How to find time to exercise & get its benefits ....
Welcome to our health & self help blog.
Focus on Your Health:
In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective.
We do posts on staying healthy; preventing disease; aging more slowly; weight loss; exercise; nutrition; & news in medicine.
Today's post: Thursday, 5-10-2007
How to find time to exercise & get its benefits ....
Some people are lucky enough to find it easy to find time to exercise.
But, most of us have enough to do with our work & other tasks that it can be very challenging to find time to exercise.
It's certainly worth it. :
People who exercise are stronger & move better.
They think better & handle stress better. And, their brains even grow new neurons according to recent research. This helps people who exercise remember better. It even improved the memory of people who had only exercised for a few weeks.
People who exercise are leaner & look better. And they usually have much better sex, particularly as they get older. Studies show this is true of BOTH men & women.
And, the list of obnoxious & life threatening disease exercise tends to prevent is astonishingly long. Some diseases, like type II diabetes, exercise can sometimes help reverse. (Strength training seems to be most effective for helping to improve or reverse type II diabetes.)
Here are some ideas that work if you have had trouble finding time to exercise.:
1. One of the best & most effective ways to find time to exercise is to do it first thing in the morning before the rest of your day starts.
Kenneth Cooper, MD who wrote about aerobic or cardio exercise found that people who did this were twice as likely to keep exercising compared with people who exercised later in the day.
The reason is simple. Stuff happens to people during their day. By exercising in the morning, when stuff does happen to you, you already got your exercise in that day. But if you had a session for later in the day, the events of the day may prevent you from exercising.
This one is a real help for me. I exercise at home every morning before breakfast. I use dumbbells & my bodyweight to exercise my upper body 3 times a week & my legs 3 times a week. And, I use a Nordic Track twice a week.
These sessions take only 10 to 30 minutes each.
Also, I have several sessions of each kind of exercise each week. So, if I do have to leave so early on a day in my week that I cancel exercise that day, I still have all the other sessions that I did do that week.
And, there are a lot of at home exercises that also work. Some people exercise to Tae Bo videos. Some use rebounders. (See www.urbanrbounder.com ) Some people use Bowflex machines. Some use a smaller & less pricey home strength trainer called the Total Gym.
Some people do jump rope.
2. Some people take walks over their lunch hour at work. If all you do is do that 4 days out of most weeks, you’ll get about half of the health benefits of an ideal exercise program.
3. You can do effective strength training in only two days a week. As long as the sessions are at least one day apart, you can do any two days.
And strength training, done well, can produce amazing benefits in a very short time. Studies show that even one set of each exercise will work if you gradually increase the weight you use as you get stronger until you work out vigorously on each set.
I skip the couch & TV on Monday & Weds evenings. And, I go to a local gym for just half an hour to use their heavier weights & machines.
But it can be any two days. And, one can be a week-end day if that helps you fit it into your work week. Tuesday night or lunchtime plus Saturday morning works fine, for example.
4. By the way, trading TV watching time for exercise time or exercising while you watch TV, can be an excellent way to find the time to exercise.
5. For some people, going to a regular class works. You get an expert instructor & a group of other students to socialize with & get to know & who will miss you if you don’t show.
Martial art training is ideal for this. And, once you have some knowledge, you can even work out at home.
6. If you have money, you can even do as Michael Masterson does.
(He founded the information company at www.earlytorise.com & other businesses.)
He pays a personal trainer to come to him at his office several times a week.
According to his Early to Rise email today, he pays his trainer for an hour & then exercises for about 30 to 40 minutes. That’s because his trainer may have to wait 5 to 20 minutes for Michael to finish his last work task.
So, Michael makes this OK by paying for 60 minutes each time for the 35 to 60 minutes the trainer is actually there.
And, many personal trainers will come to your home. Some even have vans equipped with strength training equipment they can bring to your home.
So, as you can see, there are all kinds of ways people have found that work. And, there are all kinds of levels of dollar cost.
Simply try a few that might work for you. Then keep trying them until you hit on a version that DOES work for you.
