Heartsavers - Exercise
When starting a program of exercise, the best thing is
to try to build it into your daily life. Start slowly and gradually build up.
Prevention of coronary heart disease.
How to exercise
At this stage we can design an exercise programme. We already know the conditions it must meet and we know our objectives.
Here are a few methods of exercise that are good for the heart: walking, running, swimming, cycling, rowing, aerobic dance, squash, tennis, football, rugby, anything that you can do for 30 minutes or more.
You must first decide what form of exercise is right for you, remembering at all times that that the first consideration is that it must be an activity you will enjoy doing. Naturally you will also want to choose an exercise that is within you physical capabilities, for example someone of an advanced age would probably not be too happy with football.
There's plenty of different activities to choose from so if your first choice gets boring after a while you can change to another activity.
It's probably a good idea not to incorporate too many different types of exercise into your exercise programme, just stick with one or two.
By far, walking is the form of exercise that people seem most able to easily build into their daily lives without getting bored, and as it provides most of the health benefits for the heart and is well within the physical capabilities of the majority of the population it is probably best to adopt it as your main form of exercise if you have no other preference.
Exercise Programme
As mentioned in previous sections, most of the health benefits are achieved by moving from a sedentary lifestyle to moderate levels of activity. Just 30 minutes per day is sufficient to improve your health.
If you're not used to exercise here's how to get started:
- Week One: Walk 15 minutes twice per day
- Week Two: Walk 20 minutes twice per day
- Week Three: Walk 30 minutes once per day
You may not want to exercise every day so as an alternative do three
sessions per week at 60 minutes per session, it will be just as
beneficial.
To get the health benefits you must aim to keep your pulse rate between 45 - 80% of your maximum heart rate as discussed in the previous section. A good rule of thumb to save you constantly checking your pulse as you walk is the Out Of Breath Rule. As you are walking you should be able to carry on a conversation but feel slightly breathless as you do so.
Useful Hints
Concentrate on building up the duration of your exercise before building up the intensity.
Start your exercise session relatively slowly so your body can get warmed up, this will prevent muscle soreness and injuries.
Avoid exercise when you're ill, it could make your illness worse, just rest until you're feeling better and gradually build up again.
Avoid exercising on a full stomach. After a large meal your body will divert more blood to your digestive system, so your exercise will be less efficient.
The Next Step
The next step is very easy, just keep on doing it.
Bear in mind that the exercises mentioned above are sufficient to improve your health, but are also the minimum you should consider if you are serious about the subject. Of course there is no reason why you should not increase your exercise well beyond the minimum, just build up gradually and you'll soon notice the difference.