♥ Exercising : Of course it’s all up to you. To strengthen the heart, the intensity of your training has to be high.

Exercising always has to do with balancing between intensity, duration and frequency.

For most of us, the intensity has to become more and more since you’re getting stronger, while duration and frequency stay consistent when you reach a certain level.

To strengthen the heart, the intensity of your exercising has to be quite high. You can measure the intensity in different ways. There’s one method, where the intensity is considered adequate, where the heart-rate per minute increases with at least 20 beats, in relation to the heart when it’s in rest condition.

There’s also another method, slightly more complicated though, where the intensity is considered adequate when the heartfrequency is between 70 – 85% of the maximal heartfrequency. But…. you can also measure the intensity, by skipping the numbers. Are you breathing and sweating more heavily? (Of course in a not-warm-environment) Then the intensity is quite high. Are you breathing and sweating enormously? Then you could say the intensity is super high. Another method of measuring, is by doing the exercise as long as you can. Give all that you have until you can’t anymore, muscle pain guaranteed 😉

It’s best exercising is 30 – 60 minutes per time, with an intensity that’s júst achievable. This amount of time is ideal for training your muscles and for improvement of the cardio vascular function (explained in this article). Of course it’s all up to you if you wánt to train longer than that, but it won’t lead to any improvement, whether this is gaining muscles or endurance…

Then there’s this: it’s good to move your body every day. But training more than 4 times a week on a high intensity level isn’t that great for your skeleton muscles. After you’ve trained a certain part of your body, let’s say your buns and legs, it takes 48 hours to recover. When you give your muscles that time to heal, they will get stronger.

By different exercises, different muscles get strained. So for aerobic exercises, it’s best to vary with them and pick one different exercise each time. By running, you’re training your lower-legs, with bicycling mostly your upper-legs and with swimming and rowing you basically strain your upper-body and back.

For an-aerobic exercising it’s best to pick another part of your body each time. For example: on Monday your legs and buns, on Wednesday your abs and arms, on Friday you pick some for your legs and buns, abs and arms and your back. The days in between you could stretch, do some aerobic exercises or… you could do Pilates, yoga or ballet. Whatever feels right for you.

It’s also best to change the types of exercises each week, to get the best result out of your workout.