Practice the 4 pro ways to ease into your New Year’s workout routine

It’s crunch time! Most people use the new year as motivation to start their fitness goals.

If it’s been a while since you set foot in a gym, don’t worry, I’ve got you covered.

As the supervising exercise physiologist in the Sports Performance Center at NYU Langone Orthopedic Center, I have four simple steps to getting back into an exercise routine and staying injury-free in the new year.

1. Make a plan

If you have a history of heart, kidney, or metabolic disease, it’s best to consult your doctor before starting an exercise program. For otherwise healthy adults, we want to help.

First, assess your current fitness level by doing a step test or a six-minute walk test.

The step test requires you to walk up and down a 12-inch staircase for three minutes at a speed of 96 steps per minute. Finally, check your pulse for a full minute. The lower the heart rate, the higher the fitness level.

For the six-minute walk, place a cone 30 feet away. You must walk towards and around the cone as far as possible in six minutes. Distance traveled can help predict fitness. If you are out of breath within this time and need to sit down, there is room for improvement.

You can also check your strength and stability by doing planks and push-ups. If you can’t do any, that’s a good indication to start a strength program.

Use all of this information to set your goals—and make them as specific as possible. If you want to lose weight, how much weight? Think about how you can do this and create your timeline based on what is realistic about what you can achieve.

For example, if the goal is to lose 10 pounds, this can be broken down into smaller goals. To achieve weight loss, we usually need an excess of 300 minutes of exercise per week. Is this reasonable for a new exerciser? No, but we can start with 10 minutes a day and slowly add five to 10 minutes a week to get there.

We also need to choose a suitable time frame. This can be more of a journey than instant gratification. You can set weekly or monthly goals, such as signing up for a new exercise class, walking three lunches, going to bed 10 minutes earlier to get up, and exercising 10 minutes in the morning, etc.

2. Choose an exercise

An exercise program should include cardiovascular exercise, strength training, flexibility work and stability exercises.

Cardio increases heart function, helps maintain healthy blood pressure, elevates mood, and lowers the risk of premature death.

We should do cardio—like walking, running, rowing, cycling, and swimming—five to seven days a week and strength training two or three times a week.

Using free weights or a weight machine as part of a strength training regimen promotes healthy metabolism, reduces the risk of diabetes and improves body composition.

Working with flexibility maintains joint integrity and physical function. Examples of stability exercises include bodyweight squats, planks, and side planks.

It’s important to warm up before any exercise because movement raises your body temperature, which helps deliver oxygen for energy to the active muscles. Try walking, followed by lunges, squats, high knees, butt kicks and leg and arm swings.

Doing a dynamic warm-up before your workout and then stretching the muscles you just used can help prevent injury.

A good cool down should transition our bodies from an exercise state to an arrested state. This can be anything from deep breathing to flexibility exercises to maintain muscle integrity and length.

And don’t forget sleep – sleep is a very important part of recovery. Without good sleep, our exercise efforts are diminished.

3. Increase the intensity

After a long break from training, you should start at about 50% of where you left off and slowly progress, about 10% more each week.

An ideal exercise program would be 150 minutes per week spread over five days, allowing you to include rest days.

The frequency of rest depends on your fitness level. Two or three days off can be a good start – you can reduce the number of days off as you get fitter.

It’s always best to check with an exercise professional before moving on to more difficult exercises. Everyone has different limitations – and joint mobility can vary.

It is important to know these limits before progressing in order to avoid injury. Signs that you’ve increased the intensity too quickly include soreness that lasts more than two days and aches or pains that don’t go away after exercise.

4. Look to the future

Progress is when you see improvement in exercise. For example, if you are doing strength training, lifting weights becomes easier. That means it’s time to increase those weights.

Typically for strength training, we say that every week or every two weeks you can increase the weight when you get at least two days a week consistently.

For cardio, this can mean increasing the duration by five minutes or more per workout or week, as well as increasing the intensity. If you are doing things like jogging, you should increase the volume per week by 10%.

Ultimately, it’s important to stay accountable. You can do this by working out with a friend, signing up with a trainer waiting for you at the gym, telling everyone you know you’re working out so they’ll ask how you’re doing, and written in a journal. you can see the responsibility yourself.

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Heather Milton, MSis the supervisor of the exercise physiologist in the Sports Performance Center at NYU Langone Orthopedic Center. She is a board certified clinical exercise physiologist, certified strength and conditioning specialist, and certified cancer exercise coach. It develops specialized PROGRAMS to help athletes reach their maximum potential and ability, creates unique and motivational programs to inspire health and fitness clients, and designs injury prevention PROGRAMS for athletes at risk.