Reading Time: 2 minutes Do you really need to do cardio? And if so, how much? Here’s what the experts recommend.

Reading Time: 2 minutes Fueling up before exercising is important for giving your body the energy it needs. So what’s the best pre-workout snack? Our trainer shares some ideas.

Reading Time: 2 minutes Here are four ways to change up your workouts and increase your gains.

Reading Time: 2 minutes Avoid feeling stiff from sitting too long in class with these dynamic stretches.

Reading Time: 2 minutes Our trainer walks you through two strengthening exercises that support the muscles around the knee and can help you recover after an injury.

Reading Time: 2 minutes An expert weighs in on how frequently you should be working out, depending on your goals, schedule, and current level of fitness.

Reading Time: 3 minutes Can’t make it to the gym today? Try these three easy abdominal exercises you can do at home. 

—Kerriene E., Southern Alberta Institute of Technology

We know exercise is good for us, with long-term benefits (e.g., stronger bones and lower blood pressure) and more immediate benefits (e.g., improved emotional state). If you’ve never exercised before, stepping foot into a gym can be intimidating. There are so many machines and free weights and people doing their own things. How do you know what to do? Where do you start?

Here’s what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends

OK, so what does that mean exactly?

Aerobic activity

Start with 10-minute segments. If you can get a few 10-minute sessions in per day, the time really adds up. As you build fitness, you can start to increase your workout segments to 20 minutes. Work hard enough that you’re breathing hard and breaking a light sweat (a heavy sweat is fine, too).

Aerobic activity isn’t just about ’80s step aerobics (though that is totally legitimate, and we approve wholeheartedly). You don’t even need to go to the gym to get your aerobic activity in. A brisk walk around campus counts!

Here are some other ideas

• Take the long way to class.
• Add in a post-dinner bike ride.
• If you’re digging the gym, try the stationary bike, elliptical, treadmill (walking or running), step mill, rowing machine, or anything that gets your heart rate up.

Strength training

Strength training, or resistance training, focuses on building and maintaining your muscle mass. And that’s important in keeping your heart disease risk low, your body fat percentage in a healthy range, your bones protected, and more, according to the American College of Sports Medicine. Perform resistance training on two nonconsecutive days per week. If you’re brand new to strength training, start with body weight exercises or resistance machines. You can progress to using free weights when you become stronger and more accustomed to exercise.

Squats, lunges, push-ups, and planks are great exercises that use only your body weight and incorporate many muscle groups. Make sure to use proper form with all exercises. If you’re not sure what proper form is, ask a trainer at your campus or local gym for help.

As you get stronger and become fitter, you can choose to increase the amount of time and number of days per week that you exercise. Just get moving—you won’t regret it.

← Back to Orientation

—Rachael T., University of Wyoming

Once you get over the initial ugh, starting a workout program can be pretty exciting—and the motivation tends to come more easily in the beginning. But as time goes on, finding the enthusiasm to continue to work out can be a challenge.

The key to long-term health and reaching your fitness goals is consistency, so it’s really important to be able to motivate yourself to get your workout in.

Here are three ways to stay motivated:

Psychologists identify two factors that help keep us motivated: extrinsic and intrinsic. Keeping a fitness journal or tracking your progress on a fitness app can help with intrinsic motivation, which comes from within yourself and is driven by internal rewards (we’ll get to extrinsic later). Think of how good you feel after you complete a hard workout or reach a fitness goal you’ve been striving for. These feelings of personal gratification can motivate you to continue working out. Write them down in a journal so when you need a little push to get your workout in, you can look back at it for a reminder about how great you feel after exercise.

Rewarding yourself is a form of extrinsic motivation, or incentive driven from external rewards. Think about some things that make you happy or that you consider a treat. It can be anything from a trip to your favorite coffee shop with friends to taking some time out to watch your favorite movie…again. Or something more extravagant, like that new gadget you have your eyes on. Try setting small weekly rewards for yourself and build up to a larger monthly reward. Before you know it, a month will have gone by and you’ll be reaping your reward for finishing all your workouts.

Want to take it a step further? Check out an app called SweatCoin, which tracks your steps and actually “pays” you in “sweat coins.” You can reward yourself with fun things like a new pair of shoes, an Apple Watch, or experiences such as a yoga class. You can also choose to donate your coins to help others.

Extrinsic motivation can also come in the form of goals, in both the long and short term. Long-term goals tend to be something larger, such as training for a 5K, an adventure race, or a specific charity event like a walkathon. To help keep you moving toward your long-term goal, set short-term goals too. These can be anything from increasing your cardio workout time by 10 minutes, increasing your weightlifting exercise by five pounds, or trying a new fitness class.

“For someone who has never worked out, where is the best place to start?”—Kerriene E., Southern Alberta Institute of Technology

We know exercise is good for us, with long-term benefits (e.g., stronger bones and lower blood pressure) and more immediate benefits (e.g., improved emotional state). If you’ve never exercised before, stepping foot into a gym can be intimidating. There are so many machines and free weights and people doing their own things. How do you know what to do? Where do you start?

