Before starting any exercise program it is necessary to get an
approval from your doctor.Start easy,don’t take strenuous
weight programs in health clubs,which takes time out of your
working day. It takes too much of your time and becomes a burden.
Exercise should be part of your daily routine to be successful.
It is better to exercise in the morning for twenty minutes than three
hours at a gym on the weekend. Use your own body weight and
gravity,instead of machines, which provide ample resistance.
It’s best to progress gradual, there is no need to work to your limit.
Don’t strain. Your body doesn’t need to be heated in order to
improve. The rhythms of nature are your limits.
Your exercise program has three goals. First and most important:
to maintain and increase your muscle mass.
Secondly: To maintain your cardiovascular system.
Thirdly: To maintain your flexibility.
The average person stiffens as he ages, increasing the risks of
strains and tendon, ligament and skeletal disorders.
When you have your doctor’s approval, you can do a little
aerobics to warm up the system and get your blood pumping.
Twenty minutes at even mild intensity will have cardiovascular
benefits. I recommends aerobics to begin with for everyone,
before you pick up weights.
Then 5-10 minutes stretching after your muscles are warm
is all you need to maintain flexibility lifelong.
Now you are prepared to exercise your muscles. Your program
should include resistance exercise for shoulders, arms, chest,
back, legs and abdominal. If you exercise three days per week,
which is the starting level for consistent benefit, then do:
Day 1 – Shoulders and arms
Day 2 – Chest and back
Day 3 – Legs and abdominal
For 5 days per week, do one body part per day.
1) Never do more per exercise than one warm-up set of 12 – 15
easy repetitions, followed by one medium heavy set of 6 – 10
repetitions to exhaustion.
2) Work a body part only once per week. It takes about 48 hours
for exercised muscles to breakdown worn cells, then 48 – 72 hours
to build new, stronger replacements. The muscle remains at
maximum strength for 5 – 8 days and then slowly declines.
Exercising a muscle every 5 – 8 days is the optimum program
for progress.
3) Don’t train with weights for more than one hour per workout.
Your ability to gain lean mass,is limited by your hormone levels.
After 45 minutes to one hour,hormone levels decline.You can
force yourself to continue,but it doesn’t do your body any good.
4) Use a wide variety of exercises. Restricted resistance exercises,
especially on machines, stress only certain fibers of a muscle
in certain positions. You need to get all the fibers in all positions.
5) In one hour at two sets per exercise you can do 12 exercises
easily. Don’t force yourself to do more. For weight exercises,
see Bill Pearl’s book: The Encyclopedia on Weight Training and
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding.
6) Accentuate the return phase of the repetition, when the muscle
in question is lengthening under load. In a barbell bicep curl for
example, the eccentric contraction occurs when you are lowering
the bar to the start position.
Restrain yourself all the way down, because it is the stress of
lengthening under load that causes most of the strength and
lean mass gains that you are seeking.
7)Take a protein drink daily within one hour after workout.
Research shows that weight training puts subjects into protein
deficit, despite the high protein level of the American diet.
8) Take daily antioxidant supplements. All exercise increases
oxidation in the body.
9) Eat an alkaline diet. All exercise increases body acidity.
See www.nutrobalance2.com/ the alkaline/acid food theory.
10) Sip a cold light carbohydrate drink (7-10%) throughout
workouts. Drinks containing a little glucose, a little zylitol plus
mostly glucose polymers are best. It will trickle carbohydrate
continuously into your blood and spare your muscle glycogen,
thereby maintaining your energy level.
It will also prevent dehydration. Even 3% dehydration can reduce
strength by 10%. And it will help to keep your body temperature
down, at the same time reducing the amount of blood diverted to
the skin for cooling, thus leaving more to supply your muscles
with oxygen and nutrients.
A final note about weight-bearing exercise: without the stimulus
to your body to grow, nutritional supplements can’t work properly.
Important new research published in the New England Journal
of Medicine shows, that multi-vitamin and mineral supplementation
had little effect in improving the health of old people, unless a
resistance exercise was added, the health benefits were astonishing,
ranging from over 100% improvement in strength and muscle size
to big improvements in mobility and recreational activity.
It takes a bit of puff and stick ability to grow a high-performance body.
But once you’ve done it, a little bit of exercise necessary to maintain
it is one of life’s greatest bargains.