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FITNESS GUIDE
FITNESS GUIDE
scheduled, moderate level workout for 20–30 minutes on Monday, Wednesday,
Friday and Sunday (see the intensity monitoring section for further details on
how hard to workout). On the other days, you might try going for a leisurely
stroll 10 minutes in the morning and in the evening (or whenever you can fi t it
in).
Whatever you do, just make sure you get your body moving, and your heart and
lungs pumping for some period of time every day.
■
Muscular strength
Training your muscles to remain strong using resistance such as dumbbells,
elastic tubing or your body weight. In the past decade, we have learned that
building or maintaining muscular strength is extremely important for a balanced
fi tness program. And it is especially important as we get older.
We have learned through a variety of studies that those individuals who just
train aerobically (without strength training) do maintain their cardiovascular
endurance over the years, but they generally lose lean muscle mass as they
get older. However, those individuals who combine strength training and
cardiovascular training can maintain their lean body mass as they get older.
What this means is that if you just do cardiovascular activity, your body will
naturally lose muscle mass as you get older, and that means that you will
actually get “fatter” as you age, unless you incorporate strength training.
We have also learned that consistent strength training helps maintain bone
and muscle mass as we get older. For women, strength training (along with
cardiovascular training) may also protect against post-menopausal bone loss and
osteoporosis in their later years.
And strength training is not complicated. It is recommended that you do 8–12
repetitions of 8–10 major muscle groups at least two days a week. However, you
don’t have to do all these exercises at once. You can break them up into shorter
workouts throughout the day. For example, you can do just upper body exercises
in the morning, and your lower body exercises in the evening. Or, you can
alternate strength exercises with cardiovascular exercise (often known as circuit
training) by switching back and forth every couple of minutes.
The best part is you don’t need complicated equipment or fancy machines. You
can do everything you need to do with a simple pair of dumbbells, or you can try
the new Nautilus’
®
SelectTech
™
dumbbells, which provide you a wide variety
of weight options in a revolutionary all-in-one dumbbell. You can use elastic
tubing, or simply do body weight exercises such as push-ups or lunges.
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Flexibility
Being able to bend, reach, twist and turn with comfort and ease as we perform
daily tasks, play or exercise. It is perhaps the most ignored component of fi tness,