Exercise Basics: Does the science back what you do in the gym?
This article is aimed at giving you an update on fundamental principles to exercising. This can help those new to exercising and want to know what to do and where to start. It can also assist if you are a regular gym-goer and want to double-check your program against the research or, if you just don’t know what is the most efficient way to reach your exact goals.
A current model for success and development, Elon Musk, once said, “People work better when they know what the goal is and why”. The why is up to you, however, you must also know your “what” — what is your goal? Is your goal to get leaner (Here is why this is what most people want when they say they want to ‘lose weight’), gain weight, train for (insert craft/hobby), or is it to improve your cardiovascular health?
Of course there is some overlap but, greater success will be given to those with singular focus. You can change this goal over time but for a given training period, you should hone your focus on one goal. Once your goal is chosen, this will dictate how we approach each major exercise parameter.
Type of Exercise
Should you be doing cardiovascular exercise (running, cycling, walking, arm bike, etc), should you be lifting weights, should you do both? Of course both would be ideal; there is nothing ground-breaking there. If you are pressed for time, leave it at both (with more time on resistance training) and move on to the next section. For those that can give their training more of a time commitment and want a more precise answer, read on..
If your goal is to lose weight (get leaner) your time is better spent doing some cardio (15–30% of your session) and mostly resistance training (70–90% of your session). More and more research is supporting resistance-training (or weight-training) as the exercise of choice for weight loss (more on that here.)
If you are trying to improve your cardiovascular health, you guessed it, do more cardio. Don’t abandon the weights totally though — more like 70% cardio and 30% weight training, as a very crude example. For those training for something specific, well then, your training should be specific; this would take greater detail and programming that would be out of the scope of this article.
Exercise Frequency
The goal here is to minimize the amount of time you are inactive. If you sit at a desk every day for hours, try and break that up with light to moderate daily exercise (to start). It can be as simple as going for daily brisk walk. If your job is more active, aim for higher intensity exercises 2–3 times per week. If you catch the trend here, the goal is to push your body beyond a level of what you do on a daily basis.
For weight-training, you want to “stress”/train a muscle group 2 times per week. Everyone splits up what muscles they train a little differently and each method has its own pros and cons. As a rough simplification, try doing legs twice a week and upper body twice a week. Keep it simple: for legs you can stick to squat and deadlift (add core). For upper body, bench press, rows, pull-ups (add core). Yes, I snuck in the core. Planks, reverse curls, and/or Russian-twists will do.
Core can be trained each time at high reps (it is not vital to put on resistance/weight with core work, generally). Think 3 sets of 15–30 reps.
One note would be to try and vary the exercise for each muscle group to prevent overuse injuries. If you are just beginning to exercise, start with the aforementioned exercises. Do not worry too much about varying the exercises. More importantly would be to watch your form — less weight and perfect form will always be better than more weight and not-so-great form. We “know” this, but do we do it? I, myself, am not exactly undefeated in that battle of the body verses pride.
Exercise Intensity
We touched upon this a little already — exercises should be more challenging than what you do on a regular-basis. If you sit at a desk or are mostly sedentary, start light-to-moderate intensity. If your day-to-day is active you may need to exercise at moderate to rigorous intensity to cause enough of a stimulus to the body to provoke a response (aka improved fitness).
There is an intensity “sweet-spot” where you are challenged just enough. Above is a scale that helps us grade exertion levels. For those individuals that are more sedentary aim for levels 2–5. For those that are more active day-to-day, try to exercise at levels 5–8.
Advance this intensity gradually to prevent injury. Each person is different in regards to starting point/tolerance. Part of the journey is becoming more in-tune with what your body can and can’t handle (more on that later) and then tinkering with that. The fun is in watching those limits stretch as you progress!
Logistics
Aim to do some warm-up such as 5–10 min on a bike, jog on the treadmill, or light aerobic work on the elliptical. It can be anything really, but, the goal is to find a minimally-strenuous (1–3 range on scale above) exercise that will transition you from your normal day-to-day to the challenge of exercise/training.
After the warm-up, perform your planned exercise; Follow that with a cool-down. A cool-down can be using lighter weights, return back to whatever your did for your warm-up, or anything that is less strenuous than your work-out to slowly bring down your heart rate. At this point you can try to stretch, if needed.
Stretching
Keep this simple. Stretching should be done 2–4 times per week, if needed. Your stretches should be held for 10–30 seconds, or 30–60 seconds for older individuals. Ultimately you want a 1 minute hold time for each muscle. Whether you hold the stretch for 10 seconds, 6 times or 60 seconds, 1 time — and anything in between — the goal is to get a 1 minute total hold time.
Rest and Recovery
I had said earlier, it is important to get more in-tune with your body and having an awareness of what it can and can’t do. This is as important for training as it is for rest and recovery.
If you are having a stressful week at work and already feel achy, picking up the weights for a rigorous plan is likely not a good idea. That will be too much stress on the body. Especially for those wanting to get leaner; over-stressing the body can lead to overeating.
Instead, when stressed, try focusing more on interval training on a bicycle, swim, or something a little less intense. This way you are still training (causing the body to adapt and improve) but managing the stress on the body.
Sleep is also vital to the equation. The effects of sleep can be a whole other topic and article. For brevity and simplicity, let’s leave it at sleep allows you to recover from stressful events — exercise as well as mental stressors — and it also is a key time your body rebuilds and develops. For example, it is during sleep that our body sees an increase in growth hormone (stimulates growth of most tissue in the body) and an inhibition of cortisol (the “stress” hormone).
Another aspect of rest and recovery — rest between sets. Ideal time between sets is 2–3 minutes, according to the American College of Sports Medicine.
Be mindful of what muscle a certain exercise targets and don’t overload a particular muscle/muscle group. For example, benching and doing dips BOTH work your pectoral (chest) muscles and should be considered as such. 3 sets of bench press and 3 sets of dips should be viewed as doing 6 sets of pectoral exercise. This is neither good or bad (depends on your goals and conditioning) however, it should be noted and accounted for in the program. If you are sore in your chest for 5 days after a workout containing both, try to do only one or cut the number of reps of both. It is normal for expert, high-level power lifters to be sore for days and even weeks, however, this is not the majority of people and is otherwise not advised.
Repetitions
Amount of repetitions again also depends on your goal and can vary significantly from program to program. A couple things to note is to not train to “failure” if you are new to exercising. This can lead to injury if not handled correctly and monitored for form. The better approach would be to train to “fatigue”. This means, do not train till you physically can’t do any more reps, rather, train until you feel a significant drop in muscle performance (can’t do as many reps or can’t lift as much weight).
To significantly simplify the equation, do high weight and low reps to improve pure strength. Perform high reps with low weight to improve endurance. A theoretical example plan for improving strength would look like 4–5 sets of 3–6 repetitions. An possible example of endurance work would look like 3–4 sets of 12–20 repetitions.
Safety!
Less is always better. You can always do more weight or repetitions next set or session but you can never go back and do less. It is recommended that you check in with a healthcare professional such as your physician or physical therapist before exercising. For those just starting to exercise again, look through and complete a PAR-Q.
Thank you for taking the time to read my post. Please like and share if you enjoyed. Feel free to reach me with any questions, other article ideas, or comments at RiseRehabFit(at)gmail.com and @DrGayedDPT.
