The best way to improve your heart and lung health is via exercise in combination with healthy eating and keeping your stress levels in check. However, before you start pounding the pavement it is wise to have a baseline measurement of your current fitness levels. This is critical to do before you get started with any exercise program as it achieves two things. Firstly it will also give you a way to measure your improvement as you progress with your program, but more importantly it helps you to understand the different exercise intensities to find what level is best for you. Exercising too intensely too soon can cause more harm than good and having a clear understanding of what intensity is right for you will help to keep your exercise efforts safe, but effective. In this article I show you three different tests I use that vary in difficulty so I can pick the best test for people of different ages and needs.
Why Is The Obesity Crisis Getting Worse For All Age Groups?
There has never been a time in human history where there was more diet books, personal trainers, dieticians, and access to information and resources about how to get in great shape yet the vast majority of the population in the western world is overweight or obese! This trend has been increasing steadily for decades as global obesity rates have almost tripled since 1990, while overweight has increased by almost 50%! When you consider the costs and the links to chronic disease with being overweight or obese you would think that there would be a stronger focus to address this problem. Unfortunately, there is very little focus given to treating the underlying causes of this problem as the medical world is obsessed with finding cures and magic pills. There are obviously a lot of factors to consider as this is a problem much more prevalent in high income countries and something that has been established in the community lifestyle which is one reason why it is hard to break the cycle. I also believe a serious discussion must be had relating to several interesting questions relating to recording statistics of being overweight such as the use of BMI and lastly the value of being overweight and fit, versus being overweight and unfit. In this article, I will discuss these interesting questions and more in great detail and give you something to ponder about your own health.
Is Interval Training Your Missing Ingredient To Achieving Great Health & Fitness?
Most people believe that the key to losing fat and getting in shape is to spend lots of time doing long slow cardio sessions. If you don’t get a sweat then it is not a good workout! There are several problems with this type of thinking. Firstly if you are just starting out the chance of suffering an injury with this approach is very high for the body is not ready for this type of demand and you also need to be certain you move well enough to handle this type of stress. Plus you are going to need a lot of time to devote to this type of training and most people are time poor already. Secondly, this type of exercise may burn calories at the time but it is not only the calories that is important. This does not mean all cardio exercise is bad for there is a better way and one that does not take that long to do and more importantly provides the body with positive adaptations that are very similar to the effects of strength training. That method is called INTERVAL TRAINING! In this article, I discuss how this works and how you can implement it into your weekly schedule no matter what age or ability you are.