How To Get Back Into Shape

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Sunday, November 1st, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed

Starting a brand-new series of exercise routines can be ambitious and demands that you take a couple of precautions, particularly if you are not in good shape and haven’t exercised for a while.

Before you begin to get in shape at home, you should get clearance from their physician. This is done primarily for two reasons. One, you don’t want to push yourself beyond what your body can safely do. For example, if you have high blood pressure, strenuous exercise may push your blood pressure into the danger zone where you are at risk for having a heart attack or stroke. So find out what your health issues are before you begin.

The second reason to see a doctor is that you want to have a baseline to compare yourself against in a few months time. After three months of exercising, has your blood pressure decreased? Is your weight down? What about your percentage of body fat, has that decreased? Good results can give you added incentive to keep going with your exercise program. Poor results can let you know that your exercise program is not working and needs to be modified.

When you’ve made the decision to begin exercising again, many people leap into the activity feet first. But to get in shape after a long period of being sedentary and not exercising at all, you should start off at a slow pace. Weekend warriors are famous for getting injured because they think they can do more than their bodies are actually can.

So beginners should pace themselves in the beginning. If an exercise calls for thirty minutes of activity, and you start to get tired after 5 minutes, that’s a clear sign to slow down and alter your routine until you can gradually work yourself up to thirty minutes. The key is to let your body be your guide. If you learn to listen to your body, there’s much less chance of you overexerting yourself.

It doesn’t matter if you exercise only infrequently or if you do it everyday, but it’s essential to do warm up exercises before starting your main exercise program. These exercises help to relax and stretch the muscles and joints. They also slowly speed up the blood circulation in your so that your blood pressure and heart rate don’t have an abrupt build up or spike. Warm ups primarily helps to avoid injuries to your muscles, such as muscle pulls or strains. Warming up does not mean that you will completely do away with the chance of injury. It simply lessens the chance that it will happen.

Many times when a person decides to get in shape, they have in mind one particular body part. For example, they might want to get 6 pack abs, or they want to lose weight in their hip area. But the best exercise plan is one that gives you a full body workout. Ideally you want to work every muscle and joint in your body. And that includes your heart muscle so that your cardiovascular system is improved. And then, once you’ve done this you can concentrate and work on the areas of your body that you are really interested in.

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