A fitness program includes strengthening your cardiovascular system, burning fat, toning, maintaining or building muscle, and improving your flexibility. Workout routines can involve all three goals or target them separately. To stay fit, add aerobic, resistance and flexibility training to your routine. Consult a physician before starting any exercise program.
Aerobic Exercise
Aerobic exercise burns fat and improves cardiovascular strength. Aerobic exercise is moderate intensity, sustained activity, such as jogging or using an elliptical, as opposed to sprinting or playing tennis. Aerobic workouts can be as simple as performing calisthenics, such as jumping rope, running or skipping in place or jumping jacks, or can involve exercise machines, such as treadmills, stationary bikes or ellipticals.
Aerobic workout programs should begin at a lower, warm-up intensity, progress to a sustained level that requires your heart rate to achieve about 75 to 85 percent of your maximum heart rate and finish with a slower cool-down period. A stretch after your workout will prevent subsequent soreness and stiffness and promote increased flexibility.
Resistance Workout
Resistance exercise attempts to increase muscle size using body weight, free weights or machines. Body-weight exercises use only your body's weight to resist the muscles and include push-ups, chin-ups, pull-ups, squats and lunges. Machines such as the Total Gym and Gazelle rely on your body weight for resistance. Free weights include dumbbells or barbells. Weight machines, such as the Bowflex, use controlled as opposed to free weights.
Resistance workouts should alternate use of muscles or muscle groups. For example, when working on the upper body, one exercise should focus on the arms, the next should use back muscles and the next should use shoulder muscles. This prevents muscle fatigue while doing exercises. Resistance workouts should also focus on different muscle groups on alternating days to allow for repair and growth of muscles. For example, upper-body workouts would be done on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, with lower-body workouts performed on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
Flexibility
Trainers classify stretching as either static or dynamic. Static exercises are the traditional stretch-and-hold stretches, such as toe touches, pulling a knee up to your chest or stretching your arm across your chest. Dynamic exercises are quicker movements that do not extend beyond your comfortable range of motion and include jumping jacks, skipping and arm circles.
Some stretches can be done as both static and dynamic stretches, such as lunges and squats. Alternating muscle groups, such as the upper body and lower body, or arms, legs, then shoulders, allows muscles to recover between exercises.
Perform flexibility exercises after both aerobic and resistance exercises and as their own workout.
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