What’s the Best Exercise for Me to……?

Exercise choices are akin to numerous things in our day-to-day lives: something preferred by one character does not work for someone else. Furthermore fitness is an aspect of life too prone to trends. This week, Yoga seems to be receiving a great deal of positive press. Many moons ago it was spinning. Tomorrow… throw a dice? As a result, flanked by the press interest on one model of keeping fit now and a new one in a month’s time, backed up by your peers all telling you conflicting advice on what type of work-out is the most successful, how can you manage to choose which to go for when you’re just starting an exercise program? More importantly, how can you appreciate which variety of training is better for what you want to achieve? Here are some pointers to help you choose.

First, know why you’re starting to exercise. Probably you are starting – or are considering starting – an exercise program for a specific purpose. Possibly it’s to drop a little bit of unwanted weight. Possibly you want to to increase your muscle. Possibly you plan to merely firm up a body that is beginning to show off its maturity. Possibly it’s after a health scare.

Whatever your objective, keep your goal in your head when you think about the innumerable fitness programs open to you. Moreover, ensure that you are as specific as possible – are you aiming to shake off a bit of middle-age spread, or 25 kg of unwanted weight? Are you hoping to fit into one pant-size smaller, or contest with catwalk models? Is it your upper body that you want to work out, or your thighs, or your entire body? Do you have some muscle from years ago that you’re planning to simply have more defined, or do you in reality need to create some initial muscle first.?

By being precise, you’re increasingly likely to learn about a fitness routine that meets your goals. After that simply test a variety of work-outs which claim to help you meet your objectives: if you intend to increase your muscle, then there is no benefit doing long-distance running. After all, you don’t set eyes on many long-distance athletes looking like Will Smith in his film Ali, right?

Second, identify what you get pleasure from. Okay, so if you have not genuinely exercised in the past it could be difficult to already know exercises that you enjoy. Nevertheless, you will already be able to say whether you enjoy team-based tasks (and therefore a team-based sport might be best) or solitary ones (which negates soccer training, for example). Perhaps you would prefer to exercise outside (so cycling might be an opportunity) or avoid moving beyond the air conditioning (so a leisure center restricts your selection of routines).

If you are debating training outdoors, remember to pay attention to the seasons. Lots of people set off running at some point in the summer, while the weather is warm, cheerful and with long daylight hours. But then winter comes and the weather changes, and it’s night earlier than you even get back home from the office, do you think you’ll be as keen to nip out for a run? In addition, remember that this might change – if you started running just before winter hits, you will probably have more likelihood of quitting as soon as you’re evading the local children and filthy weather. But if you are starting during spring, then when winter arrives, you might be fully into the routine and will not want to waste your hard-earned gains made all through the summer.

The third important thing is to be aware of what agrees with your body shape and age. If you are close to pensionable age, you might consider different types of work-out than your granddaughter. If you are obese (clinically obese, I mean), you should avoid any form of work-out that might additionally stress your already burdened knees, at least pending the point when you have successfully lost some weight to begin with. If, as most people, you have been living a totally inactive life, you really ought to steer clear of exceptionally arduous exercises and start with something easier, maybe switching as soon as you are adjusted to recurring work-outs.

Item number four is to keep in mind the price. Gym membership is for many people a fairly high regular fee. But hill walking can be done for the outlay of a decent pair of walking boots and a waterproof coat. Training with a football squad comes at a much higher cost. It’s advisable to begin with something that is not expensive – there is no benefit to paying three months’ salary for a home exercise machine, if you quit after 4 weeks because you discover you can’t stand training in your own home. If you later realise you would prefer to continue training at home, then you could find out if you can purchase a low-cost set of weights from eBay. Then, if you’re still using those 3 months later, you might purchase a more impressive machine as it much more likely to prove to be a good investment at this juncture.

These points should sway what you decide to do as your new exercise program, but always keep in mind this fifth concluding thing: if you are only just beginning, you genuinely will not appreciate what it means to actually do many of these programs. So give yourself a break by granting yourself room to try new things. Definitely don’t issue any grand proclamations about “I’ll be running a marathon in a year’s time”, since the announcement will be remembered, and the mockery of your colleagues is not what you need as you are beginning. And feel free to experiment with several programs without feeling that you’ve failed. If you are training systematically but changing the type of exercise every few months, that’s obviously better than trying one thing and then quitting altogether just because you didn’t love it.