Friday, March 11, 2016

MONITORING YOUR EXERCISE PROGRESS

An exercise log is a journal that records your compliance with you exercise program. Carry this log with you whenever you to go to the gym, and look back on it on days that you don’t exercise to look for holes or weaknesses in your training. In this log, you should keep track of:
MONITORING YOUR EXERCISE PROGRESS

1. Which exercises you did and the time of day you did them to monitor how closely you are sticking to your program.
2. Number of weight-lifting sets and reps, along with the amount of weight used for each set to track your gains in strength.
3. Calories burned and steps or miles covered during aerobic exercise (you will need a Digiwalker or a Calorie Tracker) to gauge the efficiency of your aerobic exercise.
4. Morning heart rate when still in bed to ensure that you are not over training or suffering from hormonal imbalance. If your heart rate is over 80 to 95, you should scale back your training program and talk to your doctor.
5. General notes about how you felt after exercising (e.g., full of energy, out of breath, exhausted, etc.) to guard against unhealthy patterns of fatigue or exhaustion, which indicate overtraining or hormone imbalance.
If you are not making the progress you think you should, look for clues as to why in your log, especially where you record your weight-training performance. Ideally, you should be getting stronger and making slow but steady increases in the amount of weight you lift. If you see that you have been missing workouts, then your problem is undertraining. Exhaustion and fatigue after exercise most likely mean that you are overtraining. Also ask your training buddy or personal trainer to look at your log for a second opinion. Make the necessary adjustments until you are back on track and making progress.

Troubleshooting

When many people begin formally exercising on a set program for the first time, they often get discouraged either by the difficulty of the program or by a lack of results. Several of these problems are due to improper technique or overtraining and can be easily corrected. Following are some tips for diagnosing and solving three common exercise problems:
• Prolonged muscle soreness: if your muscles are always sore, even several days after exercising, you are clearly overtraining. Try giving yourself more rest between weight-lifting days and slightly lower the intensity of your exercise by lifting lighter weights. Once you are at a point that pain and soreness go away quickly after lifting weights, you can slowly start increasing the amount of weight you lift each session.
• No increases in strength: if you don’t have any pain or soreness and seem to be recovering from exercise well but are not seeing any increases in strength, chances are you are eating improperly and are losing muscle. Try eating your Magic Window Meal (discussed in Article 3) more quickly after you work out, and make sure you are getting enough protein in your overall diet.
• Increases in strength, but not it muscle mass: one common solution to this problem is to drink a low-carbohydrate protein shake with 25 to 35 grams of protein immediately before exercising. Ingesting protein right before lifting weights is an excellent way to directly feed amino acids into your muscles during the weight-training period.

Injuries and the Role of Physical Therapy
Major and minor injuries can easily derail any weight-loss program: pain can quickly cause you to lose your motivation. But both can be overcome and actually remedied by fitness and exercise. At some point in life, most people eventually develop some problem with their joints or spine, especially as they age.

Sometimes you can work around these problems if they are minor, but, in order to achieve maximum results from your training and to keep your body healthy, you need to ensure that you are injury free. To do this, you may require the help of a physical therapist. Below is a list of some common indications that you may require physical therapy:

1. You feel a distinct line of shooting pain or numbness down one or both arms or legs. This also can be associated with an odd sensation, numbness, or tingling, indicating that you have a pinched nerve that deserves medical attention. The most common cause is a herniated disc in the neck or lower back.
2. Localized intense pain in an extremity
3. Loss of full range of motion of a joint
4. Any type of pain that keeps you from sleeping
5. Joints that sublux, or dislocate (go out of their normal socket)
6. Untreated high blood pressure or cardiac disease
If you have any of these problems, they should be treated before starting or continuing the Hormone Revolution Exercise Programs. Oftentimes, you can train with a physical therapist even after your injury is healed. Sometimes you may need to return to your doctor or physical therapist to readjust the program if your problem persists.

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