Gentle Exercise is the key to Regular Exercise. If having more energy and feeling fit don’t appeal to you, move to another web page. If losing weight or toning up muscles your is not your goal, move to another page. If belonging to a minority is not your idea of fun, then click away. You can become part of the 15 percent of the nation who exercise regularly using these simple steps.
Most people who give up on an exercise program do so because they start too harshly. Taking an ill prepared body through a strenuous workout predestines you to failure. Your aches and muscle pains after the workout, plus the discomfort during the training put even the most resourceful people off of exercise for long periods. Use your mental resources to hold back. Short easy walks will prepare your skeletal and heart muscle for future exercise, while also getting you into the habit of finding the time for exercise. The best exercise gurus eschewed the “no pain no gain” philosophy before the Internet was invented. There are 24 hours to each day; you only need to start with 15 minutes on four of those days. One hour per week, less than one percent of the week is easy to find. After dropping the children off at school, drive to a quite spot such as a park on your route to work. Walk slowly for seven minutes. Look around you. Take in the sights and sounds. Then smell that rose which you’ve been ignoring for years; or watch the ducks circle, or dogs running. After your one minute look, smell and rest break, walk leisurely back to your car. Congratulations, you have just started your pain free exercise program. Variety is vital to an exercise program, so two days later, take your 15 minute walk at lunch time. If you can find 3-4 flights of stairs to walk up also (do them slowly), you’ve just added strength training. Four flights of 15 steps at five inches per step means a 150 pound “weight lifter” has lifted 9,000 pounds! The next day, leave work earlier than normal, or get home later, thus making space for your 15 minute stroll. Unwind as those work thoughts drift through your system. Use the adrenaline from work stress to send you 7 minutes to a viewpoint...then practice deep breathing as you force your work life out, and look toward your private time, to your healthy evening. Your fourth session will be at the weekend. You only need to convert one half of a percent of your weekend to an exercise period. Do fifteen minutes out of your 48 hours with your heartrate up a few dozen beats per minute. You can break those fifteen minutes up if you wish. Research shows that you gain almost as much health benefit from exercising in short sections as you do from one continuous walk. You can park half a mile from the mall to give a total of a mile walk, or use the same trick for church.
As you reap the health and fitness benefits from this first hour of exercise every week, you’ll begin to feel fitter. You can then: Exercise a few minutes longer by adding 3-5 minutes each month to each workout. Increase intensity with somewhat faster walking in the middle 10 minutes of each session. When walking up those stairs, take them still slower, but two steps at a time. Stair walking works your buttock muscles. After a few more weeks, take the elevator down then walk back up. You’ve just started interval training. Then, add variety with gentle: Biking, swimming, skating (any kind you like), exercise machines or easy paced running.
You can add intensity by walking hills instead of stairs. Don't take your heartrate above 80 percent of your maximum until you've been exercising for 3 months though. Then, find a 2-5 % incline and walk at your regular pace up the hill. Try shorter steps at first. If you use a treadmill, simply raise the incline gradually to about 6 %. Add another one percent every couple of weeks until your form vanishes, then go back one percent to your natural comfort zone. Do the middle third of your exercise session at this higher intensity. The majority of your time should still be spent at 70 % of maximum heartrate or less.
Other tricks to finding time for exercise. Write down what you watch and how long you watch TV for. Then figure out why! Then decide the best time to switch the TV off. Record how much work you do at home. An employer has no right to your lunch time or your free time. They are not entitled to an explanation as to why you cannot do a task which is so important to them now. You do not have to give an excuse for being out at lunch time, or for leaving at 5 p.m. if that is your scheduled finish time. Exercise while your children are doing their sport. You’ll be back in time to cheer them on during the rest of the game. Take the children with you on your walks. Listen to the highlights of their day while starting them on an exercise program. Children who exercise, just like adults who exercise, are less likely to do drugs...both the illegal and the legal drugs tobacco and alcohol. Prepare the lunch time food prior to bedtime; set out the breakfast things; set your alarm 21 minutes early so that you can make whoopee. OOPS, I mean to go walking prior to breakfast. Learn to say no. Set limits on other people using your time.
A study of women who exercised with brisk walking released in August 1999, showed a magnificent decrease in heart attacks. To get the full health gains from exercise, you will eventually need to work up a sweat for 20-30 minutes. Increase intensity slowly, a few minutes per week and you can still make exercise a pleasurable experience.
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