What Exercise Should You Be Doing?

As a personal trainer the most common question I am asked is “What exercise can I do to lose belly fat?” Or something very similar to this question, most people want a single exercise they can do to fix everything. Unfortunately, exercise, fitness, health and life don’t work this way. 

That leads me into today’s topic. What exercises should you be doing? If someone asked me this question in the gym I would respond with a question of my own, “What is your goal?” This is where we need to start because someone with a goal of weight loss is going to require different activities than someone who is training for a marathon. 

For the sake of ease I will assume everyone reading this has one of two goals, fat loss or just wanting to be healthy so they can live a good life. These are the most common goals people have and are often intertwined. The most important thing you can do for fat loss is eating proper nutrition. After that I would treat your exercise selection similar to our general health example. So now that we knocked that out of the way let's get back to the exercise. Did I mention there won’t be just one exercise you can do to fix everything? This is going to be a long process so lets break it down. 

First, if you are concerned with being healthy we will have to do both cardio and resistance training in some form. Cardio can come in any form so its best to pick something you are either good at or enjoy. If you have ankle, knee or hip problems, running will not be your go-to. Swimming and biking are better options for those in a situation like that. If neither of those are available you have machines like an elliptical which is good or you can walk/ruck. Rucking is just walking with a weight in a backpack or a weighted vest. You want to do this at least twice a week, start with just 15 minutes and try to work your way up to 60 minutes each session if you can. Two 60 minute sessions per week is a very good amount of cardio training. 

Next is the resistance training or weight training.  You need to be doing at least 2 days of weight training. If you are a beginner, starting with just bodyweight exercise is good but you’ll eventually need to progress. I recommend doing full body workouts both days. This is quick and efficient. It also won't leave you feeling super sore for a week. Here is how to build yourself a full body workout (refer to the picture for more specific examples); choose one squat, one upper body push, one upper body pull, one hip hinge and one core exercise, Do 3 sets of 10 repetitions for each exercise, rest 60 seconds between each set and 2 minutes between each exercise. Try to choose different exercises for each category between the two days. If day one you do squats, do lunges on day two. You can repeat those same exercises for a few months.

Another piece to this puzzle and a big mistake people make is you exercise intensity. I see one of two things typically happen. One is people go as hard as they possibly can right out of the gate. They do a full cardio workout and a full weight training workout in one day, and do that 7 days a week for a few weeks and then they get burned out, obviously. The other thing I see people do is go way to light. They grab 2 lbs weights and just do those for everything for months at a time. If you can only lift 2 lbs, that’s no problem, but you do have to push yourself and try to lift more if you want to continue getting results. So the intensity you should take is to follow the days I laid out. If you are a beginner or haven’t worked out for a while start with two days of cardio and two days of weights. That's also a good bare minimum amount of days for those who are more advanced but get busy. Start with 15 minutes of cardio both days, keep your heart rate in the range from the chart pictured in “Zone 2 Cardio”(you may have to scroll that picture). And choose your 5 exercises for weightlifting, perform 3 sets of 10 on everything. Every workout see if you can increase the amount of weight you're doing. 

There isn't one exercise you can do to change everything but there is one important thing you should do and that's be consistent. There is a ton more that goes into programming but this is a great place to start. If you have injuries or specific issues you’d need to address, your best bet is to hire an expert to help just like you would if you need electrical work done in your house. You can contact me here if you’d like to get in touch regarding training.