How Much Exercise Do I ACTUALLY Need for Optimal Health Anyway?

Many people don’t exercise because they lead busy lives and don’t want their exercise programs to monopolize their schedules. While it is true that professional athletes and body builders spend a great deal of time in the gym, the actual amount of exercise needed for good to optimal health is quite small.

If you want to have a healthy body and increased levels of energy, don’t look to the muscle magazines for exercise advice. Every activity and every sport has different training regimens. Some of the differences are small and some are quite large. Putting it simply, if you don’t want to be a body builder, football player, or downhill skier then don’t train like one.

For a basic health and fitness starter program, I recommend 30 minutes of cardiovascular exercise three days per week and about 45 minutes of resistance exercise two days per week. If you haven’t exercised much lately, take it slow! Over-enthusiasm is one of the biggest killers of exercise plans. If you overdo it, you’ll be miserable and much less likely to continue. How do you know if you’re doing too much? Listen to your body! If you go for a run and you start gasping for breath, slow down and walk until you feel better. As you progress, you’ll find that you need fewer breaks and the breaks that you do take will be much shorter. Start small with the weights! No lifting with the ego! The goal is NOT to be curled up in a big ball of pain the next morning. Experiment until you find a weight that you can perform eight to twelve repetitions with. If you can’t lift the weight eight times, go lighter. Once you can do twelve repetitions it’s time to bump the weight up a little.

If you don’t feel you’re getting results quickly enough, don’t worry. While the human body has an amazing ability to adapt to its environment and the stresses of that environment, the adaptation doesn’t come overnight. Give it a couple of months. With a sensible exercise program, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how little your daily schedule is impacted and by how much your body changes for the better!

Thanks for coming back to visit me.
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!