The American Heart Association recommends that healthy adults do vigorous cardiovascular exercise, such as jogging, for at least 30 minutes a day five days a week. This type of workout burns calories at a fast clip, builds your endurance, improves your heart health and can help your body fight some types of disease. However, jogging has its negative aspects, which can make it difficult or inadvisable to incorporate into your daily routine. Speak with your doctor before starting a jogging regimen.
Stressful Impact
Like running and jumping, jogging is a high-impact workout. The repetitive motion of lifting and landing on your feet can stress, strain or injure your tendons, joints and muscles, particularly your ankles and knees. If you have a lower-body injury, you may find jogging too painful to pursue. Lower-impact exercises such as swimming laps, using an elliptical trainer or walking provide similar cardiovascular benefits without repeatedly shocking your lower body.
No Strengthening Component
Jogging alone does not provide every type of exercise you need. The American Heart Association recommends that you do two or three sessions of muscle-building and stretching exercises every week. Jogging will not significantly improve your muscle strength or increase your range of motion. However, if you jog as part of a combination workout such as circuit weight training, you can address this issue. You can also jog over steep hills or on a steady grade to elevate your heart rate higher and strengthen your core, leg and gluteal muscles.
Difficult to Sustain
The best type of exercise regimen is one that challenges you but that you also enjoy. Not everyone appreciates the repetitive and often monotonous nature of jogging. Adding complicated tools to multitask while jogging is not practical and can lead to injury. If you like new challenges or social activities, cardiovascular workouts such as aerobic dance or "boot camp" may work better for you.
Safety Issues
Jogging outdoors may jeopardize your safety in a way that more regimented activities do not. You need to design routes to avoid deserted areas or dangerous neighborhoods. If you run in urban areas, you have to watch out for pedestrians, cyclists and vehicles. Jogging early in the morning or at night may mean having to stick to well-lit areas populated with other joggers.
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