"Exercise is Nature's miracle drug" - Cary Skaggs
Diet will determine how much you weigh Exercise will determine how that weight looks
Exercise is a wonderful way to look better, feel better, and live longer. It is an essential part of a healthy lifestyle. But there is a lot of confusion about the effectiveness of exercise in losing weight. The only exercises you need to do to lose weight are fork putdowns and table push-aways. Exercise will build muscle, diet will dictate if you can see that muscle or not. Cardiovascular exercise will improve your heart and lungs and make you feel rejuvenated, but it will not overcome a bad diet. So first things first, fix your diet, then start focusing on exercise.
Exercise is a wonderful way to look better, feel better, and live longer. It is an essential part of a healthy lifestyle. But there is a lot of confusion about the effectiveness of exercise in losing weight. The only exercises you need to do to lose weight are fork putdowns and table push-aways. Exercise will build muscle, diet will dictate if you can see that muscle or not. Cardiovascular exercise will improve your heart and lungs and make you feel rejuvenated, but it will not overcome a bad diet. So first things first, fix your diet, then start focusing on exercise.
Getting Started with Fitness
Take a walk Before diving into the higher levels of fitness, I always recommend that everyone take a walk. Its good for the mind and body. It gets you moving. There are a lot of benefits and few drawbacks. It doesn't take any equipment and its free. Its low impact and usually injury free. So to start off, walk for 45 minutes, 3 times a week. Don't worry about pace or endurance, just get out there and walk.
Have fun Once you start to pick your activity or activities that you will use to further your health, consider doing what you enjoy. Some people love running, some a bike, some love swimming; choose something that you truly enjoy.
Be practical Pick something that you can do as often as you like. You may love rock climbing, but if your schedule or your body won't allow you do it a couple of times a week, you'd be better off finding something that you can do as often as you like. Also consider doing something that won't wreck your body too quickly. Biking, swimming and walking are all low impact. Jogging and Running are great, but may catch up with you in 10 years. That said, if you love doing something, do it and enjoy it for its own sake.
Have fun Once you start to pick your activity or activities that you will use to further your health, consider doing what you enjoy. Some people love running, some a bike, some love swimming; choose something that you truly enjoy.
Be practical Pick something that you can do as often as you like. You may love rock climbing, but if your schedule or your body won't allow you do it a couple of times a week, you'd be better off finding something that you can do as often as you like. Also consider doing something that won't wreck your body too quickly. Biking, swimming and walking are all low impact. Jogging and Running are great, but may catch up with you in 10 years. That said, if you love doing something, do it and enjoy it for its own sake.
Types of Fitness and Exercise
The main kinds of fitness and exercises can be divided into three categories: Strength training for the muscles, cardio for the heart and lungs, and flexibility for the joints. At the novice level most forms of exercise help in multiple areas. Flexibility can give you greater range of motion and allow you to move more weight further and help prevent injury to your joints from Cardio. Cardio can give you some more endurance when lifting weights. Building muscle can help you run faster and further. At the higher levels of fitness training in one area may interfere with other areas, but don't worry about that bridge until you have to cross it.
Strength / Size / Power / Endurance
Body-weight strength training is an excellent way to start gaining strength and muscle. My morning routine consists of 100 push ups, 100 bicycle crunches, and 25 chin-ups. These three exercises work the chest, back, arms, lats, obliques, and abs. If you are unable to perform these movements Convict Conditioning is an excellent program that can show you how to progress from a complete novice to advanced body-weight fitness. For legs I recommend body-weight squats and pistols. For the whole body nothing quite beats burpees.
There are two kinds of muscle growth - Myofibrillar Hypertrophy and Sarcoplasmic Hypertrophy. The first involves the growth and addition of muscle fibers and your nervous system's connection to and ability to recruit the muscle you have to move weight. The second primarily involves the size of the muscle and the fluid in it. You can focus on strength and look small, but pick up a lot of weight, and you can have large muscles and not be able to pick up very much. Focusing on one kind of muscle growth usually helps the other kind of growth along too. The worlds strongest people have large muscles and the bodybuilders with a lot of muscle are usually pretty strong.
