Creating a Complete Fitness Program
2/1/2010
by Vianesa Vargas
Now that you know the principles of training and understand the benefits of strength training it's now time to bring it all together with cardiovascular exercise and flexibility training. Let's start with cardiovascular exercise first.
Cardiovascular exercise is so called because it develops the heart and lungs, the cardiovascular system. Also known as CV training, there are plenty of options. These include:
- Walking
- Running
- Swimming
- Biking (indoors or outdoors)
- Dancing
- Classes (e.g. Step etc)
- Rowing
- Cross training machines
- Steppers
In addition, there are a number of home variations to consider if you can’t get out of the house:
- Stair climbing
- Skipping
- Mini trampoline
- Jumping jacks
- Jogging in place
As with strength training, variety is good – try to not always do the same thing. Mixing it up will improve your overall fitness, make your workouts more interesting, and reduce your chances of an overuse injury. Doing different forms of CV training is known as cross-training, and is the reason triathletes can sustain such heavy training loads – they split their time between swimming, running and biking.
The basics of CV training are quite simple:
Intensity: How hard should you work out? If you work out too hard you will exhaust yourself and increase the chances of injury. If you don’t work out hard enough, you will not get the benefits of the exercise.
The simplest way to gauge your effort is to use the Rate of Perceived Exertion, or RPE. This is a self-assessment of how hard you feel you are exercising.
Using a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is very easy (i.e., you’re sleeping) and 10 is maximal effort (i.e. you’re puking), you can monitor your intensity. Amazingly, when this is correlated to actual heart rate, people are usually very good at assessing their effort.
Using the RPE you should do your CV workouts at around a 5 to 6 to begin with. Once you have been working out for 6 to 8 weeks, your body will have begun to adapt to the effort, and you can increase to a 6-7 range.
Frequency: To reap the benefits of your CV training, aim for at least 3 times per week. 4 or 5 times per week will be more effective, particularly if you are looking to lose weight.
Rest: You should always have at least one day off per week. It gives your body a break, and is also good mentally. Trying to work out every day can become very draining.
Duration: The general rule is that your CV workouts should last at least 20 minutes. Unfortunately, many people interpret this to mean that their CV workouts should only last 20 minutes. The truth is that 20 minutes is the minimum – aim for 30 minutes and you will be sure to get a good workout.
Flexibility:
Flexibility often forgotten when people plan an exercise program, however, stretching regularly allows you to move easier, recover quicker, and stay injury and pain free. Flexibility should be a part of any workout program.
There is often confusion about when you should stretch. This is because many gyms mistakenly teach people to stretch as part of their warm up. This is incorrect. Let me explain why.
A warm up is designed to get your body moving, elevate the heart rate, get the muscles warm. Stretching is designed to relax you, calm you down, lower the heart rate.
When you look at it that way it is clear that the best time to stretch is after your workout – as a part of your cool down[1]. In addition, stretching works best on warm muscles, and is an important part of the recovery process, helping to clear waste products from your muscles after a workout.
Total workout
So if you don’t want to do several workouts every day (strength, cardio, flexibility), how do you put it all together?
An ideal strength/flexibility workout would have the following components:
- 10 mins cardio warm-up
- 20 – 40 mins strength training
- 10 minutes stretching/flexibility to cool down
If in addition you perform 3 cardio sessions per week (e.g. walking, swimming, running), you will see the excess weight disappear safely and quickly.
Final thoughts on exercise:
One important thing to bear in mind with exercise – even if you don’t feel like doing it because you’re tired or not in the mood, you almost always feel better and more energized afterward.
A very effective trick if you’re not in the mood is to go ahead and get changed – if you’re still not in the mood, fine. But usually once you’ve got changed you’ll get on with your workout.
[1] http://www.pilatesrunner.com/drillswarmup/warmup2.htm
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