Getting fit is always the hardest part, but once achieved you can stay fit easily. Having a good diet and plenty of sleep is also necessary to keeping fit and loosing weight. Depending on how fit you are wanting to get and what you are getting fit for, these exercises will help you with whatever your goal is.
LOW INTENSITY WORKOUTS
This could include, walking, running, cycling or rowing. All you need to do is set a rhythm and stay at a steady state that you can hold for 30mins to an hour. if your doing it for the first time then you may go harder than you think at the start and end up dropping the pressure towards the end. This is okay. Once you have finished the activity, look at what the average power output was, weather that be Watts or a split showing how long it takes you to do 500m/1k, and set that as your steady state for the next time you do this exercise.
PYRAMIDS/FARTLEKS
This can help you burn calories fast. A fartlek is where you do a high intensity piece for a short period of time and then go straight into a low intensity piece for a longer period of time e.g. 20 seconds hard 40 seconds soft, and repeat 5-6 times. Fartlek’s can be used on almost anything so they are pretty useful to include in your workout.
A pyramid is basically the same thing to a fartlek, but used for rate. I’d usually do this on a Rowing erg, but it can be done with other activities. What you want to do is set a time for 22mins and go up rate every 2 minutes, and then when you get to halfway, you start to bring the rate back down.
HARD NTENSITY WORKOUTS
Now, instead of going in and out of hard intensity like the fartlek’s, this will be constant. These workouts will vary depending on what machine or activity you will use, but the benefits will stay the same. If your on a bike for example, you could set a distance of 1k and intervals of 2 to 3 mins. this would be repeated 6 to 8 times. You would go all out on the 1k, but settle around 10 seconds in to hold the power. Then rest for 2 to 3 minutes after the 1k. You could also change the distance to time, so the session would become 2 mins on 2 mins off.
Doing this will help you loose calories fast, and will increase your aerobic fitness and ability to sustain high intensity efforts for longer.
WEIGHTS
Depending on what your wanting to do, there are two types of weight programmes.
- Bodyweight
- Heavyweight
Bodyweights is, you guessed it, using your own body as the weight, so this could include squatting, press ups, core exercises, and pull ups. These will help with the natural movements of your body, and help a lot with gaining muscle.
Heavyweights, is using barbells, goblets, plates and bars to do exercises such as, back squats, bench press, cleans and deadlifts. These are all good to do in your workouts as they can help build more muscle and tone you out which can slim you down. These also help with the movements of your muscles and skeleton, and can make your joints a lot stronger just like bodyweight exercises can also do.
These activities listed above all help you to get fit and keep fit. They also help you to loose weight and increase your resistance to fatigue. So if your starting out in fitness and don’t really know what to do, maybe try some of these. If you want to do heavyweights, I’d suggest finding someone who knows the techniques so they can show you what to do.
Bernard.St 