If one of your new year’s resolutions is to get back into shape, you are spoiled for choice among the sporting activities that will help you achieve your goals. Running, brisk walking, cycling… all these sports that burn more calories will surely help you improve your physical fitness in 2025.
But if all these sporting options put you off, there is a much simpler and more fun activity, from Sweden, which can help you with your fitness goals. It is about “fartlek”, a Swedish word meaning “racing games”.
What is fartlek?
“Fartlek training is a very good way to improve your physical condition”, explains to the Washington Post Ulrik Wisloff, a researcher at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, who studies the link between exercise and health. “I practice it and recommend it to people who say they don’t like physical exercise, because it’s never boring.”
Concretely, it is about using the land at your disposal to play sports, but while having fun. Whether it’s walking, running, or cycling, you choose your preferred activity and you progress slowly at your own pace. Then you choose a landmark a little further away: a tree, a rock, a very special house, and you accelerate to reach this point as quickly as possible. You then resume your cruising speed and, as you wish, you add new changes of pace.
Start with 30 minutes once a week
Fartlek is a simple and fun way to add intensity to our daily activities. And as the expert explains, a growing body of scientific data indicates that this intensity, even if practiced only once a week, can make workouts more beneficial, not only for our strength and endurance, but also for our health and longevity. The ideal is to start with 30-minute workouts, once a week. And gradually increase as you get used to the game.
“Simply increasing the intensity of some of your exercises, from short walks to faster walks, can be enough to significantly improve your health and fitness,” says Martin Gibala, a researcher at McMaster University in Ontario (Canada). To find the right intensity during these fartlek workouts, you need to be able to talk during the fast intervals, but not sing, because singing uses most of your respiratory resources.
Source: www.topsante.com
