One of the many rewards of vigorous exercise is the leisurely relaxation of the post exercise bath or shower. You will find that the most enjoyable part of a workout is taking a shower, although pitchers sent to the showers disagree. This is the moment of intense nothingness you have earned. Make the most of it. It is good for you. You are now re-educating your muscles to relax on command. There is no tension in the shower. You probably could not be anxious if you tried.



Your muscles and nervous system once again have learned to obey the STOP sign that they learned to ignore in your efforts to be successful. And second, this application of moist heat promotes increased circulation to your muscles, of significant benefit in avoiding stiffness and cramps.

Workouts should be varied?both to provide varying degrees of stress and to offer variety and promote fun.

How To Limber Up

Early in the game you should do limbering-up or flexibility workouts. You must redevelop long-lost flexibility of muscles and joints before starting in on "progressive resistance" training. Limbering-up workouts consist of stretching exercises. These include touching your toes, rotating and bending the trunk, flexing and extending the neck, flailing the arms loosely in all directions, and a series of other exercises which you can improvise for your own needs.

Training for strength and stamina should be attempted only after two to four weeks of limbering-up workouts?when you are sure you are loose enough. This takes patience. Naturally enough, fitness beginners want to see immediate results. But Rome was not built in a day. Achievable fitness goals, like all other ambitions, should be modest at all times and without time limit. You can set your sights higher and higher?but one step at a time.

Other of your workouts can be modifications of those used by competing athletes. Once you have graduated beyond the limbering-up phase, you are now ready for fun workouts. The ground training is over and you are ready to take off? and solo.

In any fitness program, whether or not competition is an aim, improved proficiency and stamina are inevitable?but unpredictable. Unlike climbing Mount McKinley, where each bit of progress is a measurable distance of steady ascent, fitness is a series of prolonged plateaus, each of which seems never to end but which is a definite step up from the former.

During initial efforts little if any improvement may be noted for weeks. Then, with no extra effort, the next plateau is reached abruptly and continues for more weeks. Later, a higher degree of achievement is suddenly discovered?and with plateau periods of varying lengths, higher and higher peaks are reached. Improvement is stepwise, not steady. Protracted leveling off may be discouraging, but usually precedes another jump in performance. The weatherman and the physician base their forecasts on sound, scientific data. Although the physician fortunately has a higher batting average, both are subjected to the whimsical vagaries of nature. It would be impossible for any physician to predict how long it may take you to reach excellent, steady, superior fitness. If you have followed the rules outlined thus far, a conservative guess would be six months