It's easy to hyper-focus on strength training or cardio alone, endlessly lifting weights, running miles, or grinding on the Peloton. But experts are now pressing pause on that one-dimensional approach in favor of a smarter, more sustainable strategy: low-impact cross-training.

Whether you're a serious cyclist, a weekend warrior, or someone looking to avoid burnout, these low-impact moves offer a refreshing reset that supports muscle growth, cardiovascular health, and mobility, all while being gentle on your joints.

Cross-training isn’t new, it’s been around long enough to have an entire category of athletic shoes named after it but its importance is experiencing a strong resurgence. According to leading fitness trainers, today’s workouts need to be more holistic. That means you don’t just build muscle—you build endurance, joint flexibility, coordination, and overall resilience.

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And here’s the good news: it doesn’t have to be intense or intimidating. Cross-training is most effective when done 1–2 times a week, and even small, consistent additions can lead to big gains. Swapping out the final 10 to 15 minutes of your workout with functional movements outside your usual program can improve recovery, prevent injury, and train your body to move in multiple planes.

What Is Low-Impact Cross-Training?

Low-impact training is a game-changer—especially for those battling chronic joint pain, recovering from injury, or simply aging gracefully. According to certified trainer Brodie, as we age, our joints naturally lose range of motion and muscle mass begins to decline after 30. Cross-training with low-impact exercises ensures that your fitness evolves with your body.

These movements keep at least one foot on the ground at all times (yes, that means no jumping), making them safer for your knees, hips, and back. But make no mistake—they still challenge your muscles in new, meaningful ways.

Also Read: Bryan Johnson's 90-Day Experiment Claims That Oxygen Therapy Could Beat Aging

What You Need for Low-Impact Cross-Training?

To get started, grab:

1. A medium to heavy kettlebell
2. A mat
3. Open floor space

Aim for 10–12 reps of each movement, resting 30–60 seconds between each. Do 2–3 sets, twice per week to start seeing results.

1. Kettlebell Swing

The kettlebell swing is a full-body, explosive movement that works your posterior chain—from glutes to lower back—and teaches you how to generate force safely. “It’s not just about swinging a weight; it’s about understanding muscle activation and relaxation,” says Brodie.

This move is especially beneficial for cyclists and desk-jobbers alike, helping correct poor posture and preventing lower back pain by reinforcing hip mobility and glute engagement.

Form tip: Keep your core tight, back neutral, and drive from the hips—not the arms.

2. Goblet Squat

Squats are foundational, but the goblet squat makes them smarter. Holding the kettlebell in front of your chest helps engage your upper body while deepening your squat form and improving balance.

What makes this exercise low-impact is that it builds muscle in your glutes, quads, abs, arms, and grip—without joint stress or high-impact plyometrics. The upright posture also translates well to better bike handling and hill endurance.

Form tip: Keep your feet grounded and chest lifted as you squat.

3. Around the World

Around the World is often overlooked—but it's a quiet powerhouse. By rotating a kettlebell around your body in a controlled motion, you’re not just improving shoulder stability, but also enhancing core strength and coordination.

This is particularly useful for cyclists, who often deal with upper-back tightness from riding in a hunched position.

Bonus use: Works great as a warm-up to upper-body workouts.

4. Weighted Glute Bridge

Modern lifestyles mean long hours sitting at desks—or in saddles. Enter the weighted glute bridge: a deceptively simple move that strengthens your glutes, opens tight hip flexors, and engages your core.

This exercise directly improves your ability to push and pull pedals while protecting your lower back from strain.

Form tip: Avoid arching the back; instead, focus on squeezing your glutes and keeping your core stable at the top.

5. Suitcase Carry

If you’ve never done a suitcase carry, you’re missing one of the most functional, real-life applicable exercises. Holding a weight in one hand while walking forces your core to stabilize—mimicking the movements needed in cycling, lifting, and even daily tasks.

It’s a brilliant way to train anti-rotational strength, reduce the risk of injury, and improve posture.

Challenge yourself: Use two kettlebells for a farmer’s walk variation that works both sides simultaneously.

6. Hiking, Snowshoeing, or Cross-Country Skiing

Not all cross-training needs to happen in the gym. Outdoor activities like hiking, snowshoeing, and cross-country skiing offer a total-body burn with the added mental health benefit of being in nature.

These are especially effective for building endurance, balance, and cardiovascular strength, all while maintaining low impact on joints.

Whether you're scaling trails or gliding through snowy landscapes, you're engaging muscles that often get overlooked—making this a worthy addition to your training year-round.