Focus on Your Health:
In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective.
We do posts on staying healthy; preventing disease; aging more slowly; weight loss; exercise; nutrition; & news in medicine.
Today's post: Thursday, 5-10-2007
How to find time to exercise & get its benefits ....
Some people are lucky enough to find it easy to find time to exercise.
But, most of us have enough to do with our work & other tasks that it can be very challenging to find time to exercise.
It's certainly worth it. :
People who exercise are stronger & move better.
They think better & handle stress better. And, their brains even grow new neurons according to recent research. This helps people who exercise remember better. It even improved the memory of people who had only exercised for a few weeks.
People who exercise are leaner & look better. And they usually have much better sex, particularly as they get older. Studies show this is true of BOTH men & women.
And, the list of obnoxious & life threatening disease exercise tends to prevent is astonishingly long. Some diseases, like type II diabetes, exercise can sometimes help reverse. (Strength training seems to be most effective for helping to improve or reverse type II diabetes.)
Here are some ideas that work if you have had trouble finding time to exercise.:
1. One of the best & most effective ways to find time to exercise is to do it first thing in the morning before the rest of your day starts.
Kenneth Cooper, MD who wrote about aerobic or cardio exercise found that people who did this were twice as likely to keep exercising compared with people who exercised later in the day.
The reason is simple. Stuff happens to people during their day. By exercising in the morning, when stuff does happen to you, you already got your exercise in that day. But if you had a session for later in the day, the events of the day may prevent you from exercising.
This one is a real help for me. I exercise at home every morning before breakfast. I use dumbbells & my bodyweight to exercise my upper body 3 times a week & my legs 3 times a week. And, I use a Nordic Track twice a week.
These sessions take only 10 to 30 minutes each.
Also, I have several sessions of each kind of exercise each week. So, if I do have to leave so early on a day in my week that I cancel exercise that day, I still have all the other sessions that I did do that week.
And, there are a lot of at home exercises that also work. Some people exercise to Tae Bo videos. Some use rebounders. (See www.urbanrbounder.com ) Some people use Bowflex machines. Some use a smaller & less pricey home strength trainer called the Total Gym.
Some people do jump rope.
2. Some people take walks over their lunch hour at work. If all you do is do that 4 days out of most weeks, you’ll get about half of the health benefits of an ideal exercise program.
3. You can do effective strength training in only two days a week. As long as the sessions are at least one day apart, you can do any two days.
And strength training, done well, can produce amazing benefits in a very short time. Studies show that even one set of each exercise will work if you gradually increase the weight you use as you get stronger until you work out vigorously on each set.
I skip the couch & TV on Monday & Weds evenings. And, I go to a local gym for just half an hour to use their heavier weights & machines.
But it can be any two days. And, one can be a week-end day if that helps you fit it into your work week. Tuesday night or lunchtime plus Saturday morning works fine, for example.
4. By the way, trading TV watching time for exercise time or exercising while you watch TV, can be an excellent way to find the time to exercise.
5. For some people, going to a regular class works. You get an expert instructor & a group of other students to socialize with & get to know & who will miss you if you don’t show.
Martial art training is ideal for this. And, once you have some knowledge, you can even work out at home.
6. If you have money, you can even do as Michael Masterson does.
(He founded the information company at www.earlytorise.com & other businesses.)
He pays a personal trainer to come to him at his office several times a week.
According to his Early to Rise email today, he pays his trainer for an hour & then exercises for about 30 to 40 minutes. That’s because his trainer may have to wait 5 to 20 minutes for Michael to finish his last work task.
So, Michael makes this OK by paying for 60 minutes each time for the 35 to 60 minutes the trainer is actually there.
And, many personal trainers will come to your home. Some even have vans equipped with strength training equipment they can bring to your home.
So, as you can see, there are all kinds of ways people have found that work. And, there are all kinds of levels of dollar cost.
Simply try a few that might work for you. Then keep trying them until you hit on a version that DOES work for you.
Labels: at home exercise, exercise, exercise benefits, fitness
posted by David at 1:30 PM
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