When assessing your exercise goals you need to take your physical condition, age, goals, and health history into careful consideration. But, as with nutrition, there are general guidelines which are practical and useful for everyone.
Stretching before exercise is an important step which is often overlooked. Before you start your exercise make sure that you warm up with light aerobic activity, including jogging, walking, or a few minutes on a bicycle (stationary or not). After a brief warm up period, your body is ready for stretchin,g and afterwards, exercise. As your body ages these warm up steps are increasingly important as the muscles, tendons, and ligaments of the body see their elasticity reduced which leads to greater chance of injury. Stretching a cold muscle is sure way to strain your muscles and make your exercise routine more difficult and less beneficial! You should be stretching the region of the body that you plan to be exercising for that session.
Once you’ve concluded stretching it’s important that you start slowly and with lighter weights. Just as stretching cold muscles will introduce adverse conditions into your routine, lifting too large a weight will strain and damage your muscles. It’s recommended that you start with a lighter weight at higher repetitions and work your way up to heavier weights as the exercise becomes easier for you. Don’t expect this to happen overnight; often it will take days or even weeks of regular exercise before your body responds with its greater abilities.
A question that many patients ask me is what kind of weights to use, or whether there’s an advantage to Nautilus, Cybex, or Keiser weight systems. Providing a general answer for this question isn’t possible as they’re all suited for different goals and conditions. Cybex and Nautilus utilize cams and pulley systems, whereas Keiser utilizes pneumatics to increase the loads. Free weights are popular for those who are trying to noticeably increase the size of their muscles in addition to their strength. For patients returning to exercise from injuries, systems such as Nautilus are a good starting point. The real benefit of these machines is not in the amount of weight that can be used, but that the machines keep the weights within a strict range of motion. This will reduce the chance of injury and make conditions a little bit easier for the beginner since you won’t have to balance the weights using additional muscles.
If you have difficulty finding a method that works for you, Dr Moseley can suggest exercises or routines with your goals and exercise criteria in mind.