By Duncan Rinehart, Ph.D.
In this post, you will learn some principles to follow in structuring your workouts toward general fitness goals. Many of these principles apply to all exercise programs. A certified personal trainer can help you structure a workout program to meet your specific needs. As with any exercise program, it is advisable to speak with your healthcare provider before beginning.
General fitness is built through a combination of building the following four areas: heart/lung and circulatory system which is also known as aerobic capacity, strength, flexibility, and balance.
How much exercise: The well-established guidelines are to exercise 150 minutes per week of moderate-intensity exercise or 75 minutes per week of vigorous-intensity and do 2 days per week of strength exercise.
There are many “exercises” and activities that you can do to meet these goals. Here is a website for more information https://www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/basics/adults/index.htm .
How can you know if the intensity is moderate? The easiest way to know is to exercise to where you are breathing a bit harder than normal, but you can still carry on a conversation though talking might be more between breaths. The key here is that you are not exercising so hard that you can’t engage in a conversation.
If you have a heart rate monitor, you can watch your heart rate to be sure that you are in the “moderate” or aerobic zone for your age and gender. The usual formula for determining aerobic zone heart rate is 220 minus your age x 50% and 70%. For a typical 70-year-old: 220 - 70 = 150; 150 x 0.5 = 75; 150 x 0.7 = 105; aerobic zone between 75 and 105 beats per minute.
Consistency is key to achieving your health and fitness goals through an exercise program. Establishing a program that you enjoy and that is well-designed to take you to your goals, and then following that program week after week is how you will get the results you seek. The body does improve but it takes consistent work and adequate recovery over weeks to months to get the improvement. A certified health and wellness coach can help you build this consistency into your lifestyle.
Stress and recovery: in general, fitness is gained by stressing the body - through exercise - and then allowing good recovery for the body to rebuild from the stress. So, both exercise and recovery are equally important in any general fitness plan.
Warm-up: workouts should always include a warm-up session of 10-15 minutes beginning with easy aerobic effort and progressing to moderate aerobic effort to increase blood flow to your muscles and increase heart and respiration rates getting you ready for the increased intensity and/or duration of the workout to come.
Cool-down: workouts should always include a cool-down or warm-down session of easy aerobic effort, of 10-15 minutes at the end to help your body begin the recovery process and return to a more normal level of activity.
Stretching: it is good practice to include 5-10 minutes or more of easy stretching at the end of the warm-down period, focusing on the muscles that were targeted in the workout as well as general flexibility.
Stretch to the point where you begin to feel discomfort – not pain - in the muscles and hold there allowing the tissue to relax and gain more range of motion.
One to two minutes per stretch is usually enough to gradually increase flexibility and prevent injury.
Always do easy stretching without bouncing or straining.
Breathing “into” the stretched muscles also helps them relax.
Structure: workouts are usually structured around “sets” of “reps” or repetitions.
A repetition is one complete movement of an exercise like one arm curl or one leg press from the starting position through the movement back to the start.
A set is usually composed of 8 to 12 (sometimes 15) repetitions.
This principle of sets and reps can be applied to “aerobic” fitness as well like in the following:
swimming - 10 x 100 yards with 30 seconds rest between
running - 5 x 400 meters with 200 meters easy jog between
elliptical - 5 x 2 minutes faster with 2 minutes easy between.
Weights: generally, start with 8 to 10 repetitions of an easy to moderate weight that you can perform all reps - including the last few - with good form. Then as you grow stronger, you can add more reps and over time add more sets and/or gradually add more weight.
Recovery between sets and exercises: recovery intervals between sets and/or between exercises are important and can be varied according to your fitness goals.
If you want to build aerobic fitness and endurance, then you will use shorter recovery intervals such as 30 to 60 seconds.
If you want to build muscle size and/or strength you might use longer recovery intervals between sets using heavier weights or intensities.
Recovery between workouts: recovery intervals are important between workouts as well. Workouts are designed to stress the body so that it can rebuild slightly fitter given good recovery.
In strength training or more focused forms of fitness training, a “hard” training day should be followed by an “easy” training day or a rest day.
Large muscles first: in strength training it is best to exercise the larger muscle groups first such as glutes, quads, and lats then move to the smaller muscle groups such as hip abductors and adductors, biceps, and triceps.
Exercise opposing muscles: in strength training as well as in stretching it is good practice to exercise opposing muscles as well as your targeted muscles. For example, if you are working on getting bigger biceps, be sure to exercise the triceps equally well.
Balance between opposing muscles is important to prevent injury.
Cardio: in building overall fitness, building aerobic capacity through “cardio” is important. Doing longer 15 to 60-minute sessions of walking, running, biking, swimming, rowing, or on an elliptical machine is a common way to build aerobic capacity.
Monitoring your heart rate is useful here. Some cardio machines have heart rate monitors built into the handles/grips and some also have charts that show target heart rate zones for different ages.
For aerobic capacity, exercise at a level that gets your heart rate into the “aerobic” zone for your age and gender and keep your heart rate there for the planned length of time.