| The answer depends a large amount on whether you’re new to structured exercise, and I’m going to focus on those of you who have not been in a consistent exercise routine for any length of time here.
Those of you who have been in a consistent routine can have another read of my series from a few months ago. This is the one about exercise: How Stuff Changes As We Age I think that being either completely or fairly new to exercise around 40 can actually make it easier to figure out how you are best to exercise. You have no emotional connections to how you used to be able to do something, and so we’re able to simply start where you’re at, monitor the response of your body and adapt things to get you the results you’re looking for without over-doing things. Despite there being a lot more good quality information available these days, when we think about starting a workout plan, we still think exercise means going all-out every time you do it. This is not the case at all, and even more so when we get a little older. You’re not going to be able to go all-out then get up tomorrow morning and function the way you’d like to function. While you might have been able to get away with this in your 20’s, your body needs more time to recover these days. So, how do we build a workout plan when we’re over 40? Start by committing to an achievable amount of workouts across the week. You can do longer or shorter sessions, whatever fits in best, and remember that you’re not making a decision for the rest of your life – you can always change things up in a few weeks. As I’ve already mentioned, recovery takes longer as we get older, and so choosing to exercise five days a week will probably be too much as a starting point – you’ll risk injury, plus you probably won’t end up making yourself feel better! If you’re not driven by time constraints, I’d suggest two or three workouts a week as a good place to begin. Again, you can adjust this as you go as different schedules and frequencies work for different people. As an example, I have one client who is seeing excellent changes with just one workout a week, another who loves doing three workouts a week but does best when these are split into one full body session, one lower body session and one upper body session. I myself do best with four sessions a week, but I struggle to recover from more than two consecutive days! You must allocate a good percentage of your workout time to warming up. A proper warm up which mobilises your joints and gets your body into a state where it is able to do the movements you are asking of it becomes even more important as we get older. Then, choose exercises which are at the right level for you. Neither simple nor complex exercises are better – keeping things too simple for your ability won’t encourage your body to change, just like trying to throw yourself in at the deep end is counter productive and will probably earn you an injury, or see you getting demotivated and quit. The aim is to work consistently on gradually improving your skill; the way you do an exercise is also more important as you age – the chances (and often, costs) of injury are higher! Each week, try to do a small amount more. Then, once you feel like you’ve mastered it, add a little more difficulty. Keep things slow and steady. Consistency is the most important thing by far – try to keep that in mind rather than what you are achieving in each individual workout. I posted something about consistency in the Facebook group last week. You’re welcome to come and join the group if you’d like to read it. |