Maggie's Farm

 Before you begin:

- Get a physical exam including a cardio stress test. You don't need to do this every year, but you ought to do this before you embark on a strenuous journey into the unknown. Get your doc's OK.

- Consider your fitness goals. All-round Fitness for Life, or body-beautiful, or big muscles, or specifically to plan run a 5-K race or a triathlon, etc. Our posts here are about general Fitness For Life and high energy. Six hours/week is all our plan takes. Doctors, hedge fund owners, housewives, international businessmen, and plumbers find time for that, and even retirees with all of their daily errands - so you can too. Even Obama did a workout for an hour every morning. Trump, I am sure, does not. He is a slob, wakes up and goes on the internet and Twitter.

- Our advice is regardless of age, sex, gender-identification, etc. Same things apply. We are diverse.

-  If you play a sport once or twice a week (eg basketball, singles tennis, martial arts can count as calisthenics. Golf, doubles tennis, baseball are recreation, not exercises. Like Bulldog says, we get fit for sports, not vice-versa.)

- If you want to keep it simple like some of my friends, just join a local Crossfit "box". They make room for every level and push you hard. 5-6 days/week will get you going in a good direction after 6 months. We do not dislike Crossfit.

- Check your ego at the door. Every body has different genes, shapes, and potentials. Do your best with what you have been given, and try not to compare yourself with others. You will anyway, but try just to focus on what you are working towards. Nobody cares about you except you.

- Determine your ideal body fat % (not BMI) and aim for that even if you never meet it. Overweight (ie fat)?  Being overweight will impair your fitness program, so watch what you put in your Pie Hole so you can begin to move with agility and energy. If scrawny, we recommend Big Macs with fries along with your exercise program. You don't want to be a twink.

- When you begin moving heavy weight, guys try to get 80-90 gm of protein daily, and women maybe 60.  Weight work is especially important for women, but all guys like to be strong. Besides the requisite character traits, being a man means muscular competence. 

- Yoga?  I consider it to be a strength/agility/flexibility session. Body-weight resistance, not cardio. Best to view it as an accessory exercise unless you are somewhat satisfied with your muscle development.

Stage 1:

Start out by waking up your body. Let's assume you have not been doing any serious exercise for years. (No, taking walks is not exercise. The term "exercise" implies exertion.) You have to get your whole body used to moving with intention before you increase the stress.

Stage 1 would be "light cardio", meaning working your way up to 45-60 minutes, 5-6 days/week of a mix of brisk walking (walking, say over 3 mph), swimming laps, rowing, biking, and elliptical. No intensity, no high speed, no sprinting. Just endurance, putting the entire body in motion. Mix them up or it is no good. When elliptical, use the arms.

When you can get up to around an hour of mixed "long, slow" mixed cardio 5-6 days/week (that could take weeks or months depending on your starting condition), you are ready for Stage 2. In fact, your body will want Stage 2.

Stage 2 

Stage 2 of beginning conditioning would be to introduce two sessions of calisthenics/week, replacing two of the "long,slow" cardio days. Gym calisthenics classes are great, or you can use the intro classes on Youtube at home.  We have posted some in the past. These sorts of things are often termed things like "cardio/cross train", or "conditioning", or "athletic fitness."

These sorts of sessions ramp up cardio intensity and make more demands on muscle without using heavy weights (mostly body weight or light weights). At first they will kick your ass, but over time they become more do-able. They should never become easy. If you push yourself, you should crawl or collapse afterwards.

So now the program is, say, 3-4 days long slow, 2 calisthenic sessions/week. A good hike or bike ride can sub for one "long slow".

I'd stick with Stage 2 for a couple of months. At that point, your body will begin to feel different and, if you are lucky, it will yearn for more intense challenges. 

Stage 3 

Then, at Stage 3, you introduce 2 sessions/week of strength training. I strongly advise at least several sessions with a trainer to learn proper techniques of the power lifts and the accessory weight exercises that are right for you. Proper technique is essential for effect and to avoid injury. Also important to learn the correct rest time between sets, and good stretches. Tell the guy or gal what your goals are. Newbies need good advice on how to gradually raise the resistance and how many reps to do.

For regular people, two weight sessions is enough if you do 2 cali days/wk. Remember, this is not about body-building so much as about general fitness. It's a good idea to do a 3-5 minute warm up of some sort first.  It's not unusual for people to make one day a push day and one a pull day, or one a legs day and one an upper body day.  Or just mix and match. There is a method to it. (Deadlifts are legs.)

We advise 5 sets for powerlifts and 3 sets of your accessory lifts.  The powerlifts are the foundations of strength training. Since it's about fitness and not body-building, each powerlift done just once/week is adequate. 

So now the program is 2 hrs of calis, 2 sessions of long slow cardio, and 2 sessions of weights.  That's a good foundation to build on. Best to separate the weight days by 2 days.

Stage 4 

At this point you are months into the program.  Now you can up the intensity of one of the pure cardio sessions. That would mean doing some sort of HIIT on one of the days for a shorter time. Thus 30-second sprints alternating with slow, or jogging instead of fast-walking, in whatever form you want.  It's best to vary what you do though, because always doing the same thing in cardio loses its effectiveness over time.

So instead of 45-60 minutes of long slow you might do 20-30 minutes of mixed jump rope intervals, air bike, or ski erg, or sprint and walk on the treadmill, or fast and slow on the stair machine. Efficient. Then you can use the rest of the hour for accessory work like pullups, lunges, ball slams, pushups, step-ups, curls, squats, kettlebells, etc. 

Now you have 2 days of resistance, one day of long slow whatever, 2 calis sessions (which if done aggressively or in a class are cardio challenges too), 1/2 hour of  HIIT pure cardio, and 1/2 hr of random other things you want to fit in. You have covered all the bases.

Now just gradually up the weight resistance, up the intensity, and roll onward with this format. After 12-24 months of Stage 4 you will begin to be a different person. There is no end point, because physical conditioning deteriorates measurably after 2 weeks of disuse but it's fine to take a few days or week off every few months. Nothing wrong with deciding on a maintenance phase at some point, where you just stick with the same levels of resistance or speed after 2 or 3 years of improvement.