Exercise 'Must Be Tough to Work'

The flood of contradictory information about your health and exercise can often be confusing and intimidating. One of the purposes of Mercola.com is to offer you many free tools to help you sort through the confusion. But the simple fact is, everyone's body is different.

The best way to sort through the information is to try a variety of different methods, and find out what works best for you by carefully observing the results.

You know your body, its strengths, weaknesses and limitations, better than anybody else. Armed with information and some common sense guidelines, you can optimize your body to the peak of health.

Begin by determining your current level of fitness. Don’t judge yourself by someone else, or by what you were able to do ten years ago. Then tailor your workout to be challenging, but not so difficult that you injure yourself. Use common sense as you slowly increase the challenge of your fitness regime and you might just be surprised at your new level of fitness six months to a year from now!

The Best Type of Exercise if You Want to Burn More Fat

The evidence continues to mount that shorter bursts of activity with rest periods in between is one of the most effective ways to exercise. Just last month I posted another exercise study, which confirmed that high-intensity interval training burns more fat than exercising at a steady pace for one continuous session.

This alternating technique, known as interval training or burst high-intensity interval type training, has been around for decades but is experiencing newfound popularity as its benefits are publicized again.

So, the current recommendations by the American College of Sports Medicine might not be the most effective – at least when it comes to burning off fat. Splitting up a longer exercise session with a rest period may be more beneficial, helping you to better manage and control your weight. Although aerobic cardio exercises will certainly help lower insulin levels, the problem with doing large amounts of cardio is that you will tend to limit the build of important skeletal muscle tissue which is also important for long term health.

During my college years, and about 15 years after that, I used to do interval training, but stopped it and just did endurance training since I haven't regularly competed for 15 years. Now however, as the benefits of interval training keep pouring in, I have been reawakened to the importance of short bursts of activity done at a very high intensity to reach your optimum level of fitness.

Therefore, I now incorporate interval training (sprints) with endurance cardio training (running), pull-ups, dips, and singles tennis (when I can find someone to join me!)

You certainly don't have to run to achieve these benefits, and can receive similar effects using properly supervised weight training.

Although interval training requires intense periods of exercise (more intense than you may have normally done), the session is broken up with periods of rest, so it really goes by much faster yet produces excellent results. This technique should help just about everyone who uses it; just be sure to start out at your own pace, and keep these three variables in mind when designing your routine: When you are doing your aerobic cardio exercises you will want to focus on the following variables:

1.      Length of time
2.      Frequency
3.      Intensity

To make sure the intensity is high enough, exercise to the point that it’s difficult – but not impossible – to talk to someone next to you. This will help you make sure you are running at the ideal pace for your fitness level.