July 31, 2011
You cannot be healthy without exercising. Exercise aids in weight management, in releasing endorphins that lead to feelings of well-being, enlarges lean muscle mass, assists in keeping your medical insurance premiums down, and allows you to look your best. But since our bodies are very complicated and sophisticated organisms, our fitness regimens should satisfy the diverse demands of our bodies. To continue to be healthy we need a workout that involves some form of stretching, strength training, and cardiovascular or aerobic exercise. Attention to all three forms of exercise gives you stronger muscles, including your heart; flexible muscles; stronger bones; and burns fat.
THE ESSENTIALS OF A WELL ROUNDED EXERCISE PROGRAM
• STRETCHING requires holding a muscle in a fixed position and maintaining that for about 30 seconds.
• STRENGTH TRAINING requires utilizing resistance to contract the muscle to build strength.
• AEROBIC OR CARDIOVASCULAR EXERCISE requires utilizing the large muscle groups to intensify the work of the heart and lungs continuously for a lengthy amount of time at a low intensity.
STRETCHING
There are contradictory studies concerning stretching. However any serious runner or dancer will tell you that stretching is a very important element of a fitness regimen. Muscles that are unduly tight are not strong and lead to an imbalance in your body that inescapably results in injury. Stretching sustains the suppleness of muscles and assists in preventing injury. There are many ways to stretch and many good books that show various stretches for different muscles. Ballet, yoga and Pilates are very good disciplines make use of] a certain amount of stretching.
STRENGTH TRAINING
To do this form of exercise one pulls or pushes something that is resisting. Not only does this create strong muscles, but it assists in strengthening bones. Strength training produces dense muscles which demand more calories to sustain. So the stronger you are the more calories you burn. Weight training is doubtless the most popular type of resistance training. Pilates and yoga are also strength training workouts. Pilates utilizes the resistance of spring tension and some yoga poses employs the person’s body weight as resistance.
AEROBIC EXERCISE
Running, biking, and walking are all well-known forms of aerobic exercise. These exercises strengthen the heart and burn fat. Aerobic means “relating to, or involving oxygen.” Aerobic exercise makes the heart stronger , forcing it to pump more blood, an effective circulation booster. The more blood pumped, the more oxygen retrieved from the blood is given to the muscles.
Now there is some [argument and research that talk about HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training). This kind of workout is known as anearobic exercise. The definition of this is “relating to, or involving an absence of oxygen.” Research has suggested that this form of training can add to aerobic exercise. It burns the glycogen in the muscle to sustain high energy bursts of exercise. HIIT involves spurts of high intensity repetitions followed by low intensity ones. For example, a cycle would be 30 seconds of running at 80 % capacity and then running for 60 seconds at 30% capacity. Usually aiming at 6 or 8 repetitions. As with aerobic exercise this should be preceded with a warm up and followed by a cool down. HIIT would not be recommended for someone starting to workout.
All this may seem like a lot of work that will also take a lot of time, but the benefits of health are huge. There also appears to be a domino effect. Those who exercise naturally want to make better food choices. They become more conscious of what they eat and other life style choices. A well rounded exercise regimen can lead to a well rounded life style. That could lead to a very satisfying life.
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