Treadmill User Manual

NAUTILUS

FITNESS GUIDELINES

C H A N G I N G T H E G A M E I N H E A LT H A N D F I T N E S S

™

Muscular Strength is training your muscles to remain strong using

resistance such as dumbbells, elastic tubing or your body weight. In the past

decade, we have learned that building or maintaining muscular strength

is extremely important for a balanced ﬁ tness program. And it is especially

important as we get older.

We have learned through a variety of studies that those individuals who just

train aerobically (without strength training) do maintain their cardiovascular

endurance over the years, but they generally lose lean muscle mass as they

get older. However, those individuals who combine strength training and

cardiovascular training can maintain their lean body mass as they get older.

What this means is that if you just do cardiovascular activity, your body will

naturally lose muscle mass as you get older, and that means that you will

actually get “fatter” as you age, unless you incorporate strength training.

We have also learned that consistent strength training helps maintain bone

and muscle mass as we get older. For women, strength training (along with

cardiovascular training) may also protect against post-menopausal bone loss

and osteoporosis in their later years.

And strength training is not complicated. It is recommended that you do 8 —

12 repetitions of 8 — 10 major muscle groups at least 2 days a week. However,

you don’t have to do all these exercises at once. You can break them up into

shorter workouts throughout the day. For example, you can do just upper body

exercises in the morning, and your lower body exercises in the evening. Or, you

can alternate strength exercises with cardiovascular exercise (often known as

circuit training) by switching back and forth every couple of minutes.

The best part is you don’t need complicated equipment or fancy machines. You

can do everything you need to do with a simple pair of dumbbells, or you can try

the new Nautilus

SelectTech dumbbells, which provide you a wide variety of

weight options in a revolutionary all-in-one dumbbell. You can use elastic tubing,

or simply do body weight exercises such as push-ups or lunges.

Flexibility is being able to bend, reach, twist and turn with comfort and ease

as we perform daily tasks, play or exercise. It is perhaps the most ignored

component of ﬁ tness, but certainly the easiest one to incorporate into our daily

lives because it can be done anywhere and almost at any time.

To maintain your ﬂ exibility, you simply need to stretch. This could be as simple

as reaching for your toes, or reaching overhead when you wake up in the

EXERCISE & FITNESS GUIDELINES

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