“No, summer is too hot for it.”, “Oh, my body is frozen in winter!” – we’ve heard too many times these excuses from people who are reluctant to exercise. If they really don’t want to do it in extreme seasons, autumn is probably the ‘best’ time where the temperature is neither boiling hot nor freezing cold. In fact, medium-intensity aerobic exercises are ideal for autumn. They not only slim us down but also strengthen our cardiovascular function and improve blood circulation, promoting our metabolism. Here are some suggested exercises:

Racquet sports (eg. badminton, ping-pong and squash)

They are fat-burning sports that help you lose weight while training all your muscles and joints, improving your figure.

Rope skipping

10 minutes of rope skipping equals to 1 hour of running - it is the most ideal exercise to burn fat while training all your muscles and eliminating edema. But think twice if you have knee pain.

Hiking

It’s a sport on the rise. One of the reasons being it offers check-in locations for the social media-savvy, the others include fortifying the muscles, joints and bones, improving blood circulation, preventing osteoporosis and delaying bone ageing. It also provides the right amount of intensity for weight loss if you keep doing it over a long period of time.

Jogging

It not only helps prevent arteriosclerosis but also increase high-density lipoprotein, lower blood sugar level and maintain blood pressure level if three-highs patients do it for 9 consecutive months, research reports. In addition, jogging 3 times or more a week, each time for at least 30 minutes, can speed up the growth of brain cells and slow down the appearance of ageing symptoms. Some may think jogging is not strenuous enough for body slimming, but the truth is it uses our thigh muscles (quadriceps and hamstring tendon) and can burn fat if we jog for 30-40 minutes each time. Remember to stick to a pace that allows you to breathe smoothly or even talk to other people while jogging.

Here are a few things to keep in mind before doing any exercise:

• Dehydration during exercise in autumn
  It’s a misconception that we don’t need to drink as much water in autumn than in summer as there’s less sweat. In fact, we need to refill our body with water during exercise regardless of the season to avoid edema.
• Catching the flu after exercise
  Autumn features a greater change of temperature in a day which puts us at a greater risk of flu. Although the human body releases heat continuously during exercise, it would cool down faster than you think due to the sweat-soaked shirt with the help of the autumn breezes.
• Nosebleeds after exercise
  Exercising in the dry air of autumn may cause chapped lips, dry throats or even nosebleeds. It’s advised to consume nourishing drinks during and after exercise, such as Chinese pear water, honey water or sugar cane juice. But we should be aware of the amount of sugar they contain.