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Exercise Fundamentals Part 2 – Exercise and Your Goals

In part 1 I discussed the 6 main types of exercise. Here I show you which are the best to do for your goals.

To Feel Good

To feel good you need to focus on being pain free with the ability to easily do the physical tasks required of you in life, e.g. pick the kids up, run for the bus, play football with your friends etc. The best thing for this is a combination of the different techniques. You would not need to go mental with anyone specific type but a mixture of them all would bring about your goals quickly. .

Being “Healthy”

Being healthy and feeling good should be the same thing. You can add in to the healthy bracket to bone density I guess which would need load bearing resistance exercise but that would be part of any programme to feel good!

Weight Loss

Despite popular opinion weight loss form exercise alone just doesn’t happen It has to come in combination with a sound nutrition plan For some people, that is already in place and exercise takes them to the next level when they start a routine. For others though they must change their diet to match their new exercise routine. You cannot out train a bad diet.

That being said, the focus of your exercise should be a routine that includes aerobic training and resistance training. In my experience fat loss is fairly individualistic in regards to the needs of these two modalities Some people do best with long cardio sessions while others do better on just a resistance training plan and no cardio exercise. Some prefer a mixture of the two. Postural issues need to be considered as a poor spinal alignment can undermine hormonal and other organ functions.

Muscle Gain

For muscle gain you have to spend the majority of your time focusing on resistance training. You would need to rotate the different types of resistance training techniques and be aware of postural issues limiting both performance of higher intensity training and undermining the hormonal system if spinal alignment are poor.

Improve Posture

To create an ideal posture most of the focus should be put on massage and muscle activation techniques. This in combination with intelligent resistance and flexibility work will allow you to improve posture and this will positively impact pain and injuries while increase the general efficiency of the body.

I want all these benefits please!

Most people want the full spectrum of above with certain benefits higher priority than the others most people expect them all to come together, e.g. when you imagine yourself at your ideal body fat levels I doubt you picture your knees creaking and your back hurting. The full spectrum of benefits can be achieved but you need to make sure you have the time and intelligent programming to really derive the benefit from these methods.

Sadly most people focus all their time on one area and get despondent by the lack of results in one area and give up. E.g. you do 1 hour long aerobic sessions then get annoyed you haven’t lost weight and give up. But what about the other 5 exercise areas? What about the other 4 benefits?

In part 3 we will look into the common exercises and what benefits they provide.