Man has an innate need to move in his genetic code. It has accompanied him through all periods of its history. The technological and technical achievements of the modern age reduce this need to a minimum resulting in a whole range of problems.
We will list some of the main ones and explain the impact of physical exercise in the simplest way.

Exercise – a beginner’s guide to the first workouts

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Exercising will help you feel significantly better. You have concluded that it is time to start exercising. Congratulations! You have taken the first step on the path to a new and improved body and mind shape.

Exercise is a magic pill, ”says Michael R. Bracko, Edd, FACSM, president of the American University of Sports Medicine’s User Information Committee.“ Exercise can literally help cure diseases like some forms of heart disease. Exercise helps prevent and create, and it helps recovery from some forms of cancer. Exercise helps people with arthritis and helps prevent or reverse the flow of depression. “

There is no doubt that exercise can help most people lose weight and look taut

But of course, you need to start – and keep going if you want to feel the benefits. This does not necessarily mean strict adherence and long-term exercise in the gym, although it has advantages. The truth is that you can profit through many different types and levels of exercise.

“Any small increase in physical activity will be a great incentive for weight loss and will help you feel better,” says Rita Redberg, M.Sc., president of the Scientific Advisory Board for Choose to Move program of the American Society of Cardiology.

Your exercise options are numerous, including walking, dancing, gardening, cycling – even doing small household chores, Redberg says. She says it’s important to choose the activities we enjoy. This will increase your chances of it becoming a habit for us.

And how much should I exercise?

For heart health, The AHA recommends at least 30 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity, such as walking, on most days of the week.
Still, “if you do less than that, you’ll still feel the benefits,” Redberg says. “If you can’t exercise for 30 minutes, you can’t give up because you definitely benefit from even 5 or 10 minutes of movement.”

Get ready to start…

Ready to get started? Experts for health and fitness helped compile this Beginner Exercise Guide, including definitions of some common exercises, exercise examples, and home exercise equipment recommendations.

The way to measure yyour exercise’s intensity check your heart rate and pulse during physical activity. This should be in the target range during different levels of exercise intensity.

For example, according to the CDC, heart rate should be 50% to 70% of its maximum value for moderate-intensity physical activity.

Prepare The first step is to assess your physical shape.

The first step to any exercise is to assess how fit you are for your chosen physical activity. It would be a good idea to consult a doctor when starting an exercise program. Anyone at high health risk, men ages 45 and older, and women ages 55 and older should have medical tests done, says Cedric Bryant, Ph.D., chief physiologist for the American Exercise Council.

But, regardless of your health condition, you can usually do at least some forms of exercise.

“I can’t imagine any medical problem getting worse with the right kind of exercise,” says Stephanie Siegrist, MD, an orthopedic surgeon at a private practice in Rochester, NY.

Exercise goals

After assessing your ability, you can set your own exercise goals. For example, do you want to prepare for a 5 km run? Do you go to the gym five times a week? Or are you just walking fast in the neighborhood?
“Make sure the goals are clear, realistic, and concise,” says Sal Fichera, an exercise physiologist, and owner of the New York Forza Fitness.
Regardless of your goals and health condition, approach each new exercise with caution.

“Start with low goals and go slow,” Bryant advises. Many beginners make the mistake of moving too aggressively, becoming tired, in pain, or being injured, he says. Some become discouraged because they thought aggressive exercise produces instant results.
“Generally speaking, when people go too aggressively early in the program, they tend not to be in the program for long,” Bryant says. “What you really want to do is develop some new habits that you can stick to for life.

Fitness Definitions

Even people who exercise for a long time may have misconceptions about what some fitness terms mean. Here are some definitions of words and phrases you are likely to come across:

Aerobics / cardiovascular activities

These are exercises that are strenuous enough to speed up your breathing and heart rate temporarily. Running, cycling, walking, swimming, and dancing fall into this category.

Maximum heart rate is based on a person’s age. You can obtain an estimate of the age-related maximum heart rate by subtracting a person’s age from 220.

 

Flexibility training or stretching

This type of training increases the range of motion of the joints. Age and inactivity tend to shorten muscles, tendons, ligaments over time. Contrary to popular belief, however, stretching and warming up are not synonymous. In fact, stretching unheated muscles and joints makes them prone to injury.

Strength, weight, or resistance exercises

This type of exercise is aimed at improving muscle strength and function. Specific exercises are designed to strengthen a particular muscle group. Lifting weights and exercising with stretchy resistors are examples of resistance exercises, as are exercises like push-ups in which you work against your own body weight.

