The fitness fundamentals

by Dr. Di Pasquale

CONT'D...

Step Three: Create a Workout Schedule

How, how often, how long and how much are the important objectives in creating a workout regimen. In turn, these objectives should be based on your present fitness level, age, health, skills, interest and convenience. For example, an athlete training for high-level competition would follow a different program than a person whose goals are good health and the ability to meet work and recreational needs.

Your exercise program should include something from each of the four basic fitness components described previously. Each workout should begin with a warmup and end with a cooldown. As a general rule, space your workouts throughout the week and avoid consecutive days of hard exercise.

Here are the amounts of activity necessary for the average healthy person to maintain a minimum level of overall fitness. Included are some of the popular exercises for each category.

WARM-UP - 5-10 minutes of exercise such as walking, slow jogging, knee lifts, arm circles or trunk rotations. Low intensity movements that simulate movements to be used in the activity can also be included in the warm-up.

MUSCULAR STRENGTH - a minimum of two 20-minute sessions per week that include exercises for all the major muscle groups. Lifting weights is the most effective way to increase strength.

MUSCULAR ENDURANCE - at least three 30-minute sessions each week that include exercises such as calisthenics, pushups, sit-ups, pull-ups, and weight training for all the major muscle groups.

CARDIO-RESPIRATORY ENDURANCE - at least three 20-minute bouts of continuous aerobic (activity requiring oxygen) rhythmic exercise each week. Popular aerobic conditioning activities include brisk walking, jogging, swimming, cycling, rope-jumping, rowing, cross-country skiing, and some continuous action games like racquetball and handball.

FLEXIBILITY - 10-12 minutes of daily stretching exercises performed slowly, without a bouncing motion. This can be included after a warmup or during a cooldown.

COOL DOWN - a minimum of 5-10 minutes of slow walking, low-level exercise, combined with stretching.

Four Basic Principles

In creating an effective regimen, there are four important things to consider.

Specifity - pick the right kind of activities to affect each component. Strength training results in specific strength changes. Also, train for the specific activity you’re interested in. For example, optimal swimming performance is best achieved when the muscles involved in swimming are trained for the movements required. It does not necessarily follow that a good runner is a good swimmer.

Overload - work hard enough, at levels that are vigorous and long enough to overload your body above its resting level, to bring about improvement.

Regularity - you can’t hoard physical fitness. At least three balanced workouts a week are necessary to maintain a desirable level of fitness.

Progression - increase the intensity, frequency and/or duration of activity over periods of time in order to improve.

Some activities can be used to fulfill more than one of your basic exercise requirements. For example, in addition to increasing cardio-respiratory endurance, running builds muscular endurance in the legs, and swimming develops the arm, shoulder and chest muscles. If you select the proper activities, it is possible to fit parts of your muscular endurance workout into your cardio-respiratory workout and save time.

Step Four: Monitor Heart Rate

Heart rate is widely accepted as a good method for measuring intensity during running, swimming, cycling, and other aerobic activities. Exercise that doesn’t raise your heart rate to a certain level and keep it there for 20 minutes won’t contribute significantly to cardiovascular fitness.

The heart rate you should maintain is called your target heart rate. There are several ways of arriving at this figure. One of the simplest is: maximum heart rate (220 - age) x 70%. Thus, the target heart rate for a 40 year-old would be 126.

Some methods for figuring the target rate take individual differences into consideration. Here is one of them:

- Subtract age from 220 to find maximum heart rate.
- Subtract resting heart rate (see below) from maximum heart rate to determine heart rate reserve.
- Take 70% of heart rate reserve to determine heart rate raise.
- Add heart rate raise to resting heart rate to find target rate.
Resting heart rate should be determined by taking your pulse after sitting quietly for five minutes. When checking heart rate during a workout, take your pulse within five seconds after interrupting exercise because it starts to go down once you stop moving. Count pulse for 10 seconds and multiply by six to get the per-minute rate.

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