Monday, July 7, 2014




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"You can't lose weight without exercise. But I've got a philosophy about exercise. I don't think you should punish your legs for something your mouth did. Drag your lips around the block once or twice."

A Planned & Scientific Approach
to Exercise
Part 2

Before we continue on with Part 2 please be informed of the following posts and their dates of posting in this blog.  Each of these previous articles are relevant to Part 1 and 2 of "A Planned & Scientific Approach to Exercise".  When you go to this blog and open it, look on the right side of the page to see Blog Archive.  You can find these articles by their posting date and/or their title:

  1. Training For Beginners.  Posted Nov.18, 2013.
  2. For The Beginner - Part 2  Posted Nov. 25, 2013
  3. Heart Rate Monitors.  Posted Dec. 02, 2013
  4. Strength Training For Seniors.  Posted Mar. 18, 2014
As stated in Part 1 of this "Approach", do the type of exercising that interests you and that you like to do.  Over the years that I've been working out, strength training (AKA resistance training or bodybuilding) and cardio exercises are what I do now.  This is not necessarily what you can or should do as it depends on your physical shape, your health status, and experience in your form of exercising.  I am listing, as an example, what I do on workout days and how I arrange to train the various muscle groups.

Each workout lasts from 30 minutes to an hour. I do not warm up on any cardio machine or do side-straddle hopping.  My warm ups consists of 2 or 3 sets of each exercise using increasing amounts of resistance (weight).  The 3rd set I use enough weight to do 5 to 12 reps but the number is not as important as it is to work until failure.  That means another rep at the same weight is now not possible for you to complete.  I then do another set, called a drop-set and it consists of removing some of the weight, say by 25-50%, and then do as may reps as possible, again to failure.  So here you can see that "warming up" on a treadmill or elliptical trainer is not really specific enough to warm up the muscles you are going to train.

The following muscle groups should be exercised once/week and, depending on the numbers of days you can or want to work out, you can use the following lists of muscle groups in your training plan:
  1. Legs (calves, quadriceps, hamstrings).
  2. Back (upper and lower back - from the neck to the lumbar region).
  3. Chest (pecs, over the head extensions on a bench, side raises with dumbbells, chest pressing with both dumbbells and barbells).
  4. Arms and shoulders, upper/lower including biceps, triceps, forearms, dips, curls, with dumbbells and barbells).
  5. Abs and core exercises using benches, stability balls, crunches, etc.
  6. Cardio training on treadmills, elliptical trainers, running, step machines, stationery bikes.
Example of my schedule:  
                 Monday; Legs only
                 Tuesday;  Back and Chest
                 Wednesday; Interval training on a treadmill - no weight training.
                 Thursday;  Arms upper and lower(forearms) and shoulders.
                 Friday;  Abs and core exercises.
                 Saturday; Interval training on a treadmill - no weight training.
                 Sunday; Off!

Note:  The success of any workout routine is based on adequate sleep and good nutrition. Also, as stated previously, training to failure should not be attempted by beginners.  In working out as a new trainee, try to learn the proper form and technique for each exercise you do.  After you feel that you can progress further, they your final set and do your reps until failure.  That means that you cannot do another rep!







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