That said, the way to focus on one or the other is through controlling the number of repetitions per set, the sets of repetitions, the volume of training, the time under tension, the time between sets, and isolation vs coordination. No matter what you choose though, focus on form. If you don't know how to perform the movement, and hurt your joints or tendons or muscles you can injure yourself greatly, and that does not help you reach any fitness goals.
For the strength to move heavy objects fairly often I recommend the stronglifts 5x5 method. It involves performing whole body movements using 3 exercises for 5 sets of 5 repetitions (25 total times for each exercise). The repetitions should be performed quickly, with several minutes of rest between each set. It offers a good bit of muscle size growth as well and is a great place to start. You should start with the bar and work on form. Then once you are comfortable increase the weight by 5 pounds per session until you have reached a weight that you are comfortable with lifting 5x5 and completing the sets.
You will alternate days of working out and days of rest. Monday do workout A, Tuesday Rest, Wednesday do workout B, Thursday Rest, Friday do workout A, Saturday and Sunday Rest, Monday do workout B, and so on .
Workout A Squat 5×5 Bench Press 5×5 Barbell Rows 5×5
Workout B Squat 5×5 Overhead Press 5×5 Deadlift 1×5
Power comes from increasing the load and decreasing the repetitions. To increase your power, try lifting heavier loads for 1-3 repetitions instead of 5. This is for more intermediate lifters.
To achieve size (Sarcoplasmic Hypertrophy) you must increase volume, increase time under tension, and decrease the rest time between sets. I recommend keeping each set going for about 60 seconds by doing slow repetitions with full range of motion. The time between sets should be about 30 seconds. You will work one muscle group more than the others on a day and then rest that muscle group for a longer time between workouts. To accomplish this you must reduce the amount of weight you are lifting. Repetitions should be between 8 and 12 reps per set. The exercises and number of sets can vary between program to program but I will give an example of a 3 day split. If you have any questions about how to perform any of these exercises, consult ExRx.Net or search YouTube for form videos.
Monday: Legs and Shoulders 3 sets of 12 repetitions (12x3) Goblet Squats, 12x3 barbell squats, 10 x 2 deadlifts, 12 goblet squats, body-weight squats to failure. Lateral Raises 12x3, Overhead dumbbell press 12x3, Overhead dumbbell press with a higher weight 8x3, Overhead barbell press 12x3, Lateral Raises to Failure
Wednesday: Back and Biceps 12x3 Dumbbell Rows, 12x3 Bent Over Dumbbell Flys, 12x3 Bent over Rows, 10x5 chin-ups. 12x3 hammer curls, 12x3 barbell curls, 12x3 dumbbell curls
Friday: Chest and Triceps 12x3 dumbbell Pec flys, 12x3 bench press, 12x3 inclined bench press, pec flys to failure. 12x3 tricep pull down, 12x3 tricep extensions using a dumbbell, 12x3 Skull crushers
For Endurance try these same exercised with lighter weight for 15-20 reps
A note to women worried about lifting weights and becoming She-Ra in two weeks. Don't. Some women worry that if they lift weights and gain muscle they will look like one of those female bodybuilders where it is hard to tell that they are women. Those women use a good bit of steroids which act like testosterone and make that change possible. It also takes them years of hard work to gain that physique. Most women who lift weights a whole lot and keep low body fat look more like a fitness model and less like a man, not that there is anything wrong with that if that is what you are going for.
A note to the elderly: Exercise including resistance training, body-weight exercises and lifting weights is good at any age. I have friends in their 80s who are experiencing wonderful gains in muscle size and strength, and their back aches and joint pain is greatly diminished. Working out properly can reduce your aches and pains and can add to life at any age.
Alternate Programs: Greyskull Linear Progression , Starting Strength, Convict Conditioning
Body-weight strength training is an excellent way to start gaining strength and muscle. My morning routine consists of 100 push ups, 100 bicycle crunches, and 25 chin-ups. These three exercises work the chest, back, arms, lats, obliques, and abs. If you are unable to perform these movements Convict Conditioning is an excellent program that can show you how to progress from a complete novice to advanced body-weight fitness. For legs I recommend body-weight squats and pistols. For the whole body nothing quite beats burpees.
