2895: Varying Your Exercise Routine by Steve Pavlina on Workout Advice

[00:00:00] Have you ever noticed how a calm mind can really set the stage for a good night's sleep? That's the idea behind our new podcast, Good Sleep. Greg, our host from Optimal Relationships Daily, is here to help ease you into a peaceful night's rest with some positive affirmations. And these affirmations aren't just comforting, they can help ease anxiety and nurture positive thoughts, setting you up for true good sleep.

[00:00:24] So, press play on Good Sleep tonight because a good tomorrow starts with a good night's sleep. Just search for Good Sleep in your podcast app and be sure to pick the one from Optimal Living Daily. This is Optimal Health Daily, Varying Your Exercise Routine by Steve Pavlina of stevepavlina.com and I'm Dr. Neal, your very own personal narrator.

[00:00:49] Hey there, happy Sunday. Hope you're having a wonderful weekend. Welcome back to the show where I act as your very own personal narrator and read to you from some of the most popular health and fitness blogs online. All right, with that, let's jump right to it and start optimizing your life. Varying Your Exercise Routine by Steve Pavlina of stevepavlina.com

[00:01:15] Changing up your exercise routine is a great way to keep your workouts fun and interesting. It's easy to get bored if you stick to the same workout for too long. Whenever you find that happening, it's time to move on to something new. The dominant exercise I've been doing for the past several years has been running. Running is great because it's so simple and convenient. But even with music, audiobooks, different routes, variable distances, hill training, running partners, or podcasts like these, all that running eventually can get stale.

[00:01:45] So a couple of weeks ago, I decided I'd had enough running, so I opted to join a gym to spice things up a bit. After touring a few local gyms and enduring their silly high-pressure sales tactics, I eventually found one that suited me. In fact, it's the nicest gym I've seen in my life. It's a brand new, two-story building that just opened a few months ago, and all the equipment is state-of-the-art. It has abundant cardio and weight training equipment, individual cable TVs with remotes at many stations,

[00:02:12] two pools, a spa, a sauna, a squash court, a juice and sandwich bar, zillions of classes like yoga, pilates, dance, spinning, kickboxing, aquaerobics, body sculpting, and lots more, a daycare center, and even an indoor track. And the pricing was great compared to other gyms, less than $15 a month for the plan I chose. The guy who gave me the grand tour didn't need to use any high-pressure sales tactics, nor did he try. They had me at hello.

[00:02:41] I noticed that because the gym is so nice, I do much longer workouts. I used to go for 25-45 minute runs with the occasional 60-90 minute run on weekends. Now, I'm working out for 60-90 minutes every day, and I'm already noticing a boost in my energy levels. I do a mix of cardio and weight training, but there's so much variety available that I can't imagine ever getting bored. I especially like the cardio machines with the built-in heart monitors.

[00:03:06] The difficulty adjusts in real time to keep my heart rate in my aerobic range, which for me is about 150 beats per minute. That's a lot more precise than I can get with running outdoors. I don't even know how long this feature's been around, but it's the first time I've seen it. This isn't the first time I've had a gym membership, but I've never belonged to one with so much variety. In the past, I've also done biking, yoga, weight training, hiking, cardio machines like the treadmill, the stationary bike, the stair machine, etc.

[00:03:34] Taekwondo, calisthenics, aerobics, and more. One year, I had a personal trainer as well. I noticed that whenever my workouts become dull and repetitive, switching to something new is a great way to liven things up. The newness makes exercise challenging again, and challenge makes it interesting. I found this especially true when I was learning taekwondo, which itself has a nice amount of variety. Sparring, poomsay, board breaks, flexibility, etc.

[00:03:59] If you've been doing the same type of exercise for a while, try switching things up and see what it does to your motivation level. If you exercise alone, try going to classes like martial arts or yoga. Try swimming for a change of pace. Switch from indoor to outdoor exercise, or vice versa. Move your body in ways you've never done before. Don't worry, the soreness will pass. Of course, if you're not exercising at all, just be aware that not exercising is a greater health risk than smoking.

[00:04:27] Neglecting physical exercise is among the worst things you can do to your body. Use the 30-day trial approach to kickstart a new exercise program, and then use progressive training to gradually build up to a decent level of physical fitness. You just listened to the post titled, Varying Your Exercise Routine by Steve Pavlina of stevepavlina.com. And I'll be right back with my commentary. Dr. Neil here for my commentary.

[00:04:55] I love Steve's comment about exercise and its health effects. What we're finding is that every cell in the body responds to exercise, and it responds in a good way. Basically, from head to toe, your cells, your body loves exercise. And in my experience, I too have found that varying things up in my routine, going outdoors or indoors, does help motivation tremendously.

[00:05:21] I must mention one thing about the heart rate monitors you'll find on lots of cardio equipment at gyms nowadays. Just use those as a guideline. Sometimes they can be inaccurate, depending on your health history, on how much you're sweating, on how wet your hands are, whether you're wearing gloves. Those kinds of things can alter the heart rate monitor. One really easy way to test to see whether you're working out hard enough is to use what they call the talk or the sing test. Imagine you're on the treadmill, and you were going to have a conversation with the person next to you.

[00:05:51] Could you sing to them? If so, you're not working out hard enough. It means that you're able to pull in enough oxygen into your cells to be able to sing, and that means your heart's not working hard enough. Are you able to talk to them? If yes, again, you may not be working out hard enough, especially if you're going for higher intensity activity. If you can't sing, and you definitely couldn't imagine talking to them, you're working out pretty darn hard.

[00:06:19] You're working out at an intensity that's difficult for you. And for many of us, that's the goal we want. But I definitely love Steve's idea of progressive training, gradually build up to that level, to that goal that you've set for yourself. And that'll do it for today. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for sharing this show with someone. Thank you for listening every day. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your weekend, and I'll be back here tomorrow as usual. So I'll see you there where your optimal life awaits. Thank you. Thank you.