Gymming is good but is important that you know the basic exercise principles about it. Poor knowledge can lead to injuries hence making it difficult for you to achieve the required results. Exercising daily is not only good for your physical health but also for mental health. Exercise improves your overall health and well-being.
If you are above 40 years of age and have any muscles strain, metabolic disease or if you are overweight, then you should see your physician before signing up at a gym and go for a complete checkup. Ask your doctor if you need to take any precautions and how much of exercise is good for you.
Why working out is good?
Benefits of Exercising include:
- Reduces fat
- Stress reliever and boosts your mood
- Relieves symptoms of anxiety and depression
- Reduces your risk of heart disease and certain types of cancer
- Increases bone density and checks osteoporosis
- Strengthens the heart and lungs
- Reduces and arrests cholesterol, diabetes and other metabolic diseases
- It helps relieve arthritis
It's important to know basics of working out in the gym to see a result oriented injury free class. All exercise programs are based on F.I.T.T. Principle to keep the body challenged and to avoid monotony.
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- Frequency - how often you exercise
- Intensity - how hard you exercise
- Time - how long you exercise
- Type - the type of exercise you are doing
When you exercise with adequate intensity, time and frequency of the body will adapt to the stress placed on it and will show desirable changes. This is known as the training effect.
You will notice the changes in cardio strength and endurance and the fat percentage in the body.
For instance, if you've been walking 3 times in a week for 20 minutes on the treadmill and you've stopped seeing changes, then you can change the program by increasing the number of days you workout or increase the intensity by adding short bursts of jogging or inclined walking. You can also increase the exercise timing by 10-15 minutes. Changing any of these variables will keep the training effect going.
The overload principle improves your strength, endurance and overall fitness. Gradually increase the frequency, intensity and time of the workouts to stimulate the body. You can, for instance, increase the weight of the dumbbell, the number of repetition per set or if you've been doing biceps curls with dumbbells, change to resistance tube or a barbell. These changes will soon bring in huge gains in terms of strength, toning and endurance.
Exercises should be worked on the principle of specificity- that is the exercise should be specific to your goals. If your foremost objective is health, fitness and weight loss then you must focus on total body strength, cardio and a healthy balanced diet. To take full advantage of the results of your workout, keep track of your exercises, reps, sets, weight used and any other relevant information such as the rest time, diet notes and days the muscles were worked in a log book. It’s a key to know the ongoing gains in muscle strength, mass and endurance.
Before a Workout
Eating right before exercising will keep you energized from the word go to the word finish! What you should eat totally depends on how long your training session is and how hard you will be working out. It’s good to fuel your muscles before a workout as it helps you to recover fast after the workout. If your cardio session is anywhere between 30-60 minutes then have a fluid snack before the session, the calorie value of the snack should be ideally around 200 calories.
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