Find the Workout that's Perfect for You!

Even IF YOU'VE never actually plunked down your credit card for an exercycle or got up at 6 a.m. to don your lycra shorts and your Nike shoes, you've probably dreamed often enough

about 'starting to exercise'. In your current position as Veteran Couch Spud these dreams have often been fanned by the sleekybodied images that a gleeful media saturates your waking hours

with. Envy jostles with guilt. One of these days you're absolutely going to do it. God knows you have reasons enough —

You're tired of camouflaging your girth with oversized cabanas/ Doctor's orders: your last cholesterol reading did not look so good to him, or to you for that matter/ You can't walk up to your first-storey flat these days without huffing and panting and groaning...

And then, one morning, helped along by some timely nagging from your spouse, you're finally ready to turn resolution into Action. Except that you're brought up short by a very pertinent question. What precise kind of exercise or sporting activity or team game should you take up? At last count there were close to a hundred possibilities if you include the obscure, the exotic and the New Age variants. Will yoga-chisel your middle? Can walking improve your cholesterol profile? Should you join an aerobics class? Take the measure of dumbbells at the neighbourhood gym? Will you look too frumpy in a track suit to venture on the roads? Do you really see yourself exercycling every a.m.? Should you invest in a personal trainer?

As you see, there are far too many questions to be answered before you can confidently decide which exercise will best suit your individual needs, resources, temperament and idiosyncrasies. To sort out the confusion, work your way through the checklist below, beginning with the most important consideration of all:

What do you expect exercise to do for you?

No single exercise can bring in all the physical and mental pay-offs. Different kinds of exercise develop different components of physical fitness. There are three such components:

(i) Heart-lung endurance (or cardiovascular fitness) which is developed through aerobic exercise such as brisk walking, jogging, swimming, bicycling, working out on a rowing machine, aerobic dance. Or if your preference runs to gym machines, choose from the treadmill, the rowing machine, the stair-climber or the exercycle. The aim of such exercise is to increase the amount of oxygen that your body can process in a given time — that is, your body's aerobic capacity.

In any type of aerobic exercise, the main goal is to get your heart rate up to a target level and sustain it at that level for a period of time, thereby exercising the heart muscle. A stronger heart

pumps more blood with less effort. The lungs through repetitive huffing and puffing, also get a workout and, over time, improve their capacity to oxygenate blood. What your target heart rate should be varies with your age and physical condition. However, as a rule of thumb, a maximum

heart rate that you should not exceed no matter how great your determination, is 220 minus your age. Thus, if you're 50 years old you shouldn't exceed 170 beats per minute. Your target heart

rate — i.e. the point at which aerobic benefits begin to accrue—is around 75 per cent of your maximum heart rate. Start out at a somewhat lower rate, say 60 per cent of your target rate, building up to 75 per cent.

To see heart and lung improvement and to burn calories, you'll need to maintain this for 20 to 30 minutes, three or four times a week. How many calories you actually burn will depend not only

on your weight, but also on the intensity with which you exercise (e.g. the speed rate you maintain on a stationary bike) and the duration (how long) you work out.     

At this level, you'll be showing moderate exertion with deep breathing but short of panting or becoming over-heated. After exercise, the speed at which your pulse rate returns to normal is an indicator of your fitness status.

ii) Muscle strength is the second component of fitness and is developed through resistance exercise, also known as weight training or strength training.

This kind of exercise calls for working out against moderate resistance in order to tone and build muscles. The resistance is provided either by free-weights (barbells or dumb-bells), or by weight machines — or even by cans of tomatoes or small bags of sand. Finally, in exercises such as push-ups or pull-ups, you use your own body weight as resistance (This type of resistance training is known as "calisthenics")

If you do many repetitions ("reps"), using light to moderate weights, you won't build muscle to unaesthetic levels — something that most of us, who don't want to look like body-builders, are wary about. But your muscle will increase in size, improve in tone and rev up in metabolic power — that is, you'll burn calories more effectively.

Lifting heavy weights limits the number of reps you can do. To the extent that it builds muscle mass, weight training helps skinnies to put on weight.

If you lift weights or use weight machines for at least 20 minutes without stopping between sets (each set being a series of repetitions), weight training becomes a mildly aerobic activity and

helps to bring in some of the benefits associated with aerobic exercise: fat-burning, improved cholesterol levels. This type of

weight training is known as "circuit training".

Gone is the time when weight-training was limited to bodybuilders or to those who wanted to have show-off muscles. (Remember the skinny seeking revenge on the beach bully in the old Atlas ads?) Today, weight-training is done by women as well as men, the elderly as well as the young. Muscle-building is just one of the possible pay-offs of strength-training, the bulk-up resulting only if you engage in it at high levels of intensity. For those of us who don't particularly want visible muscles, weight-training has many other benefits to offer — from strengthening bones to improving blood levels of cholesterol, from alleviating back pain to enhancing athletic performance.

Studies have found that weight-training keeps your body burning fat long after you've showered, eaten a meal, even gone to sleep. This revved-up fat burning even when you're not exercising can go on for up to 15 hours and can add up to a 115-calorie after-burn.

Having a well-toned body pays off whether it's chasing the tots, doing household chores or having wild sex.

Before starting a strength-training programme, seek expert help to create an individualized version that meets your goals. This is far better than trying to follow a general one-size fits-all programme with goals beyond your reach.

iii) Flexibility is developed through stretching. Yoga, Tai Chi and some forms of ballroom dance are exercises that promote flexibility, co-ordination and balance. You should always warm up before stretching. This increases blood flow to the muscles, tendons and ligaments you're going to stretch, raising their temperature.

And stretching helps maintain flexibility, the capacity to use muscles and joints through their full range of movement. A lack of flexibility can stress your back, hips and neck, resulting in low back pain, neck and shoulder pain and even deformity.

Stretching before and after you exercise helps to prevent injury by preparing your muscles for the activity. Ideally, you should stretch every part of the body: neck, back, legs, hips, arms and shoulders. If you can't find time to stretch them all, concentrate on those body sections that will get strained the most. For instance, before an aerobic workout, stretch areas of the lower-body — lower back, hips and legs. Before weight-training, stretch areas of the upper body — arms, back and shoulders.

It is important to breathe correctly during stretching. Your breathing should be slow and deliberate. Take a deep breath before stretching, then exhale slowly while bending into the stretch. Never hold your breath while stretching.

Apart from incorporating stretching in your exercise routine, it is also a good idea to stretch at different times of the day.

IMPORTANT:

You should consult your physician before beginning a stretching programme. This is especially important if you have joint or muscle problems, if you have been inactive for a long period of time or if you have recently undergone surgery.

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