Student Guide to working out - Exercises

No good at running? Don’t worry, a run need not be at sprint pace, just try a light jog for as long as you can and then build on it. I found a good way of improving my fitness was to create a small track, mine was about 400 meters. I would round the track say twice a night for the first week. Then the second week I added another lap and each week I would add a lap until I had reached about a half hour jog. I would then start working on my speed; once I had reduced the half hour jog to say 20 minutes while still covering the same distance I would then increase the distance so I was once again running for half an hour.

If you get bored just running round then try doing sprints in the run. I used lamp posts as marks and would say sprint 3 lampposts and then jog 3 and repeat until I couldn’t sprint anymore and then jog gently for say 15 minutes. I advise taking a Walkman with you too. I find that with music blurring down my ear holes I can run for over an hour without getting bored.

The most important thing to do when trying to improve your fitness is to keep record of what your doing. So write down how far you’ve run and in what time and then try to be constantly improving on this. Remember that you don’t have to improve hugely each time, just make sure you don’t go backwards.

Also you don’t have to run, you can get on your bike or your skates, just do something that increases your heart rate and keeps it at an increased level for a period of time.

Ok, so you can now run the London marathon in 10 minutes without breaking sweat but you can’t lift your own body weight and can’t afford a gym membership. There are plenty of strength building exercises you can do in the comfort of your room.

You can even do them naked in your room, which for some reason the gym wouldn’t let me do, not that I ever tried or anything. Anyway back to the point, or leaving the point in its pants, whatever. Press-ups, pull-ups, burpee’s, sit-ups, skipping, dips and masturbation can all be done at home with no cost. And just in case you don’t know what these are I’ll take the time to explain…

Press-ups: For this you need to lie on the floor with the palms of your hands on the ground shoulder width apart and in line with your man boobs. Push your self up keeping your back straight so that all you body weight is on your toes and the palms of your hands.

Make sure this is performed slowly, if you become good then you can hold yourself at the bottom of the exercise so that your body is not touching the floor before your push yourself back up. This exercise will greatly improve your upper body strength. Just remember keep you back straight, all the effort should be put through your chest, shoulders and arms, not your lower back.

Sit-ups: Everyone thinks they can do these but you’ll be surprised how many people really don’t know how to do a decent sit-up. The main point about working your abs is that they are no different to any muscle in you body in terms of how you should train them. If you wanted bigger arms would you pick up a dumbbell and do 50 sets of 200 every day? No you would train your arms twice a week doing low reps but hard reps so that you can feel your muscles working. Your abs are the same.

You need to make each rep count. The other important thing to remember is that you abs should not act like a hinge, more like a concertina. By this I mean that when you are doing sit-ups you should be compressing your abs like a concertina and not just folding them in two like a hinge. To get this effect you should hold you hands behind your head as to give your neck support, remember you should not be able to feel strain in you neck if you are performing the exercise correctly, then you should simply compress you mid section by lifting the upper part of your back off the floor. By doing this you should be able to feel your stomach muscles working. Don’t do anymore than say 20 reps, if you aren’t getting the desired effect then hold the exercise for a few seconds when you abs are compressed, this will make it a little bit harder.

Skipping: Hands up if you don’t know how to skip. Again skipping if something everyone thinks they can do but it always makes me laugh watching some people prance around like 3 year olds with a skipping rope. Skipping is a very effective exercise, it not only works your calves but also makes you sweat and burn calories. The key to skipping is not to bend you legs and not to move your legs independent of one another. Your legs should be moving with one another in exactly the same way, and you should be bouncing off your toes. Your arms should not be flapping around like flags in the wind, they should be kept straight and rigid and your wrists should be making the rope move. Finally you will probably suck at first but keep practicing and eventually you will get the hang of it and you can start doing your rocky impressions.

Dips: For this you either need dip bars or two stable chairs. Don’t know what dip bars are? Then you probably don’t have any, they are basically two parallel horizontal bars than you can do dips on, simple eh? Anyway I don’t think I can explain this particularly well without pictures, so I’ll get some up soon.

Burpee’s: Again with the pictures, but these are very very good and I’ll show you soon.

Pull-ups: There are many different types of pull-ups you can do and all vary in difficulty and the muscles they work.

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