Build your own workout

When it comes to safe and effective exercise, there are some basic tips that apply to everyone no matter how fit or unfit you are. The beauty of exercise is that it is scalable. One workout doesn't fit all, but the same exercise principles do. So if you want to get the most out of your workouts without risking injury or burnout, and without a complicated weekly schedule, use this basic workout routine and get fit now.

Creating Your Own Exercise Plan

1. Build a Fitness Foundation Before You Build Intensity
   As anxious as you might be to get going when you first start a new exercise routine, force yourself to start slowly and do less than you think you can do. Many exercisers make the mistake of starting out too fast, too long and too hard, only to develop soreness or an injury and quit within a month or two. Don't be one of them. Your muscles, joints, and cardiovascular system will adapt to training, but it doesn't happen in a day or even in a week. Give yourself a month or more to build your fitness base before you pile on the intensity.
   If you are new to exercise, you may even want to keep your first month of exercise to thirty minutes a day at a fairly casual pace. And of course, you should check with your doctor before you start any intense exercise. If you have heart disease or other serious conditions, intense exercise can be dangerous. So be safe, check with your doctor, and start slowly

1. Add Intensity With Interval Training
   After you have built a solid base of fitness with steady, regular exercise for a month or so, you'll need to begin increasing your intensity to build your muscle strength and cardiovascular system. For most people, this means adding a few short intervals to your workouts.
   • A short interval is a 30-second burst of speed or effort that pushes you to your exercise threshold. The short intervals help build strength, endurance and burn a lot of calories quickly. Beginners can usually do several short intervals in a workout once or twice a week. Advanced athletes can do many intervals in a session but still should only do these workouts once or twice a week with recovery days between.
   • A long interval can last two minutes or more, and will likely cause lactic acid to build up in the bloodstream. Even the most conditioned athletes will only do a few long intervals during a workout. A true long interval pushes even a well-conditioned athlete to the breaking point, with burning lungs and legs. These intervals are not recommended for beginners.

1. Sustained Aerobic Efforts
   Sustained workouts are generally the basis of most endurance athlete's workouts. Cyclists, runners, and triathletes need to develop the ability to go long and hard. Generally, these workouts push an athlete to the point of fatigue, at which point they back down slightly and keep a sustained effort going. Then they begin pushing the pace again until the burn sets in, and again, they back off a bit but keep going. This cycle is repeated for long training sessions. Over time, their ability to work at a high intensity for long periods of time (hours) develops.
   Elite endurance athletes often use lactate threshold training during these long, sustained efforts to boost their lactate threshold (LT). These workouts are not for everyone, though, and not necessary for anyone just trying to get and stay in shape.
2. Build Strength With Max Efforts
   The most effective way to build muscle size and strength is to use maximal efforts when doing resistance exercise. But even while doing endurance exercise, you will build muscle during the hard efforts. The muscle soreness felt in the days after any intense workout is known as delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS). This soreness is actually the result of microscopic muscle damage. As the muscle fibers repair and heal, they become stronger and larger. The key to building strength is the cycling between hard work and plenty of rest and repair. Exercising a sore muscle is not smart; it simply keeps tearing down the muscle fibers and doesn't allow proper repair.

1. Active Recovery After Intense Exercise Boosts Fitness
   Serious athletes require more recovery than the casual exerciser, and the amount of recovery needed generally depends on upon the length and intensity of the exercise. But rather than taking a day of complete rest, athletes are encouraged to do a form of active recovery, in which you exercise at low intensity as rather than doing nothing. Research shows that active recovery makes the muscles more fibrous, which helps prevent injury during harder workouts. That means the hard workouts can be a little bit harder. This, in turn, leads to more muscle strengthening.

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