Fitness Breakdown

You’ve figured out the hardest part of your fitness program—squeezing out the necessary time each week to devote to your workouts—so now you’re ready to look at the various types of fitness on which you will need to focus. In the beginning, your main goal should be to enjoy what you’re doing enough to keep coming back for more, so don’t worry too much about making certain you’ve included every aspect of a comprehensive regime. Eventually, however, to get yourself feeling as good as possible, you’ll need to include activities which address each of the following areas: Aerobic, Strength/Core, and Flexibility.

None of these areas is difficult to understand or do, but you do need to recognize that you probably won’t enjoy each area equally. For many years, I focused mainly on aerobic workouts because they were the easiest for me to do while spacing out as I listened to music. Pop on the headphones, hop on an exercise bike, and I was good for at least a half an hour, no problem. Doing a weight routine where I had to pay attention to form and count repetitions, not to mention feeling the strain of all that lifting, had little appeal to me; so I neglected that. The same held true for flexibility: I could stretch while listening to music, but I also had to use correct technique and watch the clock to see that I’d been doing each movement for a long enough time. Through all my aerobic hours, I was definitely burning lots of calories and getting my heart rate up to a beneficial rate, but my strength and flexibility didn’t get nearly enough work.

Eventually, I recognized the importance of my neglected areas, found some ways to incorporate them that were more palatable to me, and now have a pretty good ratio of aerobic-to-strength-to-core-to-stretching activities. My current routine is two days in a row of two-a-day workouts (30 minutes of strength/core followed by ten minutes of targeted stretching and a 35-minute aerobic session followed by a ten-to-fifteen minute full-body stretch), on the third day an extended strength/core day followed by targeted stretching, then two more two-a-days, then an extended aerobic workout followed by a full-body stretch, two more two-a-days, and then a day off. It might be difficult for some of you to believe, but that last day—the day of rest—is probably the hardest one on me as I feel like I should be working out every day. But, as we’ll review another time, it is important to have days where you give your body some time off. If anything, I should have another day off in that nine-day cycle

We’ll be discussing these three areas in much greater detail as we go. But as an introduction and to make sure we’re all on the same page, here’s a brief overview of each:

Aerobic: Get your heart rate up to the point where you’re breathing hard and sweating, and keep it there for at least twenty minutes. That’s pretty much it. If you’re only going to do one of the three areas (which I do not recommend), aerobics would be it, especially since it is very difficult to do an aerobic workout without getting at least a little strength training, core work, and flexibility mixed in. No, you really can’t do all of them at once, but when you’re on a cross-country ski machine or pedaling your bike or at an aerobics class, you have to use your muscles to move your body which will provide some strength/core/flexibility benefit.

Regardless, an aerobic workout is designed to improve your oxygen intake, which means that to improve your fitness, you increase the intensity. You gradually speed up your runs or turn up the tension on your elliptical trainer, for example. If you’ve got the time, you can also increase the length of your workout for added benefit. But once you get started, aerobic workouts are the easiest to incorporate other activities with which to distract yourself. At health clubs, you will see most people watching television as they use the elliptical or treadmill. I’ve already mentioned how music has been the key to my fitness longevity (see https://gymsjim.wordpress.com/2015/02/23/workout-music/). Some people read, socialize, or enjoy nature as they do whatever activity fits them best. You can even switch between different aerobic activities for your workout. Hey, if you can make quick transitions from swimming to biking to running, you might be a natural tri-athlete.

Strength/core workouts have traditionally involved big stacks of weights incorporated into multi-use machines like the Universals you see at most gyms. Each station targets a different muscle group, and you do a certain number of repetitions (reps) of a variety of different exercises a certain number of times (sets). “Strength” is the term most use when working on legs, arms, and chest; whereas “Core” workouts focus on abs, back, and butt. They’re really both a series of movements which involve exerting the muscles in your body. Since it’s not as easy to use weights when you’re exercising your core, some separate them into different routines at different times.

