(First parts can be seen from previous posts)
126. Clean your house (changing bedding is great exercise!).
127. Take a brisk ten minute walk each morning, afternoon and evening.
128. Plant a vegetable garden. You’ll have all that terrific food to eat and exercise in the process!
129. Learn how to snorkel.
130. Learn a new dance.
131. Join a gym.
132. Join a lunch hour aerobic class.
133. When exercising, use a multi-purpose squat to improve strength in the lower body. This will strengthen all of the major muscles of the lower body including hamstrings, quadriceps, calves and gluteals.
134. Use balance training exercises to help in performing daily living and activities. Try a one-legged balance exercise by standing on one leg for 10 to 15 seconds, switching legs and repeating the process for three to five sets.
135. Jump in place with feet together. Alternate between touching the left and right heel in between jumps with both feet.
136. Target the triceps with a bench dip. Seated on a bench, grasp the front edge with your hands shoulder-width apart. With your heels on the floor, extend your legs straight out from your body. Move forward until your hips are off the bench. Lower the hips slowly toward the floor then press up to a full extension of your arm without locking your elbows.
137. Try a bent over row to target the latissimus dorsi, teres major, posterior deltoid, trapezius, rhomboids and biceps. While standing, begin with your feet should width apart. Bend the knee and flex forward at the hips. Tilting the pelvis slightly forward, engage the abdominals and extend the upper spine to add additional support. Hold a weight or bar beneath the shoulders with your hands approximately should width apart. Flex your elbows and lift your hands toward the sides of your body. Pause and slowly lower your hand back to the starting position. Be sure to keep your shoulders stationary.
138. A simple shoulder shrug can help to strengthen your back. Stand erect with dumbbells or other weight in each hand. Lift your shoulders toward your head by elevating your shoulders and slightly retract and roll them back. Pause for a moment then return to the starting position. Make certain that you do not rock or use your legs and keep your knees slightly bent. A variation on this exercise is to do one shoulder at a time.
139. Another exercise to strengthen the back is a scapular retraction. Begin with your feet shoulder width apart and your pelvis tilted and slightly forward. Engage your abdominals so you can maintain neutral spine. Flex forward and hold dumbbells extended down and away from the body. Flex the shoulder blades together, pausing then slowly returning to the start position. Avoid bending your elbows and vary the exercise by using a single arm at a time.
140. Remember to keep it slow. Perform all exercises slowly. Spend two to five seconds in the lifting phase of an exercise and four to six seconds in the lowering part. If you move too quickly, you won’t get the muscle strengthening benefit of the exercise and you could hurt yourself.
141. Work up to the point where you can do three sets of each exercise, with five to 15 repetitions of the exercise in each set. Don’t rest within the sets, you can rest briefly between each set. As the work becomes easier ad weights or increase the number of repetitions you do.
142. Bicycling gives a great whole body exercise. Begin with short jaunts around your neighborhood. Each day widen your travels until you are able to bicycle for at least a mile.
143. Exercise should give you additional energy. If you are excessively exhausted after exercising you have overdone it.
144. Again, listen to your body. If you experience a feeling of nausea or faintness, your efforts may be too intense for your body or you aren’t spending enough time on your cool down process.
145. Your rate of breathing will increase while exercising but you should still be able to carry on a conversation. If you can’t talk and walk or talk and lift at the same time, your pace is probably too intense. Cut back and lighten your weight load.
146. While you may experience some next day soreness when you begin, exercise isn’t supposed to hurt or leave you feeling stiff. Devote more time to warm up and cool down exercises as your body adjusts.
147. Being overweight, your knees may not be strong enough to support you. If you experience pain, then shorten (or eliminate) your walks, jogs or bicycling and concentrate on strength building sessions to build up your muscles and tendons.
148. If you have been sedentary, you may experience lower back pain when you first begin to exercise. This is because your hamstring muscles have shortened. When you walk or exercise the shortened hamstrings pull on the buttock muscles, which in turn will grab your lower back muscles. If your abdominal muscles are not strong enough to assist in supporting your lower back, you will definitely feel it. To get rid of the pain, include abdominal strengthening exercises with your warm up and cool down.
149. If you get a headache, cramps or heart palpitations, or feel dizzy, faint or cool while exercising, consult your physician.
150. If you have an infection such as bronchitis, put off exercise until all is normal again.
(To be continued)
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