There are two kinds of muscle growth - Myofibrillar Hypertrophy and Sarcoplasmic Hypertrophy. The first involves the growth and addition of muscle fibers and your nervous system's connection to and ability to recruit the muscle you have to move weight. The second primarily involves the size of the muscle and the fluid in it. You can focus on strength and look small, but pick up a lot of weight, and you can have large muscles and not be able to pick up very much. Focusing on one kind of muscle growth usually helps the other kind of growth along too. The worlds strongest people have large muscles and the bodybuilders with a lot of muscle are usually pretty strong.
That said, the way to focus on one or the other is through controlling the number of repetitions per set, the sets of repetitions, the volume of training, the time under tension, the time between sets, and isolation vs coordination. No matter what you choose though, focus on form. If you don't know how to perform the movement, and hurt your joints or tendons or muscles you can injure yourself greatly, and that does not help you reach any fitness goals.
For the strength to move heavy objects fairly often I recommend the stronglifts 5x5 method. It involves performing whole body movements using 3 exercises for 5 sets of 5 repetitions (25 total times for each exercise). The repetitions should be performed quickly, with several minutes of rest between each set. It offers a good bit of muscle size growth as well and is a great place to start. You should start with the bar and work on form. Then once you are comfortable increase the weight by 5 pounds per session until you have reached a weight that you are comfortable with lifting 5x5 and completing the sets.
You will alternate days of working out and days of rest. Monday do workout A, Tuesday Rest, Wednesday do workout B, Thursday Rest, Friday do workout A, Saturday and Sunday Rest, Monday do workout B, and so on .
Workout A Squat 5×5 Bench Press 5×5 Barbell Rows 5×5
Workout B Squat 5×5 Overhead Press 5×5 Deadlift 1×5
Power comes from increasing the load and decreasing the repetitions. To increase your power, try lifting heavier loads for 1-3 repetitions instead of 5. This is for more intermediate lifters.
To achieve size (Sarcoplasmic Hypertrophy) you must increase volume, increase time under tension, and decrease the rest time between sets. I recommend keeping each set going for about 60 seconds by doing slow repetitions with full range of motion. The time between sets should be about 30 seconds. You will work one muscle group more than the others on a day and then rest that muscle group for a longer time between workouts. To accomplish this you must reduce the amount of weight you are lifting. Repetitions should be between 8 and 12 reps per set. The exercises and number of sets can vary between program to program but I will give an example of a 3 day split. If you have any questions about how to perform any of these exercises, consult ExRx.Net or search YouTube for form videos.
Monday: Legs and Shoulders 3 sets of 12 repetitions (12x3) Goblet Squats, 12x3 barbell squats, 10 x 2 deadlifts, 12 goblet squats, body-weight squats to failure. Lateral Raises 12x3, Overhead dumbbell press 12x3, Overhead dumbbell press with a higher weight 8x3, Overhead barbell press 12x3, Lateral Raises to Failure
Wednesday: Back and Biceps 12x3 Dumbbell Rows, 12x3 Bent Over Dumbbell Flys, 12x3 Bent over Rows, 10x5 chin-ups. 12x3 hammer curls, 12x3 barbell curls, 12x3 dumbbell curls
Friday: Chest and Triceps 12x3 dumbbell Pec flys, 12x3 bench press, 12x3 inclined bench press, pec flys to failure. 12x3 tricep pull down, 12x3 tricep extensions using a dumbbell, 12x3 Skull crushers
For Endurance try these same exercised with lighter weight for 15-20 reps
A note to women worried about lifting weights and becoming She-Ra in two weeks. Don't. Some women worry that if they lift weights and gain muscle they will look like one of those female bodybuilders where it is hard to tell that they are women. Those women use a good bit of steroids which act like testosterone and make that change possible. It also takes them years of hard work to gain that physique. Most women who lift weights a whole lot and keep low body fat look more like a fitness model and less like a man, not that there is anything wrong with that if that is what you are going for.
A note to the elderly: Exercise including resistance training, body-weight exercises and lifting weights is good at any age. I have friends in their 80s who are experiencing wonderful gains in muscle size and strength, and their back aches and joint pain is greatly diminished. Working out properly can reduce your aches and pains and can add to life at any age.
