The Best Exercise Routine For Busy People

Lets face it. With the busy lifestyle that our society lives, when it comes down to exercising, people want the fastest and most efficient program possible. So this brings about two questions. One, HOW MUCH TIME is required to get actual results from a fitness program? Two, WHAT needs to be done in this time set aside for exercising?

Lets say that we are designing a program for people who are simply looking to lose a little weight in the form of body fat and looking to tone up and increase strength. With these guidelines, we can properly establish a routine that addresses these particular goals. Three hours of exercise per week should be performed to reach these goals.

For cardiovascular training, a program is best modified for the individual by first measuring what the individual can do in terms of intensity and the the heart rate. The second; resistance training is best accomplished by doing primarily compound multi joint movements that work multiple muscle groups in a single exercise.

So how are these 3 hours of exercise split up between these two forms of exercise? In general, an individual with these goals can see incredible goals with three bouts of interval cardiovascular training for only 20min. This leaves three bouts of resistance training for only 40min. When you add it up, it only comes out to three hours of exercise per week and still reaping astonishingly admirable results.

Much of the recent research on cardiovascular training has shown that shorter bouts of intense cardiovascular training can be more beneficial then longer bouts of low intensity exercise. For example an individual can jog 400 meters very slowly and reap very little benefit from this. But if the same individual sprints 400 meters, the benefits of the intensity and the exertion of the muscles involved will create a substantial spike in the metabolism resulting in more fat burn and recovery expenditure from the body.

The 40min of resistance or weight training should be comprised mainly of compound exercises. A compound exercise is a exercise that involves multi jointed movement and also works multiple muscles. The advantage of these exercises is that it works many muscles and thus increases strength and energy expenditure and caloric burn.

For example, when designing a exercise program for a busy professional, it would be a much better use of the individuals time to have them do a bench press movement rather then an isolated triceps movement such as a rope pushdown. The reason for this is because the bench press will work other muscles other then the triceps including the pectoral muscles and the shoulder muscles. The tricep rope pushdown will only isolate the tricep muscle and will produce minimal results.