Your goal in a strength or core workout is to beat yourself up a little, to exert those muscles more than you normally would, to stress them to the point where they rebound to become stronger than they were before. So just like aerobic workouts, you need a system of progressions to make your exercises harder as you get stronger. Hence the stacks on those weight machines so that you can keep increasing how much resistance your muscles have to endure. Another way to progress is to increase the number of reps of each exercise you do, but that leads to an ever-lengthening workout time (which might not work into your schedule). Or you can increase the reps gradually to a set number (say increasing your how many you do by one each week after starting with 8 until you reach, say, 12 reps) before moving to the next weight. Core activities often rely on body-weight movements, such as crunches, planks, or leg lifts since it’s harder to use weights to target these areas. But make no mistake about it—core workouts are aimed at getting your ab, glute, and back muscles stronger.

Flexibility, on the other hand, is geared toward helping you move without strain or pain. You’re also focusing on a larger collection of body areas—all the afore mentioned muscle groups plus those neglected work horses, your joints and ligaments. With all those varied parts, your goal isn’t to be extreme or to push yourself overly hard; instead, you should focus on consistency and gentleness. Straining to touch your toes will only pull something or lead to chronic pain. Stretches are designed to begin where the stretcher currently is in relation to flexibility and to improve gradually from there at a pace determined entirely by what your body tells you is okay. With aerobic and strength/core, you have to push yourself on occasion to do more even if you’re somewhat uncomfortable, but you really don’t want to push too much with stretching.

There are two basic types of stretch routines: Static stretches are done after a workout when the body is already warm and loose. These are the most common types where you slowly stretch, say, your hamstrings by reaching toward the ground and holding the position for at least fifteen seconds. Dynamic (or Active) stretches are done for a much shorter period of time—usually no more than three seconds—and are designed to be completed before you work out as a warmup. That’s probably the key mistake many have been making over the years, doing Static instead of Dynamic stretches prior to going for a run or playing soccer. The easiest way to warm up for an activity is a slow jog or mild calisthenics, like jumping jacks.

Yoga is a specialized form of stretching which can be used as an entire workout in and of itself. The mental aspects of yoga also help to de-stress devotees as they become more adept at the sequence of movements yoga routines entail. Many stretch routines make use of modified yoga positions.

Stretching is probably the most neglected area of fitness for those who have already adopted an active lifestyle, but we ignore flexibility at our own peril. In my case, after I retired, I dialed up my strength workouts while maintaining my aerobic schedule. About three months in, I was hobbled by significant hip pain. Immediately, I had visions of surgery or hip replacements which would end my dreams of total fitness. Fortunately, a little research helped me to realize that my pain was caused by inflexibility in certain ligaments around my hips, and something as easy to do as sitting on a tennis ball and using a foam roller for a few minutes each day cured me. This was also a blessing in disguise as I realized that lack of flexibility could completely derail any fitness plan. I now stretch for at least ten minutes a day—20 on most days.

However, you can see how much simpler—once you’ve set yourself up and established your patterns—the aerobics workouts on exercise machines are as a starting point. You turn on the TV or music, set the resistance or program, set the time, and you’re off. To progress, you either increase the resistance or lengthen the time. Often, your machine will even keep track of your progression for you (if you own it). Strength/core and flexibility require much more careful attention to technique, reps, and length of individual movements than aerobic workouts do. So if you’re at all uncertain where to begin, I would suggest going with aerobic. There are ways to make many of those details easier to incorporate, but clearly all three of these require some adapting by the individual to fit right. We’ll discuss the various approaches as we go along, now that we’re clear on the generalities.

Attention to those three areas—Aerobic, Strength/Core, and Flexibility—will lead just about anyone to better fitness. Now that you’ve figured out how to fit physical activity into your daily routine, the next step will be to start experimenting with what activities work best for you. Remember that there are as many paths to fitness as there are people, so you shouldn’t feel like any single method is the only way. We’re now ready to look at some of the multitude of fitness options out there so you can find the ones that will fit you. (Get it? “Fit” you, as in make you fitter? Ha-ha…whoa, do you eat with that mouth? You do? Good, we’ll have some diet tips soon after we dip back into some music.)

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