How Much Exercise | Healthlad.com

The question “how much exercise?” is easy to answer:

At least 30 minutes day. My advice is 60 minutes per day, every day.

It is better to do a little bit every day than doing 4 hours on the Saturday and nothing during the rest of the week.

We do not always need to exercise at high intensity. We benefit a lot already from frequent moderate intensity exercises like brisk walking.

To stay fit and strong when we get older, we should do intensive exercising at least once a week. Joe Friel, a famous sport coach, explains in his book “Fast After 50” the principle of {{

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It = your muscles. To maintain our muscle volume and strength, we need to use them.

The generally accepted idea that when we are older, we must exercise at a lower intensity, does not seem to be true. Of course, our top speed for running and cycling will decrease, but if we keep on exercising at high intensity, we maintain our muscles better which will keep us much fitter at higher age than others.

But, it is mentally and physically challenging to push ourselves to the limit. It is much more comfortable to go at a slower pace. That is fine too, of course, but being tough for yourself at least once a week, will be more beneficial on the long run.

A drawback of high intensity exercising is the risk of getting injuries. Personally, I have experienced all kind of injuries after doing intensive running. Ham strings, feet, thighs, achilles tendons, calf muscles, knees, ankle bands and glutes have all had small or big problems. Sometimes the pain went away within a few days with a litte bit of rest, but others did not go away for weeks or months and required medical treatment.

Cycling and rowingbiking cause much less injuries from the movement itself. However, here is the danger of accidents. I slipped away on wet and dry roads in the past at low speed and at high speed. I remember hitting a car twice in all the years (about 50 now) that I ride different types of bicycles. Both times I had minor injuries, but I was lucky. Others are not.

Coming back to the question of how much exercising, we can exercise more often than we think: walk or bike instead of taking the car for a short distance, park your car a little bit away from the office and walk the last 15 minutes. Take the stairs instead of the elevator.

For more explanation, see the pages about Mental Health on this site.

To keep yourself going, have fun while doing it. The rewards will be huge: you will be healthier, fitter, slimmer, more positive, more energetic, smarter and more attractive and more successful.

30+ minutes every day does the trick. Search for: Navigation

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