Exercise For You And YOUR Health.
Important. Before commencing any type of exercise program discuss it with your doctor
Exercise plays an important part in everyone’s health, too little or in some circumstances to much will impact on how you feel at any given time. We tend to think of exercise as being something only done in a gym or by people who seem to very fit, this is not so, exercise is something we can all do no matter how old (or young) we are. Firstly we need to look at what exercise is, it is basically any movement of our bodies and limbs. For most of us just going for a walk or riding our bikes is ok, for some people running, jogging, lifting weights etc is the norm. We are all different and so is our capacity for exercise, what may seem to be hard work for one will be easy for someone else so it is important to exercise at YOUR level.
When considering what type of exercise you want to do it is necessary to consider all the options and not rush into a decision. Answering a few simple questions can save you a lot of time and pain!
1. What am I doing NOW?
If you are doing no exercise or very little then you need to set yourself an exercise goal, this can be as simple as going for a walk. How you will achieve this is the next step, how far will you walk? How often will you walk and how confident are you of doing this? If you set yourself too high a goal / target then achieving this will be harder, It is unrealistic to say that you will walk 5kms 4 days per week if the furthest you normally walk is your front gate, splitting your ultimate goal into small more do-able steps is a much better way to go. Using the above example you might start by just walking around the block for the first week and increasing it to twice in the second week and so on until you reach your goal, it might take a little bit longer but you are more likely to achieve your goal.
2. How hard do I need to exercise?
This depends on how fit you are now, a simple way to check your fitness is to march on the spot for one minute. At the end of the minute rate your exertion on a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 meaning it was so easy you never even noticed you had done it and 10 meaning it was the hardest work you have ever done. Everyone will have a different score and that is ok, we are all different, if your score was 7 to 10 then you are not too fit, if your score was 4 to 6 you are reasonably fit and if you scored 3 or less you are quite fit. Whatever your score was it is important to exercise at your current level for a time before trying to improve your score. Exercising moderately your heart rate will increase and you will start to feel warmer, you should also be able to carry out a conversation with someone (or yourself!) without feeling breathless. If at any time you feel pain in your chest then stop exercising and consult your doctor before re-commencing any sort of exercise.
3. What sort of exercise can I do?
This is entirely up to you, exercises are many and varied, simple exercises are walking, swimming, jogging and cycling, these types of exercise do not need any special equipment but should be done in conjunction with the above 2 paragraphs in mind. Just parking your car as far away from the shops and walking to and from is a good start, carrying the shopping as well introduces some weights too. Walking to the pool or beach and going for a swim combines two different types of exercise. For too long exercise has been seen as gym work, the reality is that anything we do that raises our heart rate and makes us sweat a little is “exercise”, this means that simply doing house work (vacuuming etc) or gardening etc is exercising. Bearing this in mind you are probably starting to think I do this already so all I need to do is do a little more and build on it, you are right this is all you need to do. One last thing to look at is the importance of warming up before exercise and cooling down after, do this EVERY time by starting whatever you are doing at a slower rate and building up to the rate at which you exercise and the reverse when you finish, this is important never skip it.
4. How long should I exercise?
Having decided to exercise it is important to not overdo it, especially if you have not been exercising at all. The recommended time is to exercise for 30mins per day on 4 days in a week, this accumulates to 120 mins per week. It is not necessary to exercise for 30 mins in one hit you can break it down into several shorter sessions, for example 3 x 10 mins or 2 x 15 mins. If you have not been exercising then you will need to build up to that level over a period of time and once you have reached that level you can then start to increase the intensity at which you do exercise.