Set

Commonly used in connection with strength exercises, this term refers to repeating the same exercises a certain number of times. For example, a weightlifter can do 10 biceps exercises, rest for a few moments, and then do another “set” of 10 biceps exercises.

Repetition or “tail.”

This refers to the number of times the exercise is performed during the set. For example, the weight lifter mentioned performs 10 repetitions of biceps exercises in each set.

Heating

It is a way of preparing the body for stress exercises. You can warm up the body with light intensity aerobic movements such as slow walking. These movements increase blood flow, which warms the muscles and joints. “Think of it as body lubrication,” Bryant explains. You should do a little light stretching at the end of the warm-up.

Cooling

It is a less strenuous exercise to cool your body after more intense exercise. For example, after walking on a treadmill, you walk at a slower speed for a while your breathing and heart rate slow down. Stretching is often part of the cooling.

Examples of exercises for beginners

It is important to warm up before you start exercising and then stretching. You should leave most stretching after training.

Once we warm up, experts recommend three different types of exercise for overall physical fitness: cardiovascular activity, strength conditioning, and flexibility training. It doesn’t have to be all done at once, but doing everything regularly will result in balanced fitness.

Cardiovascular activities.

Start doing aerobic activities, like walking or running, for 20-30 minutes, four to five times a week, Bryant says. To ensure you are working at an optimal level, try a “speech test”: Make sure you can maintain a basic conversation level without losing too much breath. But if you can easily sing a song, it means you’re not working hard enough.

Power conditioning

Power conditioning

Start by exercising one set of exercises targeted at each major muscle group. Bryant suggests using a weight to comfortably perform the exercises eight to 12 times in a set. When you notice how you can endure more, gradually increase either the weight, the number of repetitions, or the set number. To get more out of strength training, do at least twice a week. Never exercise the same body part for two days in a row.

Flexibility training

The American Exercise Council recommends doing slow, static stretching three to seven days a week. Each stretch should last 10-30 seconds.
To learn how to perform certain exercises, consider taking a personal trainer during one or two sessions or take advantage of the free sessions offered when you join a gym.

Home exercise equipment

Exercise doesn’t have to be in the gym. You can exercise in the comfort of your own home. You can use your own weight resistance in exercises like squats and push-ups. To improve your strength and aerobic capacity, you can also invest money in buying exercise equipment at home.

Several experts gave their opinion on the popular home equipment:

• Ergometer. This best-selling piece of equipment is great for cardiovascular exercise, says Bracko. He recommends starting walking at a low intensity for 30 minutes and apply the speech test. Depending on how you progress, adjust the intensity and/or time accordingly.

• Free weights. Dumbbells make up this category of strength training equipment. Dumbbells are recommended for beginners. Fichera suggests buying an adjustable set of dumbbells to which you can add weight.

• Other strength training equipment. This includes weight training devices (rope boards and pulleys)

• Exercise ball. Although instructions and/or video instructions usually come with this subject, Bracko believes beginners can misuse the ball. “Some people fall or can’t hold the ball in place,” he says. But if you enjoy practicing with a ball, this can be a good exercise.

• Exercise videos and DVDs. Before exercising with video or DVD, Siegrist recommends watching them at least once before exercising to observe the structure and proper training. To further enhance your workout, she suggests exercising in front of a mirror if possible or for someone else to watch you during your workout.

5 exercises for excellent fitness and health

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Muscles about the good physical condition are one of the factors that affect the health image. Experts have long been familiar with the beneficial effects of daily exercise on the human body. Still, they agree that all those who think that exercise has a lot of magic are mistaken. . The rule is straightforward, the more you invest, the more you get. No effect comes by itself.

This does not mean that you have to spend empty hours stretching and stretching weights in fitness centers, but it does mean that you have to exercise properly, smartly, and use the time you have set aside for physical activity in the most efficient way. In this article, we will try to give you a brief overview of the best and most effective ways to exercise easily and daily according to our experts’ recommendations.

Fast walking active muscles

Fast walking
Fast walking

Fast walking is one of the most modern sports activities at the moment. As a form of sports recreation, brisk walking is one of the cardiovascular system exercises that “strengthens the heart,” stimulates circulation, relieves stress, and melts fat deposits. Regardless of age and whether or not we have played sports before, it can enable us to achieve satisfactory physical and mental conditions. Walking fast is an activity you can do anywhere, anytime, and all you need is a comfortable pair of sneakers, and that’s it. This type of recreation has a beneficial effect on the body in several ways.

