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140. Remember to keep it slow. Perform
all exercises slowly. Spend two to five seconds in the lifting phase of an exercise and four to six seconds in the lowering part. If you move too quickly, you won’t get the muscle strengthening benefit of the exercise and you could hurt yourself.
141. Work up to the point where you can do three sets of each exercise, with five to 15 repetitions of the exercise in each set. Don’t rest within the sets, you can rest briefly between each set. As the work becomes easier ad weights or increase the number of repetitions you do.
142. Bicycling gives a great whole body exercise. Begin with short jaunts around your neighborhood. Each day widen your travels until you are able to bicycle for at least a mile.
143. Exercise should give you additional energy. If you are excessively exhausted after exercising you have overdone it.
144. Again, listen to your body. If you experience a feeling of nausea or faintness, your efforts may be too intense for your body or you aren’t spending enough time on your cool down process.
145. Your rate of breathing will increase while exercising but you should still be able to carry on a conversation. If you can’t talk and walk or talk and lift at the same time, your pace is probably too intense. Cut back and lighten your weight load.
146. While you may experience some next day soreness when you begin, exercise isn’t supposed to hurt or leave you feeling stiff. Devote more time to warm up and cool down exercises as your body adjusts
147. Being overweight, your knees may not be strong enough to support you. If you experience pain, then shorten (or eliminate) your walks, jogs or bicycling and concentrate on strength building sessions to build up your muscles and tendons.
148. If you have been sedentary, you may experience lower back pain when you first begin to exercise. This is because your hamstring muscles have shortened. When you walk or exercise the shortened hamstrings pull on the buttock muscles which in turn will grab your lower back muscles. If your abdominal muscles are not strong enough to assist in supporting your lower back, you will definitely feel it. To get rid of the pain, include abdominal strengthening exercises with your warm up and cool down.
149. If you get a headache, cramps or heart palpitations, or feel dizzy, faint or cool while exercising, consult your physician.
150. If you have an infection such as bronchitis, put off exercise until all is normal again.
151. If you just have a cold or the flue, wait until all symptoms such as fever, have been gone for two days before you exercise again.
152. Walking is the aerobic exercise of preference if you are over 60. This is because when you walk, the pressure on your joints never rises about 1.5 times your body weight. Jogging, dance or step aerobics can put as much as four times your weight or more on your bones. This is wonderful for younger people, but can put too much strain on the more brittle bones of the elderly.
153. Start your walking exercise by timing yourself. You don’t want to become too tried to make it back home. Check your watch when you begin, and walk around one block over and over until you get a little tired. Check your watch to see how long you have walked. That’s the length that your walks should be for the first week or two. Be sure to turn around and head toward home when half the time is up. If you get tired on the way home, stop, rest then walk some more.
154. Maintain the same level of exertion for your entire walk. You will be asking your heart to work hard (but not too hard) for your entire session. Your heart gets the biggest benefit from a sustained workout. If you come to a hill, slow your pace to maintain the same level of exertion that you had on flat ground.
155. If the temperature is hot or humid, your workout will seem harder. Adjust the speed and intensity so that you stay at the appropriate exertion level.
156. If the temperature soars over 95°F with 80% humidity, limit outside exercise to no more than 30 to 45 minutes.
157. Establish a rhythm to your exercise routine. Using music can help you to do this. The rhythm helps you perform each repetition within a set with the same gusto! You can also use the tape or cd as a timing reminder if you check the playing time before you start.
158. Be kind to your feet. Exercise in shoes that were designed for the job or you are giving an open invitation to aches, pains and even stress fractures in your feet and legs.
159. Pick the right kind of shoe. Walking or running shoes absorb the shock of your stride. This is thanks to a slightly elevated heel that also helps to prevent injuries to the leg muscles and tendons.
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