Fall Exercise Tips

Your summer exercise routine, hopefully, has included fun, outdoor activities such as swimming, biking, tennis, golf and other competitive sports. These are all enjoyable ways to burn calories and get a cardio-vascular workout. Making time for play is not a problem during the summer months. Like the song says, these are the "lazy, hazy days of summer." When the weather changes and the hours of daylight decrease, it is not as easy to get out and play. It becomes necessary to plan your workout schedule.

An over-used excuse for not exercising is not having enough time to fit in a workout. I can understand this. I am retired and sometimes I have difficulty finding time to exercise. In a good week, I power walk five days and lift weights three days. Both these exercises become more and more important as we age as they are weight-bearing exercises that help to keep our bones healthy and strong. When I find that I don't have the time I need to get in my regular routine, I multi-task. I have found a way to incorporate muscle toning and abdominal work into my power walk. This is what I do.

While I walk I do sets of abdominal work alternating with sets of arm exercises. I chose the number 30 as my goal but any number will work. First I walk 30 steps and tense my abdominal muscles. Next I relax my abdomen and hold my arms parallel to the ground, rotating my arms, first with my thumbs up and then thumbs down. I do this exercise also for thirty steps. This is a great firming exercise for the flabby, underneath area of the arm. It is reputed to be a favorite exercise of Madonna's; and she has great looking arms. If you feel self-conscious with your arms floating out from your body, you can do this exercise with your arms at your sides, turning your arms back and forth while you walk. You can also add other arm exercises to your routine, especially if you don't feel self-conscious.

Continue your walk, alternating between these two exercises and you have accomplished four goals: a good cardio-vascular workout, abdominal strengthening, arm work and toning the leg muscles. To even better tone the legs, I suggest walking on hills.

During the fall months, we have other outdoor opportunities to burn calories and get a workout, by raking leaves and gardening. According to the Spirita Health website, you can burn up to 250 calories an hour doing gardening and even more raking leaves. Depending on the type of yard work you are doing, you not only get a cardio-vascular workout, you also get weight training. Once again you have multi-tasked and can feel good about getting a workout while checking off jobs on your to-do list.

Finding ways to build exercise into your daily routine will relieve the guilty feeling you get when you don't exercise. Not only that, you will feel better both physically and mentally. There really is no excuse for not making exercise a part of your life all year long.

Reference: http://www.spirita.net/diet/calories-burned-chart.htm