Last Updated on April 30, 2025 by Grace Oluchi
There are four crucial types of exercise, which are strength, cardio, flexibility, and balance.
Strength training helps you build muscle and boost your metabolism, Cardio gets your heart rate up and improves your lung health, flexibility helps your joint, and balance prevents falls.
Exercise is a powerful tool for achieving a healthy body, and improving overall health. According to WHO, regular Physical activity, like exercising, can reduce the risk of many types of noncommunicable diseases such as heart disease, cancer, hypertension, stroke, and diabetes. It’s essential to understand these different types of exercise, and how they can affect your body.
And this article will help you understand the different types of exercise, and how they can benefit your body.
1 . Strength training exercise
Think of this as building your foundation. It involves using resistance to build muscle mass, and increase strength. This type of exercise is super important for your overall health because it helps boost your metabolism, supports your bones, and improves your posture. Additionally, strength training does the following things:
- Increase muscle mass and bone density
- Boosts metabolism and burns fats
- Enhances athletic performance.
- Boosts confidence
- Reduce anxiety and depression
According to The Endurance Factory Fitness, strength training for women over the age of 40, helps counteract the natural effects of aging by boosting metabolism, preventing osteoporosis, regulating hormones, reducing heart disease risk, and improve mental health. So, the older you get, the more exercise you need to do regularly to improve your health, and fitness levels.
If you want to feel strong, and capable, strength training is an amazing way to get that feeling, and look the part as well.
Examples of strength training include: weightlifting, resistance band exercises and bodyweight exercises.
2 . Cardio exercise
Whatsup with getting your heart rate up? Do you get your heart rate up? If you’re not doing some cardio, you had better start now. Like seriously. Cardio is like your heart’s bestie, and they need some time together every week. Cardiovascular exercise or cardio, gets your heart rate up, supports VO2 max, and gets your blood pumping. And it is immensely helpful for your cardiovascular health, because the heart, and lungs need some cardio exercises.
The American Heart Association recommends that you should engage in 150 minutes of moderate-intensity cardio or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity cardio per week.
This type of exercise:
- Improves heart health and reduces risk of disease
- Burns calories and aids in weight loss
- Increases endurance and stamina
- Boosts your mood
Examples: Running, swimming, brisk walking, cycling, and even jogging.
3 . Flexibility exercise
Flexible people are able to move freely and aren’t at a huge risk of injury. If you want to be able to move freely, and reduce your chances of injury, you’ve got to engage in flexibility exercises. It’s great for easing muscle tension, improving posture, and helping you feel more relaxed. So, if you don’t want to feel like you’re breaking something or hurt each time you bend, or stretch your body, do flexibility exercises.
FYZICAL Therapy & Balance Centers shows that flexibility exercises are great for:
- Reducing injury risk
- Improving your posture
- Reducing muscle tension
- Improving your range of motion
Therefore, incorporating stretching into your routine a few times a week can help you feel more relaxed, and you’ll feel the difference quickly.
Examples of flexibility exercise are:
- Stretching
- Yoga
- Pilates
4 . Balance
How good is your balance though? On a scale of 1-10 rate your balance, and be honest about it. If it’s less than 6 or 7, something needs to change. Everyone is almost always focused on strength training and cardio training, but don’t put as much effort into balance training. If you often trip or stumble, can’t even stand on one leg, have weak core strength, and poor posture, you might need balance training. That is, you need to start doing some balance training, for real. Balance exercises help improve stability, and coordination. It’s especially important as we get older, but it is beneficial for everyone.
The American Heart Association shows that balance training is reduces risk of falls and injury, improved athletic performance and reaction time, improved mobility and balance. Activities like Tai chi, Pilates, single- leg squats, and balance boards are examples of balance exercises.
Incorporating these four essential types of exercise into your fitness routine can help you greatly increase your fitness levels, and improve your overall health. However, remember that the best workout routine is the one you enjoy, and stick with. So, mix and match these different types of exercise, to help you maintain a good workout routine. This will keep you motivated, and help you reach your goals.
A Simple Routine you can follow : Integrating Strength, Cardio, Flexibility, and Balance
This is a weekly workout plan that includes all four types of exercise. You can follow this workout routine to enjoy all the benefits and improve your health.
Monday: Strength training
- Focus on full-body workout with exercises like squats, pushups, planks and rows.
- Sets/Reps: 3 sets of 10 to 15 reps for each exercise
Tuesday: Cardio
30 to 45 minutes of brisk walking or jogging or any of your favorite cardio activity like swimming, dancing, cycling or running.
Wednesday (Rest day)
You can chill today, but try not be sedentary by sitting all day, it’s important to get body movements.
Thursday: Flexibility and Balance
- Focus on Yoga or Pilates class or a home routine.
- Duration: 30-60 minutes
- Single-leg stance: 3 sets of 30-second hold.
- Stretch for 5 mins
Friday: Strength training
- Dumbbell deadlifts: 3 sets of 10 reps
- Push-ups: 3 sets of 10 reps
- Lunges: 3 sets of 10
- Squat punch: 50 reps
Saturday: Cardio
30 to 45 minutes of a different cardio workout
Examples: Hiking, running on the stairs, Zumba, or using the elliptical.
Sunday (Rest day)
Complete rest to allow your body recover
Follow these important tips
- Always start with 5-10 minutes warm-up of light cardio and dynamic stretching
- Finish with 7 to 10 minutes of static stretching after each workout
- Listen to your body and don’t overdo things
- Mix your exercises and activities to prevent boredom and plateaus
- Eat healthy foods to support your workout
