Weeks 1 & 2
PreviewExercise, Level 3, Weeks 1 & 2
Goals:
- Increase cardio from 5 minutes to 40 minutes
- Find your hinge
Functional Exercise
Welcome back to Pain Free Lifestyle. In level 3 we are going to start working on making our exercises more functional.
In level 1 and 2, we were trying to get you into shape. Get you from not exercising to exercising consistently and not injuring yourself.
Now we are going to shift to making our exercises more functional.
Functional exercises will engage more muscle groups, and strengthen up your entire body so you can get through the regular world easier.
Play Exercise & Stretching Demonstrations
Kicking up the cardio.
The first component that we are going to focus on is increasing the duration of your cardiovascular exercise by 5 minutes to 40 minutes
This will allow you to burn a few more calories and help you to slowly build your endurance so you can keep up with your kids or grandkids.
Whatever form you are doing –whether it is biking, walking, stairmaster, elliptical machine, swimming, rowing, or any other form of low impact cardio vascular exercise — make sure that you can do it comfortably without hurting yourself.
Don’t mistake the pain from getting beaten up from the pounding of a high impact exercise for the muscle soreness from a good workout.
The rest of the world is hard enough on our bodies. Go easy on yourself, you should feel better after exercising, not worse.
Other Cardio Options
A great, full body, cardio training exercise is the kettlebell, or dumbbell swing.
The swing was originally used only with kettlebells, but you can do them with dumbbells as well.
The first step in being able to do a swing, is to find your hinge.
In order to do the swing motion right, without injuring yourself, you have to hinge at your hips.
The best way to learn how to hinge at your hips is to “find your hinge”.
All it is, is just bending forward at the waist, while maintaining neutral spine. It’s better to have more of an arch in your low back, than to have it rounded.
You bend forward in a controlled way, and come back up to standing.
It may seem easy, but it is a difficult motion to get down. And it is very important to get this motion down before trying to kettlebell swing.
Good luck with this new exercise, and good luck with increasing your cardio.
I hope that you have a Pain Free Day.
