Beginner Fitness Level: You do little to no exercise. Your strenuous exercise endurance is a few minutes. For your workout safety, you should begin with short bouts of light-moderate exercise (such as 10 minutes, 2x/day). Good options are water aerobics, walking, stationary bike, any light cardio, light strength training. Seek guidance from a personal trainer, exercise website, exercise video, group class, book, etc. Your goal should be to work up to 30 minutes per day, 3-4x/week.
Intermediate Fitness Level: You do occasional exercise at a moderate intensity. For your safety, be careful not to injure yourself with a new or overly strenuous workout. Try to exercise consistenly 3-5x/week in order to stay in shape. Try to challenge yourself progressively with higher intensity of exercise. 30 minutes should be your minimum workout time, and try to work up to 45 minutes. Appropriate workouts are light jogging, elliptical, swimming, Zumba, aerobics class, and strength training.
Advanced Fitness Level: You exercise vigorously at least 3-4x/week. You have good muscle strength and cardiopulmonary endurance. You usually work out for at least 1 hour at a time, and you could easily do more. For injury-free workouts, know your pain-tendency areas and be sure to strengthen and stretch them appropriately. Do not forget to take rest days. Be sure to vary your workouts with cross-training, intervals and plyometrics (pending sports activities). Drink sufficient water during your workouts. Do not push through an injury during training, sports or races. Train properly for all your athletics and races in order to avoid stress or overuse injuries. Otherwise, keep up the good work! If you are in this fitness group but need to lose more weight, you must increase exercise levels. This means increasing from 60 minutes/day to 90 minutes/day, modifying your workouts to boost your metabolism (such as weight training or intervals), or increasing your resistance levels.
Guru Fitness Level: You design your own workouts, and you are able to teach others. For your safety, remember that you are not exempt from workout injuries. Be sure to maintain balance between the muscle groups on the front and back of the body. Do not forget the importance of upper body, lower body and core strength. Use your knowledge to educate those around you with less exercise experience. Good goals for you are marathons, triathlons, fitness instructor certifications and/or exercise/sports competitions.
Showing posts with label exercise guidelines. Show all posts
Showing posts with label exercise guidelines. Show all posts
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Why you haven't lost weight at the gym
I went to the gym today and as I was exercising, I noticed some things that could be problematic for gym-goers.
First, a lot of people were doing cardio exercise at a slow or moderate pace. They did not appear to be working very hard. The point of cardio is to strengthen your heart, so it needs to be done at a moderate-fast pace. If you are not breaking a sweat or breathing hard, then you may not be working out fast/hard enough. To find out, take 220 minus your age. That is your maximum heart rate. Try to get your heart rate (heartbeats per minute) to 60-80% of your max heart rate during cardio workouts. If you are new to exercise, start at 60%. But as you continue exercising over the next weeks-months, increase to 70-80%. Please consult your physician before starting an exercise program to find out if you should have different parameters.
Second, I was watching Ellen on one of the channels, and she had Mrs. Obama as a guest today. They were talking about the importance of exercise, so they both got down on the floor and started doing push-ups. They made it to around 20. However, one of them did her push-ups only going halfway down. To get the most benefit out of push-ups, do them in a full range of motion. This is true of most strengthening exercises (machine/free weights especially).
Similarly, I saw a man in the gym doing push-ups, but his back was not straight. It was arching up and down. This could cause back pain/injury, so be sure to check your techniques and postures throughout each exercise.
Third, let's talk variety! Do you go to the gym and do the same workout every day? Treadmill at 4.0 miles per hour for 35 minutes? To get the most out of your gym workouts, add various forms of cardio and/or various speeds.
Fourth, how long should you exercise? The minimum recommended amount is 30 minutes/day, most days per week (at least 4-5x/week). However, if you really want to lose weight, you need to work up to more than that. If you have the time, one hour or more would be ideal. The more you exercise, the more you will lose weight!
First, a lot of people were doing cardio exercise at a slow or moderate pace. They did not appear to be working very hard. The point of cardio is to strengthen your heart, so it needs to be done at a moderate-fast pace. If you are not breaking a sweat or breathing hard, then you may not be working out fast/hard enough. To find out, take 220 minus your age. That is your maximum heart rate. Try to get your heart rate (heartbeats per minute) to 60-80% of your max heart rate during cardio workouts. If you are new to exercise, start at 60%. But as you continue exercising over the next weeks-months, increase to 70-80%. Please consult your physician before starting an exercise program to find out if you should have different parameters.
Second, I was watching Ellen on one of the channels, and she had Mrs. Obama as a guest today. They were talking about the importance of exercise, so they both got down on the floor and started doing push-ups. They made it to around 20. However, one of them did her push-ups only going halfway down. To get the most benefit out of push-ups, do them in a full range of motion. This is true of most strengthening exercises (machine/free weights especially).
Similarly, I saw a man in the gym doing push-ups, but his back was not straight. It was arching up and down. This could cause back pain/injury, so be sure to check your techniques and postures throughout each exercise.
Third, let's talk variety! Do you go to the gym and do the same workout every day? Treadmill at 4.0 miles per hour for 35 minutes? To get the most out of your gym workouts, add various forms of cardio and/or various speeds.
Fourth, how long should you exercise? The minimum recommended amount is 30 minutes/day, most days per week (at least 4-5x/week). However, if you really want to lose weight, you need to work up to more than that. If you have the time, one hour or more would be ideal. The more you exercise, the more you will lose weight!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)