time to shapeup

Christmas time is here! As you make your new year's resolution, do take time to reflect upon life, besides thinking about how to lose weight, get fit, etc. Here are a few tips about exercising and staying fit.

Key points

*Never stand still as you’re trying to catch your breath or end your last repetition. Always end by walking or marching around so that your blood circulation can be normalized rather than being drawn to the legs during a leg exercise (or arms when exercising the arms). 

*Have realistic and achievable goals. For example, if you have not been exercising for a long time don’t aim for a 45 minute workout. Instead, opt for say five repetitions of two or three exercises.

*Do not lock (fully straighten) or fully bend the joints, especially elbow and knee.

*Do not hold your breath. Generally, breathe out as your lifting the weight or exerting. For example, during a squat - breathe in when you lower yourself to the ground, then when you come up breathe out.

*To save time and burn more energy, try performing exercises consecutively with no (or minimal) rest in between.

Here's a quick workout. Perform all exercises without stopping.

It is deliberately done using one dumbell as this forces you to counter-balance the weight so that there is no leaning or rotating to any side... think of horizontal and vertical lines like a cross.

1) Squat with dumbell at shoulder level

This works shoulders, arms and legs

Keep dumbell at shoulder level and perform a squat. After doing a few repetitions with the dumbell on your left shoulder, do a few with the dumbell on your right shoulder.

For an easier version, sit on a bench and get up, then sit down again. If you do it properly, you should feel the thigh and buttock muscles working.

To make it more difficult, you can squat more (but knees should not go beyond your toes).

2) Squat with vertical dumbell

Class dumbell vertically between your fingers (or palms) and perform a squat. Note: In the picture my fingers were not fully clasping the dumbell

3) Kneeling dumbell row

This works the upper back muscles. Lower the dumbell without twisting any part of your body, then bring the dumbell up to around the level shown in the picture. Breathe in as you lower the dumbell and breathe out as you lift it up.

Use proper technique. If it's your first time exercising after a long break, aim for something realistic like 4 repetitions (instead of 10 repetitions) of each exercise... or just choose one exercise. By now your thighs will probably be sore and your heart is beating fast!

Walk around or march in place (small steps) until your breathing is back to normal.

That's it a quick workout that takes less than 2 minutes (excluding warmup and stretching which is not shown).

On a different day, you can do something different such as pushups and lunges.

If you have questions, please email tofulah@gmail.com