You know that exercise improves your health and helps with weight loss, but if you're an average Jane or Joe (aka not a certified fitness coach or trained exercise physiologist), your best intentions may not be enough. What exactly should you be doing anyway? How do you know what exercises to do? How long should you exercise? How often? What types of exercises are best? Before you even set foot in a gym, you are feeling like a fish out of water. For many people, not knowing what to do is a big barrier to doing anything at all. You don't have to hire a trainer to think like one—or to get started with exercise or even create your own ideal workout plan. Here are a few tips to help you get started. First, doing anything at all—even if it's not ideal or perfect or the best possible form of exercise—trumps doing nothing. So while we will give you a few tips to get started on the right track, don't get too bogged down in the details. If you are moving in any possible way and as often as you can, you are doing a good job. So when it comes to finessing your fitness plan, here's how much, how often, and WHAT you should be doing each week for optimal health and weight-loss results. Cardio ExerciseCardio strengthens your heart and lungs, helps you maintain a healthy weight, lowers your risk of sickness and disease, and makes you feel good. Cardio exercise includes any type of continuous movement that uses the body is a "rhythmic" way to elevate the heart rate for at least 10 continuous minutes. Pick a variety and choose activities that you enjoy.
Strength ExerciseWhether you call it resistance training, weight lifting, toning or body sculpting, we're all talking about strengthening your muscles by performing exercises against resistance. Strength training also strengthens your bones, tendons and ligaments, which improves your fitness, appearance and metabolism so you can better maintain a healthy weight. Each strength training workout should include at least one exercise for each of your major muscle groups (think: arms, chest, back, core and legs).
Flexibility ExerciseStretching is another name for flexibility exercise, which can help lengthen your muscles and develop an appropriate range of motion for specific sports and daily activities. Flexibility exercises increase joint mobility, may help reduce injuries, improve coordination and enhance your posture. People often think of stretching as non-essential or gloss over it, but it should demand attention and priority in any sound workout plan.
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