If you’ve been training the same way for years, it may be time to refresh your routine with cross-training. And the best part? Low-impact doesn’t mean low return. By mixing in these six movements a few times a week, you’ll build a more adaptable, injury-resistant body—without derailing your current program. The next time you feel tempted to skip mobility work or cardio, try one of these low-impact cross-training exercises instead. Your future self will thank you.

Although many people do not find value in exercises like yoga and tai chi, different studies and researchers support the fact that it plays an important role in our health. One doesn’t need to only do yoga, if you enjoy doing other exercises or sports, you can include yoga as an recovery routine like many weightlifters do.

Weightlifting is a very tough sport that needs a lot of hard work, practice, strength, and good form. There are many common ways to train for it. But did you know some things that seem unrelated to lifting can actually make you better? One of these surprising helpers is yoga.

Weightlifting and Yoga

According to the USA Weightlifting, yoga helps make different muscles stronger, including ones you might not always use when lifting. It strengthens them gently, which can help you avoid injuries. Building all your muscles safely can make you a better lifter overall. Since it involves lots of stretches that make your muscles loose, strong, and stable. This helps prevent injuries, cramps, and other problems that come with intense exercise.

Yoga can also help your body heal after your weightlifting workouts. It helps your muscles and joints recover by reducing swelling and gently working muscles without putting too much strain on them. Here are some poses you can try.

Cat/Cow Pose

This gentle movement helps warm up your spine and release tension in your back. Start on your hands and knees. Arch your back as you breathe in, dropping your belly (Cow). Then, round your spine as you breathe out, pulling your navel in (Cat). This flows with your breath to loosen your spine.

Downward-Facing Dog Pose

This pose stretches your whole body, especially your hamstrings, calves, and shoulders. From hands and knees, lift your hips high, forming an inverted V-shape. Press your palms and heels towards the floor. This lengthens your hamstrings and calves, stretching out muscles worked during lifting.

Seated or Reclined Pigeon

Excellent for opening up tight hips and glutes, which can get very stiff from squats and deadlifts. Sit with one knee bent forward, shin somewhat parallel to the mat, and the other leg stretched back. Or, lie on your back, crossing one ankle over the opposite knee. This deeply opens tight hip muscles.

Bridge Pose

Bridge pose gently strengthens your glutes and hamstrings while stretching your chest and spine. Lie on your back, knees bent, feet flat near your glutes. Lift your hips toward the ceiling, engaging your glutes. This strengthens your glutes and stretches your chest, countering lifting posture.

Happy Baby Pose

This pose offers a deep stretch for your hips, inner thighs, and lower back. Lie on your back and hug your knees towards your chest. Grab the outsides of your feet, pulling your knees towards your armpits. This gently opens your hips and releases tension in your lower back.

Reclined Twist

A gentle twist helps release tension in your spine and lower back, improving flexibility and aiding digestion. Lie on your back, extend arms to the sides. Let your bent knees fall to one side, keeping shoulders down. This gentle twist helps release stiffness in your spine and lower back, aiding relaxation.

Legs Up the Wall Pose

This restorative pose helps reduce swelling in your legs and feet by draining stagnant blood. Sit with one hip next to a wall, then swing your legs up the wall as you lie back. Keep your legs straight against the wall. This pose helps drain blood from tired legs, calming your body.

Athletes are considered to be the epitome of health. They exercise and prepare for their sports regularly and also keep up with a healthy diet because they must be in peak condition for their competitions. However, a new study shows that this may not be the case as too much exercise also has health consequences, particularly for people who do sports like biking, running, swimming, etc.

A new study suggests that seemingly healthy endurance athletes might be developing scar tissue in their hearts. This scarring could put them at a higher risk for dangerous, irregular heartbeat.

Scarring Found in Middle-Aged Athletes

Researchers examined a large group of male cyclists and triathletes in their middle age. They discovered that about half of them showed signs of scarring in their heart's left ventricle. This is the main lower chamber of the heart responsible for pumping oxygen-rich blood to the rest of the body. Additionally, about one in five of these long-time competitive athletes were experiencing brief periods of very fast heartbeats, which could be connected to underlying heart problems.

Increased Risk of Irregular Heartbeats

The study found a strong connection: the presence of heart scarring nearly quintupled (increased by almost five times) an athlete's risk of having an irregular heart rhythm coming from the ventricles. One of the researchers, an associate professor of cardiology, expressed surprise at how strong this link was, especially since similar findings are usually seen in people with known heart muscle diseases, not in seemingly healthy, high-performing athletes. Irregular heart rhythms from the ventricles are considered a very serious type of heart problem and are believed to be the main cause of sudden cardiac death in athletes.