It strengthens the heart, makes your blood vessels more elastic and resilient, maintains normal blood pressure, and can lower blood cholesterol levels (if performed regularly). It also encourages the work of so-called. “Muscle pumps” stimulates circulation in the legs and thus prevent changes such as varicose veins, ruptured capillaries, swelling of the legs. It also has a preventive effect on osteoporosis development because by increasing the pressure on the bones, the deposition of calcium in them also increases, thus strengthening the bones. It will relax you, relax you, protect you from the destructive effects of everyday stress and make you generally more satisfied.

Of course, this is not about walking when shopping, but about “walking,” walking at a brisk pace and a certain technique, or real training. So, for walking to give results, you have to move fast, as if in a hurry. Start with shorter walks and gradually extend the travel time, according to your abilities. Beginners should initially walk fast for 5 to 10 minutes and gradually extend to a minimum of 30 minutes. It would be best to walk three to four times a week. Fast walking is a great choice for all those who cannot play any other sport due to being overweight and those who do a sedentary job.

Squats

The main advantage of squats is that by doing them, you strengthen and keep tense more muscle groups, primarily the quadriceps, the muscles of the backbox, and the gluteal muscle group. Very often, one of the causes of knee pain can be, especially if it occurs when walking down the stairs, weakness of the quadriceps muscles. So strengthening that muscle can help but also prevent knee pain. Squats are performed correctly as follows (can be without dumbbells):

1. Stand firmly on the ground and receive dumbbells in both hands. The feet are shoulder-width apart, and the knees are slightly bent.
2. inhale, lower yourself into a squat, making sure that your knees do not cross the plane of your toes (imagine that you want to sit on a chair instead of pushing your knees forward), lower yourself until you reach a maximum of 90º in your knees; exhale back to the starting position.
3. Repeat 8-12 times

Step forward

Stepping forward with your legs is like squats, a very effective exercise because it loads all the important muscle groups of the lower half of the body. The step imitates gait in a way, but it is still a bit more intense exercise. They consider it of better quality than squats. In addition to strengthening more muscle groups, the literature states that it can also improve balance. It should be performed as follows:

1. step forward with one foot keeping the spine in a neutral position; stretch your back leg, lift it to your toes, and place a barbell with a weight on your shoulders (weight is an option and is not recommended for beginners).

2. squat down, making sure the direction of movement is down, not forward, bending both legs simultaneously. 3.repeat the exercise 10 times, take a break, and do the second set with the other leg forward

Push ups

If done correctly, push-ups strengthen the chest muscles, shoulder girdle muscles, triceps and can (in the heavier version) strengthen all the torso muscles. They can be done by anyone, regardless of fitness. However, if your main physical activity is to switch from one bed to another, it is recommended to start with the “light” version, i.e., you can start pushing off from an elevated surface, e.g., from the height of the desk, to then move to chair level all the way to floor level.

Here’s how to do the perfect push-ups:

1. position yourself in a push-up position so that your palms are slightly wider than your shoulders and your body is straight; place your toes or knees on the floor; you can modify the push-up by getting down on your knees (lighter shape); keep the gluteal and abdominal muscles tense

2. lower yourself into a push-up so that your elbows are slightly extended and your chest is towards the floor; keep the body straight throughout the exercise

If you are already a professional and push-ups in this way are too easy for you, you can try a heavier version by doing them with one hand raised in the air to the side in the so-called. T position your balance on the remaining 3 extremities.

Abdominals

Classic sit-ups are performed correctly by lying on a mat with your feet, back, and head on the ground resisting only with your toes. You start the exercise by lifting yourself off the ground so that the head moves, then the neck, shoulders, and finally the torso. Be careful not to protrude your chin and neck (cervical spine) in front of the rest of your body, do not hold your breath, keep your hands behind your head so that your elbows are out of sight.

Abdominals are perfect for strengthening the abdominal muscles. Still, if they are not performed correctly, primarily if you bend your back too much, they can lead to the opposite effect, i.e., weakening the abdominal muscles. Some experts recommend doing sit-ups with the legs raised off the ground and flexed at the knee joint, arguing that the stronger and more limited effect of such an exercises exclusively on the abdominal muscles.

You should certainly bear in mind that for straight abdominal muscles, in addition to the abs, proper nutrition should be taken into account, not allowing the accumulation of fat that (especially in men) tends to accumulate in the abdominal area.

Conclusion

Finally, you should emphasize that these five exercises are a perfect way to keep your fitness at a more than satisfactory level with a little will, time and effort if performed 3-4 times a week. However, we emphasize that it is essential to use the correct technique to get the desired effect. Otherwise, there is a possibility that the effect will be absent, but such exercises may do you more harm than good. Therefore, it would be a good idea, especially if you are a beginner, to consult an expert before exercising, who will advise you in the right way.