Workout Videos for Improved Insulin Sensitivity

2 min read

Whether you live with type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes, prediabetes, or any other type of diabetes, you can benefit from improving your insulin sensitivity. The four workout videos highlighted here can help you do just that!

Important: always consult your physician before starting any new exercise activity.

Your insulin sensitivity is how effective your body is at using the insulin it produces (if you have insulin production) or you inject. The better your insulin sensitivity is, the less insulin or other diabetes drugs you need to manage your blood sugars.

Improving your insulin sensitivity can make your overall diabetes management easier in both the short and the long run, and exercising is one of the most effective ways of improving your insulin sensitivity.

The workouts featured here are resistance training workouts. Resistance training simply means that you put your muscles under tension. This can be done using your own body weight or external resistance such as dumbbells or resistance bands.

If you’re new to resistance training, it is suggested you start with the home (low impact) bodyweight workout. When that’s no longer challenging, move on to using resistance bands or weights.

Instructions

Each exercise will be demonstrated, and you will be told how many sets and reps to do – typically 3 sets of 10-15 or 12-15 repetitions (reps) for each exercise.

That means that you’ll do one exercise for 10-15 or 12-15 reps, rest for 30-60 seconds, do 10-15 or 12-15 more reps, rest again, and then do the last set of reps.

The reason why there is a range is that you should pick a weight that really challenges you but still allows you to do the target reps. For example, If you can only do 9 reps, the weight is too heavy, and if you can easily bang out 15, it is too light.

Of course, you probably don’t have dumbbells of every different weight at home, so use whatever you have. If you only have light dumbbells and 15 reps feel too easy, just keep going for as many reps as you can.

When you do resistance workouts, please remember that you may see an impact on your insulin sensitivity 24-36 hours after your workout, so be diligent about watching your blood sugars. If you aren’t used to resistance workouts, it’s strongly recommended you explore how resistance training affects your blood sugar before you do that workout.

And always listen to your body and stop if you feel pain. If you’re not used to exercising and doing a whole workout in one go is too much, just break it up into smaller sessions. Four sessions of 5 minutes are just as effective as one session of 20 minutes.

These four workout videos can be found at https://diabetesstrong.com/workout-insulin-sensitivity/