How the Study Was Conducted

For this research, scientists recruited 106 male cyclists and triathletes who were over 50 years old and had been training for at least 10 hours a week for 15 years or more. The goal was to understand if heart scarring might be causing dangerous heart rhythms in endurance athletes, ultimately aiming to help them continue participating safely in sports as they age.

Each athlete underwent MRI scans to get detailed images of their hearts. They also had a tiny ECG device placed under their skin for two years to record every single heartbeat.

Key Findings

After following the athletes for an average of two years, the study revealed several important points:

• Over 47% of the athletes had signs of scarring on their heart's left ventricle.
• About 19% experienced short bursts of rapid heartbeats.
• Around 3% had sustained, potentially dangerous fast heart rates originating in the ventricles.
• The presence of heart scarring increased an athlete's risk of rapid heartbeat by 4.7 times.

When participants developed a potentially dangerous heart rhythm, they were immediately contacted and advised to seek medical attention.

Advice for Athletes and Others

A lead researcher advises any athlete experiencing chest pain, dizziness, or heart palpitations (a feeling of a racing or fluttering heart) during exercise to seek medical help. He also stressed the importance of everyone involved in sports knowing CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) and how to use an automated external defibrillator (AED), which is a device that can help restart a heart in an emergency.

It's important to remember that this was an observational study. This means it can show a link or association between endurance athleticism and heart scarring, but it cannot definitively prove that one directly causes the other. More research is needed to confirm this connection, understand why heart scarring occurs in these athletes, and determine if it directly leads to abnormal heart rhythms or if it's part of a broader health issue.

Walking more each day could help reduce your risk of serious health conditions, including dementia, depression, cancer-related deaths, and cardiovascular disease. Encouragingly, new research suggests that you don’t need to reach the long-promoted 10,000-step goal to see these improvements, just 7,000 steps may be enough.

Health Gains with Fewer Steps

A comprehensive new analysis published in The Lancet Public Health has found that walking at least 7,000 steps a day can be strongly linked to better health outcomes and longer life.

Researchers examined data from over 160,000 adults and found that this moderate daily step count could significantly reduce the risk of multiple illnesses and even premature death.

What Did The Study Find?

The study highlighted that compared to people who only walked 2,000 steps a day, those who reached 7,000 steps saw a 47% lower risk of dying from any cause.

It also found a 37% reduction in cancer-related deaths, 38% lower risk of dementia, 22% lower risk of depression, and 28% reduced risk of falls.

Cardiovascular disease risk also dropped by 25%, and the risk for type 2 diabetes fell by 14%.

The More You Move, The Better

While step count doesn’t measure exercise intensity, researchers emphasized that every bit of movement helps.

Even walking 4,000 steps a day was shown to improve health outcomes when compared to highly sedentary lifestyles. There’s a “return on investment” with every 1,000 extra steps you take, the study noted.

Lead researcher Professor Melody Ding from the University of Sydney said, “Those already walking 10,000 steps a day should keep going—but for those who aren’t there yet, 7,000 steps can deliver nearly comparable health benefits for many conditions.”

Debunking the 10,000-Step Myth

Experts say this research helps break the popular myth that 10,000 steps is the only valid target. Dr. Daniel Bailey, reader in sedentary behavior and health at Brunel University London, said the findings offer a more realistic goal for many people, as reported by The Guardian.

“This study shows you don’t need to aim for 10,000 steps daily to benefit from physical activity,” he explained. “Even adding 1,000 steps a day can lead to improvements in health. For most people, targeting 5,000 to 7,000 steps can be more manageable and still highly beneficial.”

Don’t Rely on Steps Alone

However, experts also pointed out that not all physical activity shows up as steps. Dr. Andrew Scott, senior lecturer in clinical exercise physiology at the University of Portsmouth, as The Guardian reports, noted that exercises like cycling, swimming, and rowing aren't captured by step counters. “So while steps are useful for tracking weight-bearing activity, it’s important to remember that other forms of exercise are equally valuable,” he said.

Making Walking a Habit

June Davison, a senior cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, said walking is one of the simplest ways to maintain heart health, reported The Guardian. “Adults should aim for 150 minutes of moderate activity a week. Even short walks, like a brisk 10-minute stroll during lunch or walking while on phone calls—can make a real difference,” she said.

In short, if you’re struggling to hit 10,000 steps, don’t stress. Starting with 7,000—or even fewer—and building from there could already set you on the path to a healthier future.