Excercise Program – A best way to improve metabolism and energy level

Obesity ranks as one of the leading health problems in Europe, the United States, and Canada. The rates of adult and juvenile diabetes have gone up along with the size of the waistline. Anyone who has been to a doctor’s clinic and stepped on the scale recently has been told to watch his weight and get more exercise. Starting an exercise program is a good idea regardless of a person’s age. Not only will starting an exercise program help an individual lose weight, it also improves muscle tone, metabolism, and boosts a person’s energy level.

Beginning an Exercise Program

While exercise programs can involve specific routines and complex equipment, they are not necessary. Riding a bicycle or taking a brisk walk is a good way to burn calories that do not require the purchase of expensive equipment. Before any person starts an exercise program, he should consult a medical professional to find out if he is healthy enough for physical activity according to familydoctor.org

The form the chosen exercise takes does not matter. Far more important for a person developing an exercise routine for reasons of weight loss are developing a routine is making sure the activity is fun so he will do it regularly. Gyms are great places for a person to work out, but a variety of local sporting clubs and organizations exist can help a person play a sport that they enjoy. Football, soccer, basketball, tennis, ice hockey, all sports have clubs that cater to youth and adults alike.

Picking a sport or activity a person likes to do help him stick with his chosen exercise program. In addition to the health benefits of regular exercise, joining a sports organization such as a local softball league or signing up at a tennis club has the added benefit of developing social contacts with new team mates.

The Benefits of Exercise

The Health Department of the University of Michigan lists the main benefits of exercise as improved mental and physical health. Aerobic exercise improves the performance of the body’s cardiovascular system. People who perform aerobics on a regular basis have lower resting heart rates, lower cholesterol and blood pressure numbers, and a heart that pumps body through their body more efficiently. All exercises improve muscle tone, flexibility and over all energy level. Exercise also reduces pain and stiffness in joints and lessens the impact of aging.

The benefits listed above are all to a person’s physical health. Regular exercise improves a person’s mental health as well by reducing his levels of stress and anxiety. Chronic depression sufferers can alleviate depression symptoms even further by combining regular work outs with a combination of therapy and medication.

How to Stick to an Exercise Program

One of the most difficult parts of starting an exercise program is sticking to the program after the first couple of days. Most people start out with a daily routine, but then start to skip workouts and eventually taper off into their former pattern of inactivity. Like a smoker who goes through the cycle of quitting and lighting up again, many people who start work out routines quit shortly afterward. The smoker will not gain the health benefits if he does not manage to kick his habit, and neither will a person who does not continue to exercise. Support groups exist to help smokers to kick their cigarette habit, and a person starting to work out can adopt a similar strategy to continue with the program by involving a partner.

Two methods of sticking to a regular routine, picking an activity a person enjoys and making it fun have already been discussed. The two tips may seem redundant at first glance, but even the most fun activity becomes boring through repetition, so the third tip for sticking with an exercise program is to vary the routine.

Parts of an Effective Workout

An effective workout is made up of four parts: the warm-up, the actual activity itself, the cool-down, and stretching. The warm-up period gives the muscles and the body a chance to get ready for the task ahead. The warm-up period should take the form of doing the exercises at a reduced rate to ready the body for the more strenuous exercises. The second part of an effective workout is the chosen exercise itself. If walking was chosen by an individual and his partner, it would now be time to pick up the pace. The cool-down is the reverse of the warm-up. Its purpose is to signal to the body that the workout will soon be ending. No good work out should end with at the cool down period, but instead should end with a series of stretching exercises. Stretching helps prevent muscle soreness, and helps the body relax. Ideally, only the muscle groups used during the workout should be stretched.

Rather than starting with thirty minutes every day, it is best to start with a small amount of time and gradually work up to the full amount of time the workouts take. Starting with a time of ten minutes on the first day will help prevent muscle soreness that comes about from overdoing things. Should a person experience pain during a workout, he should stop exercising and start again the next day.

What is the Best Exercise?

A variety of opinions exist on what constitutes the best exercise, but experts believe that the best exercise for any given person is the one that the person will do. No matter how many calories a given activity burns or how many muscle groups an activity targets, no exercise benefits the person who does not do it.

Once a person picks a work out program that suits his needs, he should make a doctor’s appointment and discuss the plan with him to make sure that he suffers from no health conditions which will prevent him from a continued exercise program.

Reference:

http://familydoctor.org/online/famdocen/home/healthy/physical/basics/059.html

http://www.med.umich.edu/1libr/aha/umfit03.htm

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