My plan for maintaining a healthy lifestyle is to regularly exercise 4-5 days a week with moderate intensity workouts. My main goal is to be working out the cardiovascular/aerobic conditioning as well as strength training and improving muscular development. It’s also important to note that a sufficient amount of sleep is crucial to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Overall, my weekly schedule to maintain this lifestyle is to do weight training 3 times per week (5-10 minutes of stretching then train all muscle groups per session), jogging 2 times a week (no less than 45 minutes per session), and a relaxing walk 3 times per week (no less than 30 minutes per session). My short term goals can be accomplished by the end of the semester and they are reducing my mile time by 30 seconds from 8:15 to 7:45, increasing the number of push-ups from 20 to 30, and increasing my sit-and-reach by 3 cm from 28 cm to 31 cm. My long term goals are reach a weight of 180 lbs, and to maintain a body mass index (BMI) between 22.0 and 24.0. I will go in detail for each workout later to determine what muscle groups they work directly on, in addition to how these will help me towards my long and short term goals.
To improve my cardiovascular system I can to work on all muscle groups well doing conditioning heavy workouts. By following the FITT principle, which FITT stands for frequency, intensity, time, and type. The specific exercises or type are jogging and light walking, frequency needs to be at least 3 times a week with moderate to high intensity (140 or greater BPM), for approximately an hour each session. These exercises can be done in class during our heart rate monitors, during the evening and weekends at the Chaska Community Center, or when the weather gets better around my neighborhood . Ultimately, these exercises will improve endurance and strengthen my heart and lungs and help my short term goals of improving my mile time. Increasing flexibility will include stretches such as the knee to chest stretch, lying quad stretch, and pretzel stretch. These stretches will work out the leg muscle group and help towards my goal of improving my sit and reach. Finally, improving my other short term goal of increasing the number of push-ups. This can be done my working on three muscle groups: arms, shoulders, and chest. Effective exercises can also help muscle endurance and muscle strength. These exercises include: shoulder press, biceps curls, and tricep dips. Increasing muscle strength in my arms will result in the ability to do more push ups.
For long term goals, exercises that include the FITT principle might look a little different. Also, improving nutritional habits will also help and maintain those long term goals. For a long term goal of getting down to my goal weight of 180 lbs. I need to focus on a cardiovascular/ aerobic conditioning that includes the FITT principle. For example, longer exercises with higher intensity should aid in the lower body fat percentage – relating to the family tree of lowering my chances of heart disease. The cardiovascular benefits continue to increase as the exercise duration is extended to 60 minutes. So longer jogging distances or time will lower my body fat percentage. Tracking my progress will be the tricky part, meaning that losing weight will not directly tell me if I’m actually losing fat and improving my health. To accurately track my progress will require me to measure my waist as well as take pictures regularly to see where I’m losing the fat. In conclusion, to improve cardiovascular fitness, a regular aerobic conditioning exercise program, needs to be repeated 3–5 times per week for 40–60 minutes and at an intensity of 140–180 BPM (which is 50%–85% of the maximum heart rate for teenagers), is going to be ideal.
Looking at my last goal of maintaining a BMI between 22.0 and 24.0 requires that I stay between 170 lbs, and 185 lbs given that I stay the same height. To maintain this goal I can incorporate two muscle groups: back and abs (which seems to be where the most notable fat is currently). In addition, improving body composition (which is a method of describing what the body is made of. It includes fat, protein, minerals and body water. It can also describes weight and overall health more accurately than BMI) and muscle endurance will help reach my goal of a healthy body fat percentage because it reduces high cholesterol (which was also common within my family tree) and again reduces the likelihood of developing heart disease. Regarding some exercises to help improve muscle endurance would be burpees, planks, and situps. All these exercises help improve muscle endurance because they require the body to work many muscle groups especially the abs (or core) for an extended period of time.
Another way I can improve body composition is by improving a few nutritional habits. For example, I can reduce the number of servings of pop I drink weekly from 5 to 2. I can also go for at least 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day which will help replace the consumption of foods with higher amounts of sugar. Finally, reducing my sodium intake from over 3,300 mg per day to lower than 2,000 mg per day. This can be done by consuming less frozen meals and take the time to make more nutritious and less heavily concentrated sodium meals with more protein, fiber, and healthier saturated fats.
