Virgil

Shalot inspired me to tell you my exercise work out routine. First there are a couple of principles I believe in for complete fitness. One is the 3-2-1 principle. Every workout should include cardio, strength, and abdominal exercises, and they should be structured to a ratio of 3 for cardio, 2 for strength, and 1 for abs. So for a one hour routine you can figure 30 minutes of cardio, 20 minutes of strength, and 10 minutes of abs. Another principle is exercising all three levels in a workout: lower, mid, and upper body sections. Another principle is sustaining one’s heart rate at above the minimum heart rate for a light intensity and trying to reach at some point the max heart rate. You can calculate max heart rate by subtracting your age from 220; minimum intensity heart rate is that number times 66%. So at my age (46), my max heart rate is 220 minus 46, 174; my min is roughly 117. Please note, that if you haven’t been exercising, do not aim for the max until you have built up to it. You might want to get a doctor’s permission to start exercising. One last principle is variety, both for not getting bored and for stressing different muscles differently.

OK, given those principles my exercise routine breaks down to five parts. From each part I choose one exercise that I rotate from one day to another for variety. By the way I also like wearing a heart rate monitor to assess how I’m doing. The heart rate monitor is a strap that goes across my chest which sends a radio signal to the complimentary watch. Also lots of the new machines at the gym picks up the signal from the strap and displays it.

Part I: A warm up cardio exercise, for 15 minutes. Choose one of the following:
Elliptical ski machine, stepping machine, or rowing machine. I try to get my min heart rate above my to about mid 130’s.

Part II: Leg strength, four sets taking about 10 minutes. Choose one of the following:
Squats, lunges, or any of the various leg exercise machines.

Part III: Upper body strength, four sets taking about 10 minutes. Choose one of the following:
Upper back exercises (either lat pull downs or bent over rows), chest (either bench presses or dumbbell flys) chin/pull ups, shoulders (lots to choose here, several dumbbell exercises or military presses), pushups (as many as I can do in time allowed or until I burn out), bicep exercises (dumbbell curls or with an easy curl bar or at a scott curl bench), or tricep exercises (lat tricep pull downs or tricep curls or various dumbbell exercises or some dip type of exercise).

Part IV: Stressful cardio exercise for 15 minutes. This is exclusively treadmill running where I get my heart rate up to 170ish. Sometimes I’ll do an interval run where I’m alternating fast and slow.

Part V: Abdomen workout, four sets for about 5-10 minutes. There’s a whole slew of ab exercises that I choose from.

I hope I didn’t confuse people with part III. I pick one upper body part and work it for four sets. When it comes to weights I go by the philosophy of lighter and doing more reps (repetitions). You should do enough so that by the third and fourth set you are feeling a good burn in the muscle.

I’ve been doing this for over a year, three times per week. I realized back in 2006 I was getting out of shape and excusing it with age. Then I got a physical and it came back with a fatty liver issue, and at the same time a gym (sort of like a YMCA) opened really close to my house and it was perfect for me to join. In this time I’ve only lost five pounds or so, but I’ve replaced fat with muscle; my waist went down two notches on my belt. I’m not about as fit as I was in my late twenties. If I were to do a fourth day a week I think I could be in as good a shape as when I was 20, but it’s kind of hard to fit another day in. But I’m pretty satisfied.