Patrick Amon

Fitness Facts for Home Guidance

One thing you should do EVERY SINGLE DAY is STRETCH!  As your muscles grow, they are growing into either long flexible muscles or short tight muscles!  By stretching every single day, you are ensuring that you are growing long flexible muscles!  This is so important because if you have long flexible muscles you reap the benefits listed below!

Flexibility:

Remember that warm muscles are more flexible, so don’t forget to warm-up before stretching.  Warm-ups should be half-speed.

Focus your Fitness activity on the Goal you want to achieve! 

There are some examples listed below in each category.

Muscle Strength – push-ups, curl-ups, Planks. Lunges, Wall-sits, Pushing, Pulling or Lifting weighted objects.

Muscle Endurance – Use the overload principle:  In order to make a muscle stronger, you have to work it harder than it’s used to.  Start with a few repetitions and increase repetitions a little at a time, or complete the activity for a short amount of time and increase the amount of time as you progressively get stronger.

The difference between the two:  Strength is how much and Endurance is how long.

Aerobic Exercise – Movement using extremities that increases your heart rate above 120 beats per minute and keeps it there for 15 minutes or more without stopping.  Strengthens your heart and expands your lungs!

Anaerobic Exercise – Exercise where your heart rate is below 120 beats per minute or above 190 beats per minute. 

The difference between the two:  Aerobic exercise focuses on strengthening your heart and expanding your lungs (endurance) while Anaerobic exercise focuses on increasing muscle strength and agility. 

Taking your heart rate:  Find your pulse with your first two fingers, count the number of beats for 6 seconds and multiply by 10 or simply put a 0 on the end of the number of beats you count.  For example, if you count 12 the number of beats per minute would be 120.