Starting an exercise program will be more beneficial if you begin with a plan. Coordinating your fitness goals and your personal interests with activities that address both will help you create effective workouts you're more likely to continue. Five basic steps to beginning exercise will help you start a healthful fitness program.
Set Your Goals
Exercising at different intensities provides different results, including different calorie-burning, muscle-building and sports-performance benefits. Determine your priorities for exercise before you start planning specific workouts. You may want to lose weight, improve heart health, build muscle, improve bone density or blood cholesterol, or improve your sports performance. Once you know your goals, you can choose exercises and create workouts that provide the results you want.
Assess Your Fitness
Assess what shape you're in before you commit to joining a fitness-center class or purchasing exercise equipment. Your doctor or a personal trainer can help you determine areas of your fitness that could prevent you from performing certain types of exercises. You might have joint or back problems that prevent you from extended, high-impact exercise. You might not have the cardio stamina or capacity to do sprint training. You might lack the muscle strength for certain machines or body-weight workouts.
Determine Your Interests
Once you have set your goals and know your physical limits, consider the types of exercises and workouts you will enjoy doing on a regular basis. If you are a social person, join a gym or enrolling in fitness classes. If you are a competitive person, try sports as a way to burn calories and build heart health. If you are a solitary person, walk, jog, swim, bike or use an exercise machine.
Calculate Your Target Heart Rate
Determine a safe and effective target heart rate for exercise so you can make sure you don't overdo it or slack off during workouts. Many fitness machines come with heart rate monitors that let you input personal data to find your personal target heart rate range. You can buy a personal heart rate monitor to use for other workouts. If you don't have these options, use an online target heart rate calculator, such as the one at LIVESTRONG.COM.
Create Your Workouts
Using your knowledge of your goals, interests, fitness level and heart rate, create workouts that will help you meet your goals. You can combine more than one type of exercise, depending on your goals. For example, if you want to lose weight while building bone density, choose a low-impact cardio workout and use dumbbells for resistance. If you need a nonimpact workout to improve blood cholesterol, create cardio workouts with cycling, rowing, swimming, a home gym, body-weight exercises or gliding. If you want to burn calories and build muscle, try circuit training.
