Gradually increasing heart rate and effort

A good warm-up is vital at the start of every exercise session and has important safety considerations. A gradual warm-up helps to reduce the risk of chest pain and disturbances in your heart rhythm by allowing time for your coronary arteries to become as wide as possible thus maximising your blood supply and oxygen getting to your heart muscle.

Whilst exercising your heart will beat faster in order to supply more blood and oxygen to the working muscles. By gradually increasing the workload of your heart in an extended warm-up period it is able to safely meet those additional demands. Your warm-up will consist of:

- Gentle pulse-raising movements such as toe taps, heel digs, knee raises, hamstring curls and walking for approximately 5 minutes

- Some 10 second stretches of the main muscle groups remembering to keep the feet moving between stretches so that your heart rate doesn’t decrease due to standing still

- Finally we will re-warm with further pulse-raising movements, slightly more energetic than at the start of the warm-up reflecting an increase in intensity prior to moving into the conditioning element of your programme.

Maintain target heart rate & effort

This is the part of your programme where we will work on improving your cardiovascular fitness.

We will start with a mixture of cardiovascular work intervals with periods of Active Recovery (periods of lower intensity exercise) in between which allows you to achieve a greater amount of total conditioning than if you simply did continuous cardio exercises.

Your individualised programme will guide you from exercise to exercise and I will clearly demonstrate the safe and effective use of each piece of equipment. Gradually we will reduce the amount of Active Recovery exercises as your fitness levels improve until finally you are achieving 30 minutes of continuous cardio exercise.

At that point we will introduce some strength and muscular endurance exercises into your programme to further supplement your cardio exercises.

Gradually decrease heart rate & effort

It is vital to leave enough time at the end of any period of exercise for your body to cool down properly.

The Cool-Down part of the session will last a minimum of 10 minutes and the aim is to bring your body back towards it’s resting state gradually and safely.

A thorough Cool-Down reduces the risk of a sudden drop in your blood pressure which can make you feel light-headed and dizzy and also reduces the risk of disturbances in your heart rhythm – both of which could occur if you stop exercising suddenly.

The Cool-Down will consist of:

- 5 minutes slow walking gradually decreasing the intensity

- 5 minutes of stretching using the same exercises in the warm-up but holding each stretch for between 15-20 seconds. Keep feet moving at all times even between stretches. Stretching helps to reduce muscle soreness that may be caused by your exercise programme.