I am going to stick my neck out here and say around 10 minutes minimum to around 40 minutes maximum, with 20-30 minutes being optimum/average.

In my book this goes for all sorts of planned exercise, from cardio-vascular like running, or weights sessions or even my favoured variety of muscle control exercises.

Why do I say these figures? Well, from personal observation and a little research.

Around 10 minutes seems to be the norm for a minimum amount of exercise to bring on a “feel good factor”. It certainly is for me and the research indicates that this is so for most.

I advocate concentration on the exercise that you are doing and I think that it is difficult to maintain that concentration for more than 30-40 minutes. And when you lose concentration, then the boredom factor kicks in. Exercising when you are bored is counter-productive in that it will make it harder for you to keep up with your programme.

There is another factor when exercising more strenuously, like when running for example. That is that the body starts to produce Endorphins when it thinks it may start to experience damage. Endorphins are natural pain killers. I won’t go into all the technical stuff here. You can find all that on sites like Wikipedia.

But, for your normal day to day exercise programme, I advocate listening to your body, and if your body is listening to itself and starting to produce pain killers in response to damage done or imminent damage, then you have done enough!

That is not to say that someone who insistent on doing a Marathon, for example, should immediately abandon the idea, far from it. You should do what you have set your heart on. I am just talking about Easy Fitness, for those who just want that!

Before I go, there is one more thing about Endorphins. They can bring on a feeling of euphoria (the “Runners High”). Sounds great doesn’t it? Well yeah, but not if it is masking damage to your body! Also it can become addictive. Your body increasingly accommodates the Endorphins so that you need to exercise longer and harder in order to feed that addiction, thus increasing the chances of more serious damage to your body.

On the whole I prefer the Easy Fitness route.

I think one of the reasons that many people do not get as much as they should out of an exercise session as they should (or want!) is a lack of real concentration on the task at hand. I touched on this in Your body wants what you want for it!

You may think you are concentrating, but are you really listening to your body? It is relatively easy to have your goals in mind – what you want to look like; what you want to be able to do; how you want to feel etc. – but whilst exercising, particularly when contracting muscles or stretching then you really must concentrate on the moment – a) to avoid doing any damage to yourself and b) to achieve the effect you want.

This means knowing precisely how the involved body part is feeling and reacting. How contracted or stretched is it? how tired is it? is it warm or cold? is it moving smoothly when required or is it shaking at all?

Real concentration on all these issues is fundamental to the effectiveness of your exercise session. If you apply this level of concentration and listen to your body you will find that you will have allowed your body to design and monitor an optimum session for itself. One that does not include too many or too few exercises or repetitions and is intense enough but not too intense.

Learn to listen to your body.

Well that depends on what you are doing doesn’t it?

If you are doing strenuous cardio stuff like running then the wisdom is at least twice a week with three times a week being the optimum. You certainly shouldn’t run EVERY day.

Likewise, if you are exercising your muscles to breakdown, as in weight training, then the muscles need time to repair and grow and this takes longer than 24 hours. So every other day would seem good.

Now I try to run a bit, but do not spend to much time at it or I get bored, so I might do a 20 or 30 minute run every now and then and shorter runs with a few sprints (or what passes for a sprint in my case) in between. Seems to do the trick.

But with my principles of Easy Fitness and Easy Exercise in mind, I exercise every day with a variety of muscle control exercises and muscle (not joint!) stretching (I don’t do weights any more – not that I ever did much really). They don’t damage the muscles like weight training and really do tone the muscles well, and don’t take too long either.

Bear in mind that my aim is to be fit enough and look and feel good enough to support my social lifestyle without being a complete fitness fanatic.

One of my pleasures in life is my frequent visits to the pub (for social reasons of course!).

I see a lot of people down there in various physical conditions.  Some of them, and other people I know, go to the gym (they say on a regular basis – I believe them!).  I have to say that, while they don’t look exclusively terrible, very few look what I would consider great either.  Why is that?

I suspect that the ones that get most out of it really concentrate and focus on what they are doing and trying to achieve without exercising to the point of boredom.

So what about the others? –  Well those that do exercise to the point of boredom are going to give up sooner or later anyway.  That just leaves a number who really don’t look like it is doing much for them!  And, if that situation continues then, unless they are simply using the gym for social reasons, then they will give up as well.

I think the main thing about all this is in the area of intention and concentration.  The gym cannot possibly be the sum and end all of your fitness and body shape aims unless you can really concentrate on the task at hand (yeah, forget the TV, audio etc – and yeah, that goes for runners too!).

Your body will respond when you give it your undivided attention. Otherwise it’s like looking away or behind someone when you are supposed to be talking to them – not the best way to communicate is it?

Your body wants what you want for it!  So mean it.

I overheard a conversation between a group of friends of varying ages today.  One of the elder ones (the oldest I believe) is in his mid eighties and has a few health problems mainly associated with a foot problem.

