Making muscles

Enjoyment, and fitness rather than weight loss, should be your exercise goals.

Exercise physiologist Matt Wood has these suggestions to keep up your muscle strength.

■ Strength training and aerobic exercise have to go together – brisk walking won’t do much to improve your muscle strength.

■ Don’t focus on weight loss when starting an exercise programme. Fitness is much more important to your overall health.

■ Do exercises you enjoy or can incorporate into your daily life – for example, cycling to work – but ensure you challenge your breathing to the stage where you can’t hold a conversation.

■ Don’t overdo it in an exercise session – building up to two sets of eight repetitions of each strength exercise is all you need for health benefits.

■ If time is short, don’t waste it on isolated muscle resistance exercises that are more for looks. For strength training, do four or five multi-joint resistance exercises that relate to everyday activities – for example, squats instead of leg extensions/leg curls. You’ll halve the time and notice the benefits in daily tasks.

■ Yoga and similar workouts can be great for strength, balance, flexibility, relaxation and enjoyment. However, they shouldn’t be used in isolation. Research hasn’t shown large improvements in cardiorespiratory fitness compared with traditional methods of training.

■ Many exercises can be adapted to your home – for example, modified pushups, squats, lifting dumbbell weights.

■ Find a family member, friend or colleague to exercise with to keep you motivated.

■ Exercise intensity matters. You’ll need to spend some time exerting yourself pretty hard to get the most out of your cardiovascular exercise – your fitness will plateau pretty quickly with moderate walks with minimal effort, but thrashing yourself can be detrimental.

■ If you have a chronic health condition – cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes or high blood pressure – you’ll benefit from an exercise physiology assessment for individualised guidelines.