TYPES OF EXERCISE

The aerobic exercises are those that use the large muscle groups that continuously for prolonged periods. Vigorous walking is perhaps the best example. Other types of aerobic exercise are bike riding, swimming and jogging. If you go to the gym, do those activities that involves low to moderate effort but which are repetitive, going on for several minutes. You could do a “strength” program using heavy weights and a few repetitions to gain power and body shaping. However, this is not what we are after. The central feature of the aerobic exercise is that they use most of the major muscle groups in the body, in a way that pushes up your heart rate and gets you breathing more quickly and deeply.

We want you to try to exercise each day. Make it a part of your life, plan for it, look forward to it and enjoy it. If you are doing something that you do not like, you will find excuses to miss it. Soon it is no more. Find the activities that you enjoy. Create some variety. Encourage others to exercise with you. There are a few things more powerful in keeping you on your program that the commitment to meet a friend for the activity. Personal trainers are excellent in optimizing your program and providing the stimulus to keep you at it.

You should seek to do at least 200, minutes of exercise each week. Ideally, this would be achieved by doing 30 minutes on each day of the week. If your other commitments do not allow for daily exercise, you can exercise on three weekdays and make up the difference on the weekend.

It is not necessary to do the 30 minutes in one block. It is equally effective if the exercise is divided onto two blocks of 15 minutes or even three blocks of 10-minute blocks of exercise each day. Surely there are few of us so busy that we cannot squeeze in three 10-minute blocks of exercise each day. Just walking up 20 flights of stairs in your office building would do it. Walking 1 mile (1.6 km) down the street would do it. Riding your exercise bike for 10 minutes would do it. Just do it.