Are You Pushing Yourself Too Hard?

You want to strengthen your muscles to help you in everyday life, so you don’t need to lift heavy weights and suffer resulting pain. With aerobic exercises, you should always feel comfortable and able to do more; with strength exercises, you should feel really challenged by the end of each set. When you do the exercises—although I have suggested the number of repetitions you should do—you may need to vary this to suit your own ability. If you are doing ten repetitions of something and then stopping, that represents one set. At the end of the set, if you feel as if you could have done a few more, then you have not worked hard enough. If you don’t really challenge the muscle, it won’t improve. If ten is the absolute maximum you can do and the last one is painful, then you are working too hard and should stop at eight or nine. complete it properly. You should avoid this stage since your muscles are likely to be very sore a day or two later and you may injure yourself. It is very important when doing strength work that you work to fatigue, not failure.

There is a difference between fatigue and failure. Fatigue means that the muscle feels tired after you have completed the set and that you feel you have really achieved something. This is the level you want to aim for. Failure means that the last exercise (repetition) in the set was painful and that you couldn’t complete it properly. You should avoid this stage since your muscles are likely to be very sore a day or two later and you may injure yourself. It is very important when doing strength work that you work to fatigue, not failure.

The toning exercises I have devised can easily be done at home. They should take approximately 15 minutes or less, including some warm-up and stretching exercises. There are two programs, although some of the exercises are the same in both. The programs have been carefully designed to balance muscle strength evenly to promote good posture.