Here’s what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends

OK, so what does that mean exactly?

Aerobic activity

Start with 10-minute segments. If you can get a few 10-minute sessions in per day, the time really adds up. As you build fitness, you can start to increase your workout segments to 20 minutes. Work hard enough that you’re breathing hard and breaking a light sweat (a heavy sweat is fine, too).

Aerobic activity isn’t just about ’80s step aerobics (though that is totally legitimate, and we approve wholeheartedly). You don’t even need to go to the gym to get your aerobic activity in. A brisk walk around campus counts!

Here are some other ideas

• Take the long way to class.
• Add in a post-dinner bike ride.
• If you’re digging the gym, try the stationary bike, elliptical, treadmill (walking or running), step mill, rowing machine, or anything that gets your heart rate up.

Strength training

Strength training, or resistance training, focuses on building and maintaining your muscle mass. And that’s important in keeping your heart disease risk low, your body fat percentage in a healthy range, your bones protected, and more, according to the American College of Sports Medicine. Perform resistance training on two nonconsecutive days per week. If you’re brand new to strength training, start with body weight exercises or resistance machines. You can progress to using free weights when you become stronger and more accustomed to exercise.

Squats, lunges, push-ups, and planks are great exercises that use only your body weight and incorporate many muscle groups. Make sure to use proper form with all exercises. If you’re not sure what proper form is, ask a trainer at your campus or local gym for help.

As you get stronger and become fitter, you can choose to increase the amount of time and number of days per week that you exercise. Just get moving—you won’t regret it.

—Emi D., Wheaton College, Massachusetts

Working out generally makes us feel great. However, sometimes after a workout, we experience muscle soreness for a few days. Physical activity, specifically eccentric contractions (the lengthening phase of muscle contraction—for example, when you lower your arm in a bicep curl), can cause microscopic tears to the muscle fibers. These tears cause an inflammatory response in the body, which results in sore muscles for a day or two after a workout. This is referred to as delayed onset muscle soreness or DOMS.

DOMS is the body’s normal reaction to exercise, and you shouldn’t worry much about it. If your soreness or discomfort lasts longer than two days, it’s possible that you overdid it and should tone down the workout next time. While DOMS is normal, there are certain things that you can do to minimize the effects.

Muscle soreness is more likely to occur after periods of inactivity or after performing a certain motion or move that you haven’t done in a while. Increasing the intensity of a particular motion, even one that you’re used to performing, may also cause DOMS. You can try to prevent or decrease the effects of DOMS in two ways:

1  Ease into your exercise routine

DOMS is the result of the body adapting to new stresses that have been placed on it. Gradually increase the intensity of your workouts over time. The more you perform a certain exercise, the less soreness you will have the next time you do it. Getting into a consistent routine with careful progression of weight and intensity will help to decrease DOMS but not necessarily eliminate it all together.

2  Increase the blood flow to the affected areas

Light physical activity, such as walking, biking, swimming, or doing simple body weight moves, will help loosen the muscles and decrease soreness. It may seem counterintuitive to exercise when you’re feeling sore, but it’s one of the best things you can do. Inactivity will prolong the soreness. Gentle massage with a foam roller or another self-massage tool can help increase blood flow as well.

—Catherine N., University of Wyoming

If you’ve been on a regular workout routine and aren’t seeing the results that you want, or aren’t feeling great despite your efforts, that can be very frustrating. Working out inefficiently or working out too much (overtraining) can have the opposite effect on your body of what you intend.

Signs of working out too much:

Feeling tired all the time

You might not be getting enough quality sleep at night. Our body repairs itself from exercise while we sleep. Too much exercise can throw off the nervous system and endocrine system, which can lead to disrupted sleep, resulting in a feeling of unusual tiredness.

Increased resting heart rate

A normal heart rate is 60–100 beats per minute. Take your pulse before you get out of bed in the morning. If it’s unusually high or low, you could be overtraining.

Overuse injuries

Muscle soreness for a day or two after exercise is normal, but if you find you’re always sore or are developing common overuse injuries (such as tendonitis or stress fractures), you could be training too much.

Signs of working out inefficiently:

Not seeing any progress

If you’ve been working out for over a month and have not seen any gains in strength or endurance (depending on what your goals are), it could be because your workouts aren’t efficient. Increase the intensity of your workouts by going faster or longer, or lifting heavier weights. You might need to up your efforts to start seeing results.

Spending over an hour at the gym

It doesn’t take a long time to get a good workout in. Again, depending on your goals, you might only need 30–45 minutes in the gym. Decrease your breaks between sets and really focus on what you’re there to do: work out. Your heart rate should be up and you should be moving. Sitting around too much, checking your phone, or chatting while not moving may be making your workouts less effective.