What exercise routine should i follow

Using progressively heavier weights or increasing resistance makes muscles stronger. Aside from toning you, strength training provides the functional strength you need to do everyday activities— lifting groceries, climbing stairs, rising from a chair, rushing for the bus—with ease. The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans recommend strengthening exercises for all major muscle groups legs, hips, back, chest, abdomen, shoulders, and arms two or more times a week, with at least 48 hours between sessions.

One set per session is effective, though two or three sets may be better, according to some research. Repeat each exercise eight to 12 times reps. Your body needs at least 48 hours for recovery and repair between strength training sessions in order to build more muscle and get stronger. Focus on form, not weight. Align your body correctly and move smoothly through each exercise.

Poor form can prompt injuries. Many experts suggest starting with no weight, or very light weight, when learning a strength training routine. Concentrate on slow, smooth lifts and equally controlled descents while isolating a muscle group. You isolate muscles by holding your body in a specific position while consciously contracting and releasing the targeted muscles. Tempo, tempo. Tempo helps you stay in control rather than undercut strength gains through momentum.

For example, count to four while lifting a dumbbell, hold for two, then count to four while lowering it to the starting position. Blood pressure increases during a work- out, but it rises even more if you hold your breath while performing strength exercises.

To avoid steep increases, exhale as you lift, push, or pull; inhale as you release. Keep challenging muscles. The right weight differs depending on the exercise. Choose a weight that tires the targeted muscle or muscles by the last two repetitions reps while still allowing you to maintain good form. When it feels too easy, as if you could continue doing reps, challenge your muscles again by adding weight roughly 1 to 2 pounds for arms, 2 to 5 pounds for legs or using a stronger resistance band.

Alternately, you can add another set of reps to your workout up to three sets , or work out additional days per week. If you add weight, remember that you should be able to do the minimum number of reps with good form, and the targeted muscles should feel tired by the last two reps. Strenuous exercise like strength training causes tiny tears in muscle tissue. These tears are good, not bad: muscles grow stronger as the tears knit up. Always allow at least 48 hours between sessions for muscles to recover.

So, if you do a strenuous full-body strength workout on Monday, wait until at least Wednesday to repeat it. It is fine to do aerobic exercise on the days between your strength training. Our sense of balance typically worsens as we age.

It can be further compromised by medical conditions like neuropathy a complication of diabetes or certain chemotherapy drugs that can cause tingling, pain, and numbness in the feet; side effects from other medications; uncorrected vision problems; or a lack of flexibility. Poor balance often leads to falls, which can cause head injuries and temporarily or permanently disabling injuries to the bones and nervous system. Hip fractures, particularly, can lead to serious health complications and can impair independence.

The point of these days is simple : you want to keep moving, improve your range-of-motion, repair your muscles, and maintain a habit of activity. A long walk burns energy, reduces stress , and gets your muscles and joints warm. It relieves soreness from previous workouts, and if combined with a light stretching, helps maintain your range-of-motion your ability to move fully around any given joint. Your exercise requirement in the Whole Life Challenge is what you say it needs to be. Foam rolling and myofascial release are keystones to recovery , and should sprinkled liberally throughout your program.

Myofascial release will help you avoid injury and maintain athletic ability. While it will get its own day in my sample schedule, note that you should take ten to fifteen minutes before of after every workout to do some myofascial release. Action Step 2 : Take your schedule, and choose one of your rest days and one of your five workout days for active recovery. Ideally, place active recovery days throughout the week, breaking up your more intense training days.

Then, pick a few of the recovery activities that appeal to you, and pencil them in for the selected active recovery days. We want to avoid too many workouts that follow the same pattern. Rep schemes, times, miles, loads, and activities need to be altered regularly.

Doing the same thing every day is an excellent way to induce mental burnout and bodily injury. Therefore, we want to choose several different activities across workout days , choosing those that address our athletic deficiencies while building up our strengths. A classic example of the problem : the unguided, novice distance runner. She starts running with one goal, going further. She does a mile every day for the first week, two miles every day the second week, and so on, repeating for months until joints hurt, range-of-motion is limited, and plantar fasciitis infects every step.

She does the same thing at the same intensities, with predictable results: nagging injury. She would be better off running three days a week, doing intense hill sprints and track work one day and a long, slow five-miler later in the week, and capping it off with a one-mile max effort, each intense running day preceded by an active recovery day or lighter work.

She would build in some full-body strength training on her fourth training day to help make sure her muscles become strong enough to support the natural battering of frequent running. This variety would build her speed via the track day and the one-mile max effort , her endurance via the long distance day , and her strength via the lifting day , while the interspersed recovery days swimming, yoga, and myofascial release would keep her injury-free and able to train consistently.

By contrast, running long and slow every day would build her endurance only while exposing her to injury. Action Step 3 : Put sufficient variety in your workout days.

To make consistent progress, your hard workouts need to get harder over time. You can find tons of great options here at MensFitness. We have upper-body moves that build your core , the 30 best legs exercises of all time , the 30 best shoulders exercises of all time , five exercises to work your abs to exhaustion , and plenty, plenty more.

But to keep benefitting from it, you need to constantly change it. He recommends performing the same routine, but with different equipment; changing your set and rep scheme; or simply changing the exercise variations you use. So instead of performing back squats like before, maybe you opt for front or single-leg squats.

It's no secret that strength training is a critical part of any weekly workout schedule. Sure, dumbbells and barbells may look overwhelming at times, but strength training can help build lean muscle, increase bone strength, and prevent injury. Try this upper-body dumbbell workout or incorporate HIIT into your upper body training with this at-home bodyweight workout.

Check out this four-week weight training. Since the general rule of thumb when it comes to lifting is to allow 48 hours of recovery time between working the same muscle group when you train, you develop microscopic tears in the muscles that produce inflammation, and your body needs this in-between time to repair the tears , focus on lower body strength on "day two" to give your upper body muscles a rest.

Try this lower body fat-burning workout that uses a resistance band and dumbbells as part of your weekly workout plan. When it comes to correctly spacing out your weekly workout plan, "the general rule of thumb is that you don't want to do the same activity on successive days," says Cardone.

Not only do these fast-paced workouts take half the time, but they can also provide the same health benefits as endurance activities, according to one University of Birmingham study.