By Mat Munro
The weather is warming up and with that our motivation to get fit and healthy usually spikes to a new level. For those that have never been a big exerciser or just went into hibernation over the long winter this can be a time when we are most at risk of getting injured. Diving in head first to the amount of exercise you used to do or what your friend or partner does may just lead to injuries or niggles which then put a halt to any progress you may have made so far and can lead to people giving up on their new found health goals.
To begin your new exercise adventure you should first set yourself a goal that you can then aim and build towards. This may be something as simple as you want to be able to jog 5 km or ride 15 km without stopping by the end of November, if you have done some running in the past you might be aiming at something bigger such as running 10 km and completing it in under 50mins. Whatever your personal goal is we need to then break it down into smaller chunks to be able to get there.
If your end goal is 3 months away then look at focusing on 2 weeks at a time. Set yourself a goal for the first 2 weeks to focus on and work towards that.
Each week a good rule of thumb to manage our work load is to not increase by more than 10% each week, and compare what we have done in the past month on average relative to the current week. If we keep things consistent, then we will have fun and be able to reach our goals whilst minimising some risk for injury.