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”I am living a healthier lifestyle by exercising several
times per week at home,”
can help you stay on track.
Set goals.
Setting goals can be helpful in keeping
you motivated, but remember to keep them realistic.
Short-term and long-term goals can make this easier.
How many days do you want to exercise this week?
How many workouts would you like to have done in 90
days or a year?
Components of Fitness
Over the past 25 years, many people have focused on
walking, running, cycling, swimming and other types
of aerobic activity as their only means of exercise.
However, we have learned that two other
components of fi tness are just as important. These
other two components are muscle strength and
fl exibility. So in addition to having a strong heart
and lungs, we also need to be able to pick up a full
bag of groceries and tie our shoes without having
to sit down.
When developing your home fi tness program, it
is only appropriate that you develop all three
components in order to achieve balanced overall
fi tness. Let’s take a look at all three components:
Cardiovascular fi tness
is training the heart and lungs
to be stronger and deliver more oxygen throughout
your body with less effort. It can help reduce the risk
of heart disease, and help you manage your weight.
It is the cornerstone of fi tness, and can be achieved
in many ways such as using a Nautilus elliptical,
walking or running on the treadmill or outdoors,
climbing stairs, cycling, using a StairMaster
®
stepper
or swimming in the pool or ocean.
For many years, it was suggested that moderate
level cardiovascular activity (activities that make you
sweat and breathe and a moderate pace) should be
done 3 – 4 days a week for 15 – 45 minutes at a time.
It is now recommended that you attempt to do some
cardiovascular activity EVERY day, if possible.
The good news is that the cardiovascular activity
does not need to be moderately intensive everyday,
nor does it need to be sustained for 15 – 45 minutes
at a time.
So while it is ideal to challenge your heart and lungs
by doing something like a strong power walk every
other day for 15 — 45 minutes, it is more important to
make sure you do at least a little bit of cardiovascular
activity every day, even if you don’t do it for very long
or very intensely.
For example, you might try using a Nautilus
®
elliptical
for a scheduled, moderate level workout for 20 – 30
minutes on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday
(see the intensity monitoring section for further
details on how hard to workout). On the other days,
you might try going for a leisurely stroll 10 minutes in
the morning and in the evening (or whenever you can
fi t it in).
Whatever you do, just make sure you get your body
moving, and your heart and lungs pumping for some
period of time every day.
Muscular Strength
is training your muscles to
remain strong using resistance such as Nautilus
strength machines, dumbbells, elastic tubing or your
body weight. In the past decade, we have learned
that building or maintaining muscular strength is
extremely important for a balanced fi tness program.
And it is especially important as we get older.
We have learned through a variety of studies that
those individuals who just train aerobically (without
strength training) do maintain their cardiovascular
endurance over the years, but they generally lose
lean muscle mass as they get older. However, those
individuals who combine strength training and
cardiovascular training can maintain their lean
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