As I understand it, part of the medical advice he had was to generally try to get a bit fitter and as walking is a problem for him at the moment he was advised to do a few light exercises.  Fine, I am sure – or rather I hope – that whatever the advice was, it would have been sensitive to his age and condition.  But one thing worried me:-

He has absolutely no tone in his abdominal muscles (that is obvious, he probably doesn’t have too much tone in others also).  I was concerned, because apparently he had been advised to do sit-ups to address this issue – that’s easy exercise??.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I would recommend sit-ups for ANYONE just starting on an exercise regime, let alone an 85 year old who obviously has not exercised for many a year.  In fact I don’t think I would recommend sit-ups at all.

What do you think?

I remember a radio show a few years ago which was a discussion program on the subject of popular weight loss diets.

The participants in this programme were the presenter, various advocates of different diet regimes, and a Professor of Nutrition at one of our (UK) universities.

The programme started with the presenter introducing everyone and then asking each advocate to state the case and present  evidence for their diet in turn, allowing time for the others to cross examine, argue, refute, agree with them or whatever.

You can imagine that there was a fair amount of heated disagreement, but any comment from the professor was completely absent.

At the end of the show, before signing off, the presenter thanked the participants and then said “Professor , you have said nothing throughout, do you have any comment to make before we finish?”

There was a pause, and then he answered – “I have listened to all this with interest.  But, the body is a chemical factory whose task is to turn raw material into energy.  And, frankly, it doesn’t care much what the raw material is”

End of programme – end of story!

Apart from their obvious task of carting us around by inflicting forces on our bony bits by tweaking tendons and things, muscles have quite a lot to do with our general well-being.

• Without them we would fall into a heap!
• They circulate blood
• They improve our metabolism so we are more disposed towards losing fat
• They have a lot to do with our shape

So if you want to look good, feel good and get away with being a bit bad with your lifestyle – exercise your muscles!

One of the things that bothers people about many forms of muscle exercise is “how many reps?”.

Well, I remember a few (quite a few!) years ago, reading a book by a (Dr.) Someone who had worked on systems for keeping astronauts as fit as possible in space.

He stated that it was the first repetition of any form of exercise that gave the most physiological benefit, after that the effect lessened rapidly.

The message being that often 2 reps would be sufficient to maintain muscle fitness and after about 4 or 5 the gains were so small that it was not worth the time and effort – you would be better off doing something else.

I go along with this! – few reps but done with real concentration are much better than dozens without concentration and “good form”.

How about that for easy fitness!

Can’t see a runner getting much out of just doing 2 paces in training though.

So many people start on some form of exercise routine, full of enthusiasm, only to give up months, weeks, days or sometimes even after the first session – why?

Not because it hurts or costs too much, but usually because “I don’t have the time right now”, “It’s more important for me to do something else”, “What’s the payback – I don’t see any results!”  These are thinly disguised ways of saying that the exercises are not really an acceptable part of your lifestyle ie they are boring.

Well boredom comes in many forms and pretty much any repetitive activity will become boring  – so how to offset it?

Human beings are strange creatures.  On the one hand, they need a certain amount of routine to function comfortably and on the other they are easily bored.

I think the answer might lie in the idea that people do not have to spend to much time on keeping fit, but they do have to concentrate whilst they are doing it.  Something I have called “Easy Fitness”.

What do you think?

Easy Fitness is the main theme of this site.  But of course “easy” doesn’t mean “no effort at all”, otherwise nothing would happen!

I don’t know about you, but I do NOT want to spend punishing hours exercising when I could be “out and about”. And I definitely don’t want to be on a diet of water, fruit juice, lettuce and lentils or whatever.  In fact I don’t really want to be on a diet at all.

I want my system to be inclusive rather than exclusive.

You see, I like to pursue an active social life, a lot of it in pubs, bars and restaurants – and I find it a whole lot more fun if I feel good about myself.  I want to feel good – I want to look good (well, as good as I can for my age), but mostly I want to enjoy myself.

However, in terms of fitness, I realise that “no effort at all” is not an option. So, whatever I do to offset the ravages of my lifestyle has to be “time and effort effective”.

Go to PhilsBelt Home and you will get a much better idea of what this is all about.  There is also a questionnaire where you can register your views if you want.

I have coined the phrase “fitness non fanatic”, really to explain that whilst fitness is an important attribute to enhance a lifestyle it is not an end in itself (rather like money not being an end in itself, it’s what you can do with it that counts!).  So any method of exercise that ends up detracting from the quality of your lifestyle rather than enhancing it is doomed to failure – hating what you are doing ain’t much fun!

Please keep a handle on this site and this blog.  Your comments will be very valuable whether you currently exercise at all or not.  Really, I would rather not even use the word “exercise”, but I guess that’s what it is and I can’t think of another word that doesn’t sound a bit weak.

Just need to get the message of Easy Fitness over, so that others can share a few ideas that I have and see what happened to me.  Let me know what you think.

Lots more to come…..