Having a Balanced Fitness Routine

Exercise is exercise, right?  Wrong!  Before you get to thinking that exercise was meant to make fit, chiseled bodies, remember that physical activity has been around for thousands of years and bodies are shaped by the repeated movements they perform.  A swimmer will have more developed arms and shoulders, while a sprinter has built quads and hamstrings.  If you are not exercising to perform better in a sport, but simply trying to increase your fitness level, get into shape or lose weight, know that different activities have different functions.

There are three components to a well-rounded routine:  flexibility, cardio and weight training.  Flexibility exercises are great for the joints and increase your range of motion.  This includes warm-up and cool-down stretching, yoga and Pilates.  Cardio strengthens the heart and circulatory system such as fast walking, jogging, running, jump roping, elliptical training, biking, swimming, etc.  Weight training builds skeletal muscle and increases the load the heart can handle and includes various resistance exercises.  Remember that no one part of your fitness routine is more important than another; they each have different purposes.

If you are trying to lose weight and have no joint problems, you need to incorporate high-impact activities into your routine.  Yoga is great to stretch the muscles and warm them up for increased activity, but don’t rely on it as your sole fitness program.  You need to lift weights in order to build muscle.  Remember, you won’t be exerting yourself like a body builder, however, muscle burns fat.  A vigorous cardio workout will burn lots of calories in a session, but the muscle you build from lifting weights will raise your metabolism and you will burn more calories at rest.  Below is a table that gives you a guide on the amount of calories you burn with various exercises.

The Workout

The prime workout is set up like this: 

1. Warm-up cardio: Go for 3-5 minutes at low effort, just enough to break a sweat.

2. Warm-up stretching: Stretch all of the muscle groups (2 sets, 10 second hold) you will be using that day in your lifting session.

3. Weight lifting: Do at least one exercise for each muscle group. (For example, for lower body work calves, quadriceps, hamstrings, abductors, adductors, and butt)

4. Cool-down stretching: Do the same stretches you did in your warm-up, but hold for 30 seconds. This helps relieve some of the lactic acid build-up.

5. Cardio: For maximum fat burn, do your cardio after you lift. If you do cardio first, for the first twenty minutes of your session your body will be burning calories from carbohydrates instead of fat.

6. Cool-down cardio stretching: Do a few post-cardio stretches before you end your workout.

Make certain not to completely fatigue yourself with your cardio session.  Your muscles need to recover from lifting and your body won’t be able to do this as well if you exhaust yourself with cardio.  You may also choose to do cardio on alternating days, or on days you work your upper body.

Alternate the exercises you choose about every two months for variation and to continue in your progress.

Various Exercises and Calorie Expenditure