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[E370]Exercise Health And Fitness

by Frank Colarik, Fra

There are a wide variety of exercise plans available. The American Heart Association recommends at least 30 to 60 minutes a day of moderate physical activity for a healthy lifestyle. They also recommend resistance training at least two days per week and flexibility stretching on a daily basis. It is best to check with your doctor to decide on the best routine for you based on your current health, schedule and preferences.

Creating your Initial Exercise Log

Once you have decided upon an exercise routine, it is time to create your initial exercise log and begin tracking your progress. At a minimum, your first exercise log should contain columns for the date, the type of exercises performed and any notes you wish to record about the workout. This "beginner's" log can easily be kept in a notebook or journal. The main purpose of this initial log is to help you plan your workouts and get accustomed to entering data from your workouts into a log book.

Expanding your Exercise Log

After about two or three weeks of actively logging your workouts you can begin expanding your exercise log to include additional information. One addition should be a list of goals. Goals should include the date each goal is entered, the anticipated completion date for each goal and a description of each goal. Setting goals is a great way to motivate yourself and stay committed to your exercise routine for the long term.

In addition to goals, you may wish to start tracking elements unique to the exercises in your workouts. For example, if running is part of your exercise routine, you may want to begin tracking the distance ran, your half mile pace, your one mile pace, etc. With most types of exercises, you should be able to track a variety of items such as repetitions, duration, and pace. This information is valuable not only for tracking your progress, but the information can also assist you in setting obtainable fitness goals.

Advanced Exercise Logs

Over time, you may find that your initial exercise notebook is no longer adequate to keep track of your growing number of workout entries or the expanding number of exercises that make up your exercise routine. One option available for creating a more advanced exercise log is exercise log software. This software varies from small freeware programs with basic features to larger commercial software packages that have built in logging for almost every type of exercise imaginable. As an alternative to specialty software, you can also use a spreadsheet program like Microsoft Excel to create your advanced exercise log. The drawback is that you will have to create the exercise groups, formulas, etc. yourself.

Beyond the Exercise Log

Exercise is only one component of a healthy lifestyle. Diet is another. Similar to an exercise log that records fitness workouts, you can also create a nutrition log to track your food intake. The nutrition log can be used to set dietary goals and instead of tracking items such as exercise repetitions and duration it is used to track items such as food calories and saturated fat.

Used together, the exercise and nutrition log provide you with two excellent tools to assist you in setting and obtaining your overall fitness goals.

Exercise is an essential in life. Most people will certainly nod their heads to this. Exercise is not only perfect for losing weight, it is also good for keeping a reasonable body weight, for giving a boost on the metabolic rate and also for burning those unwanted excess calories. Exercise also revs up the heart and the lungs' machinery making them more efficient in doing their natural functions. Aside from these, exercise also works for strengthening the bones and keeps people looking good and feeling good about themselves. Exercise also gives people the stamina to enable them to keep up with the pace of their lifestyles. Unfortunately, not many people chose to do what is good for them. Most people could not decide exactly what to do when waking up in the morning; whether to exercise or to press the snooze button one more time. The following tips are very helpful in reaching and maintaining the ideal body weight. This is especially great for women since they get through a lot of things going on in their bodies and are more susceptible to osteoporosis. Not to mention that many women are under the pressure of keeping themselves beautiful. It is recommended that one or two of these tips at a time are incorporated to the work out routine.Worry not that the exercise routine is not enough. It is important to keep the commitments one makes. Ideally, it is advised to exercise three to five times a week for 20-60 minutes. However, this is not exactly the case in the real world. One should not frustrate herself by aiming for the ideal when she knows for herself that it is utterly impossible. If she an manage it two times a week for twenty minutes per session, that will do just great.It is best to focus on doing what one knows she can do than to reproach herself for having not done enough. She can start from this point and then progress on afterwards. This should make her feel successful for having kept her commitment to herself.Weight lifting should always come first. Many women always do cardio exercises first before weight lifting. A disadvantage of this is that it is possible to miss a critical component of the routine and spend all of it on cardio training. A women may notice this by not being able to see results even after devoting long hours at the gym. This can be avoided by reversing the order. This will guarantee visible positive outcome. Remember to monitor heart rate. It is recommended to exercise at 75-85% of the maximum heart rate. Many people stick with just pumping up only 50% of their maximum heart rate. To ensure that one is working out at the prescribed target heart rate, she should use a heart rate monitor or any exercise equipment with this feature.Work out for only an hour or less. Doing this will keep one from dreading the gym. Focusing on the exercise and the aim to be accomplished will make each work out session more and more efficient.Have some sort of fitness social support. Being in a fitness community maybe the important element lacking in your training program. A social support can do amazing wonders and therefore should not be underestimated. It would be helpful to work out in a gym once in while if one customarily does her work outs at home. One can also try classes in activities that have always been interesting such as yoga, pilates or sailing perhaps. One can also join clubs such as a walking club or a running club for instance.Pep talk yourself. One should not pressure herself too much; rather, it is best to congratulate one's self and give out words of encouragement in between exercises. One should never forget to say some positive feedback for herself.

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Both Frank Colarik & Nicholas Tan are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.

Frank Colarik has sinced written about articles on various topics from High Cholesterol, Fitness Program. Frank Clark is a staff writer at Proexercise.com,, an online retailer of fitness products including nutritional supplements, vitamins, and herbs. Frank Colarik's top article generates over 14800 views. to your Favourites.

Nicholas Tan has sinced written about articles on various topics from Fitness, Nervous System and elliptical. Submit your articles and get a PR4 backlink to your website! We provide free articles and information. Check us out at. Nicholas Tan's top article generates over 550000 views. to your Favourites.