Alternate Programs: Greyskull Linear Progression , Starting Strength, Convict Conditioning
Cardiovascular / Conditioning
Whether running, biking, swimming, climbing, or playing sports; cardio involves elevating your heart rate and using your lungs for a prolonged time. If you want a healthy heart and lungs and vascular system, do cardio. Cardio also imparts other benefits such as sleeping better, better body composition, and a host of mental benefits. Do not try to use cardio to burn off the excess food you eat, this will only end in tears and disappointment.
My secret to Cardio is to find something you love to do and doing it often.
For running/jogging, a lot of folks have had success with Couch to 5k. It trains you up from walking to interval running to running for 5 kilometers straight in only 9 weeks.
For biking, I recommend buying a nice comfortable bike, and just riding it as far as you can and then back. Don't worry about pace at first, but work up to it. The trick is to always push yourself to just beyond a comfortable pace that you can hold for an extended time.
Here is an introductory swimming program.
Conditioning is related to cardio in that it is your ability to expend a great amount of energy in a short amount of time. Whereas Cardio can extend for half an hour to a couple of hours, Conditioning exercises are usually over in less than a few minutes. Some programs like Crossfit focus on conditioning and VOX (Volume of Blood Oxygen) while also adding a good bit of strength and endurance. Good exercises for better conditioning include sprints, running the stairs or stadium, prowler crawls, or just anything that involves moving at a moderate to fast pace for a short time to exhaustion.
Whether running, biking, swimming, climbing, or playing sports; cardio involves elevating your heart rate and using your lungs for a prolonged time. If you want a healthy heart and lungs and vascular system, do cardio. Cardio also imparts other benefits such as sleeping better, better body composition, and a host of mental benefits. Do not try to use cardio to burn off the excess food you eat, this will only end in tears and disappointment.
My secret to Cardio is to find something you love to do and doing it often.
For running/jogging, a lot of folks have had success with Couch to 5k. It trains you up from walking to interval running to running for 5 kilometers straight in only 9 weeks.
For biking, I recommend buying a nice comfortable bike, and just riding it as far as you can and then back. Don't worry about pace at first, but work up to it. The trick is to always push yourself to just beyond a comfortable pace that you can hold for an extended time.
Here is an introductory swimming program.
Conditioning is related to cardio in that it is your ability to expend a great amount of energy in a short amount of time. Whereas Cardio can extend for half an hour to a couple of hours, Conditioning exercises are usually over in less than a few minutes. Some programs like Crossfit focus on conditioning and VOX (Volume of Blood Oxygen) while also adding a good bit of strength and endurance. Good exercises for better conditioning include sprints, running the stairs or stadium, prowler crawls, or just anything that involves moving at a moderate to fast pace for a short time to exhaustion.
Flexibility / Mind Body Connection
Flexibility is essential to a healthy life. It helps increase range of motion, allows for new activities, relieves pain and stress, releases endorphins, and can help you sleep better (I like to stretch before bed to release all of the stress). There are gymnastic routines that you can use as well as starting routines.
Yoga is also a wonderful way of relieving stress and increasing flexibility and stength. It has the benefit of usually being taught in a classroom setting. I don't care for the unqualified eastern medicine quackery and mysticism aspects, but it works so I won't knock it.
Another important feature of all forms of exercise is that it will help connect your mind to your body in a more tangible way. You always exist in your head, but after a good workout you can feel your body and limbs and you know where they are. It's the difference between being aware of your body and being present in the moment. If nothing else, you should quickly start to feel better put together.
Benefits of Exercise
- Improves your chances of living longer and living healthier
- Helps protect you from developing heart disease and stroke or its precursors, high blood pressure and undesirable blood lipid patterns
- Helps protect you from developing certain cancers, including colon and breast cancer, and possibly lung and endometrial (uterine lining) cancer
- Helps prevent type 2 diabetes (what was once called adult-onset diabetes) and metabolic syndrome (a constellation of risk factors that increases the chances of developing heart disease and diabetes; read more about simple steps to prevent diabetes)
- Helps prevent the insidious loss of bone known as osteoporosis
- Reduces the risk of falling and improves cognitive function among older adults
- Relieves symptoms of depression and anxiety and improves mood
- Prevents weight gain, promotes weight loss (when combined with a lower-calorie diet), and helps keep weight off after weight loss
- Improves heart-lung and muscle fitness
- Improves sleep