives. Regular physical activity can improve your physical and mental health, reduce your risk of developing serious health conditions, help you to manage, maintain, or gain weight, as well as strengthening your bones and muscles. Exercising can lower your risk of early death by up to 30% according to the NHS. And best of all? It doesn’t have to cost a thing.

Regular exercise provides a huge range of benefits. From boosting your self-esteem, mood, overall energy levels, and quality of sleep, to reducing your risk of stress, clinical depression, type 2 diabetes, stroke, and dementia – exercise can feel intimidating, but the benefits are substantial.

It’s recommended that adults try to do something active every day. Over the course of

Training for sports or aesthetics is all well and good, but what if your primary goal is to be able to move through your daily life with more ease? These workout videos might change your perspective on exercise completely

When we think of ‘training’, often, the first thing that comes to mind is preparing for sports, or for aesthetic goals. But there is another option.

Functional training is all about doing exercises with more ease – things like bending, twisting, lifting, loading, pushing, pulling, squatting, and hauling. It can also help with your balance and stability, as well as overall strength. And, of course, we couldn’t forget the mental health benefits of exercising, too.

Over time, you may be able to protect yourself from domestic injuries (how often do we hear about people throwing their back out after lifting something incorrectly?), as well as being able to go about chores and hobbies for longer periods of time.

Ultimately, anyone can benefit from focusing on functional training, but it may be particularly helpful for those who struggle with the link between exercise and body image, and want to find a way of staying active without focusing on aesthetic results.

Tempted? We’ve collected together five online functional workout videos, to help you take your first steps.

1. Daily strength training

This video from doctor and physiotherapist Jared Beckstrand is a great place to start. Here, he takes you through some very basic exercises that you can try out, and do whenever it suits you. These are the kinds of exercises that you can pick up in spare moments – a couple of squats while the kettle boils, for example – making them a nice way to gently ease yourself in.

2. Functional body weight training

Using just your own body weight, this video will get your heart rate going, and build strength across your whole body. Now, this class is listed as suitable for beginners, but it's definitely meant to be a challenge. As the instructor says, go at your own pace. If what you see on the screen is too fast for you, slow it down – the aim is to get your heart rate going and to challenge yourself, but you should still be able to complete the workout.

3. Targeted core training

Strengthening your core can support your overall wellbeing in many ways. It can help you improve your posture, so that you’re less likely to injure your back, and it can also help with your balance and stability. This targeted workout is short and sweet, coming in at just eight minutes, and it doesn’t need any equipment for you to complete it. Some of the moves are reasonably advanced, so if you are struggling, slow it down, or repeat another move that you’re more comfor

From yoga for low mood, back pain, flexibility, and strength to accessible chair yoga, classes for men, and for partners – stretch into the world of yoga with these free classes and resources

Yoga: it’s the low-impact exercise that can be done pretty much anywhere, with little to no equipment, and is open to newbies and prodigies alike. And while you might initially turn to it for the physical benefits – gentle, restorative stretching and strength building – yoga has been used to support our mental health and wellbeing since its origin more than 5,000 years ago.

In fact, yoga is so effective, it has been shown to lower stress hormones in our bodies while raising feel-good chemicals endorphins and GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid). Yoga can also help with sleep, relaxation, and feelings of overwhelm, an all-round wellbeing wonder.

And it’s also a financially accessible activity. All you need to get going is yourself, and a soft surface (if you have a yoga mat – great! But if not, a blanket works just fine). So, if you’re ready to go, and are looking for free resources to help you on your way, look no further…

1. Yoga with Adriene

Yoga with Adriene is your one-stop YouTube channel for all your yoga needs. From simple flows, to challenging sequences, and videos designed to target specific problems – like back pain, hip pain, PMS, and low mood – Adriene’s videos are a great companion for your yoga journey.

2. Daily Yoga

Daily Yoga is a free app available for both iOS and Android, that comes with hundreds of classes from many different teachers. You can set yourself challenges, target specific problem areas of your body – such as addressing lower back pain, or neck pain – and try something completely new with the guidance of your teacher.

Search for Daily Yoga on the App Store or Google Play Store.

3. Arianna Elizabeth

If you’re looking to undertake a 30-day yoga challenge, then look no further than Arianna Elizabeth’s channel. With 30-day challenges already up and ready to go, you can dip into her 10-minute videos every day, following along with her supportive sequences.

This kind of content is rife on social media, but what’s the impact?

If you’ve ever taken a peek into the world of online fitness content, you’ve almost certainly come across ‘before and after’ body transformation pictures and videos. They could be there to sell you a fitness program, a diet supplement, or simply be a record of someone’s experience. But, despite their commonality, a new study from ASICS has uncovered the impact that this kind of content is having on our mental health.

In their survey, 48% of respondents reported feeling insecure about their bodies after seeing exercise transformation pictures. A staggering 82% of women surveyed (and 73% of Brits overall) believe that society’s obsession with the perfect body is damaging our mental health, and 80% say that they go on to feel unmotivated to exercise after seeing transformation imagery – a sentiment that is at odds with the ‘inspirational’ tone this content often adopts.

Supported by a host of celebrities, including Dr Alex George, Jada Sezer, and Motsi Mabuse, ASICS has launched a campaign to disrupt the ‘before and after’ format, and shift the focus to the ways that exercise can transform our mental health.

Following a roundtable discussion, in a series of images, the celebrities are pictured before and after doing 15 minutes and nine seconds of exercise – the length of time it takes to feel the benefit of exercise on our minds. Predictably, there is no dramatic transformation in their bodies, with the goal of the series to illustrate the ‘hidden’ benefits of an active lifestyle.

“I have been on a real journey with exercise and the reasons why I do it. When I was younger, I really used exercise as a weapon, to try and look thin, to look a certain way,” says Dr Alex George. “When I went on Love Island a few years later, I was over-training, and it wasn’t good for my mental health. Now, I’ve changed the way I view exercise and it’s really helped my mental health. I move for my mind, rather than to look a certain way.”

In a move taken following the research, ASICS EMEA has committed to not posting exercise transformation images on its social media channels, with the support of the ASICS Front Runner community, who will only share images that reflect the powerful mental and emotional impact of exercise.

Hayley Jarvis, head of physical activity at the charity Mind, echoes the importance of adopting a new approach to exercise: “Mind is a firm believer in the power of movement, however small, to support better mental health,” she says.

“Our aim is to support more people to get active to help them to thrive. Our own research shows that many people are put off exercising because they feel self-conscious. The more we can do to remove the barriers to people enjoying the benefits of exercise, the better.”