## you are looking at your Fitness master

Chapters

- 1. Say yes to fitness
- 2. Setting your goal
- 3. A word of choices
- 4. Testing your Fitness
- 5. Your personal Fitness program
- 6. Burn Calories
- 7. Ownzone training
- 8. Its not only excersize!

1. SAY YES TO FITNESS

Our bodies are made for moving. Unfortunately, the modern way of life is a sedentary one. Our forefathers sweated it out in the fields to survive, while, today, our work consists mostly of sitting on a chair, tapping away at a computer. This explains why fitness has become such an important lifestyle choice for so many of us. Exercise makes us feel good. Exercise makes us strong and healthy. Saying yes to fitness is to increase quality of life. Here are the main benefits associated with exercise.

• it improves overall health and fitness

• it increases well-being, and reduces stress

With increased physical fitness, your body’s ability to take in and use oxygen increases. Your muscles become stronger, your joints more fl exible, and the amount of fat in your body decreases. Men and women of any age will experience these benefits.
For you to be successful, you should make exercise a constant part of your life. Exercise needs to be regular for you to reap its benefits. This is probably the first golden rule. Another key principle is determining the amount and type of exercise that best corresponds to your personal fitness needs. How often you should exercise, how long and at which intensity level are important issues taken up in this guidebook. Since our bodies are psychophysical entities, the mind will need to be in on it, as well. Knowing when to relax and recover is as important a part of fitness as the exercise itself. This guidebook provides you with advice to help keep you motivated and on-track.

2. SETIING YOUR GOAL

To select appropriate goals for yourself, start by giving thought to why you want to exercise in the first place. Is it because you want to become fitter or lose weight? Or maybe improving the state of both your body and mind is what you are after? You might want to increase your endurance capacities or are just concerned about preserving your health. There may be a variety of reasons for you taking up exercise, and they are all valid. But an important part of achieving goals is knowing which ones to choose and how to define them.
Goals should be

• specific, not general

• challenging, but achievable

• divided into short-term subgoals
Goals that are too general, vague or unrealistic will leave you feeling frustrated and demoralized. Such goals will probably lead you to discontinue your exercise regimen, or make you exercise in an ineffective or counterproductive manner. Crosscheck the benefits of a specific type of exercise with your personal goals to make sure you are doing the right thing. None of us has time to exercise the wrong way. Goals don’t have to be too rigid or easy. They should challenge you and give you a clear direction, but you should be able to revise them or clarify them as you go along.
A quantifiable subgoal is something you can measure, like heart rate:

• Record your average heart rate at a constant workload performance of, for example, 10-15 minutes. If you’re using fitness equipment like a treadmill, a stationary bicycle or rowing machine, a certain load (resistance) and rate can be set. As you get more fit, your average heart rate drops for a constant performance. If you don’t have access to such equipment, you can instead run on an outdoor track or use a set of stairs. Simply walk/jog at a certain speed and for a certain length of time or journey.

• As you get fitter over time, your average heart rate gets lower and lower. Correspondingly, your speed increases or time to walk/jog decreases at a certain heart rate.

3. A WORLD OF CHOICES

Choosing the type of exercise that suits you will depend mainly on personal goals and preferences. To find out what these are, start off by asking yourself a few questions.

• Why do I want to exercise?

• Do I like exercising alone or in groups? Indoors or outdoors?

• What part of my body do I want to work on?

• What gives me pleasure?
Knowing what fitness benefits come with different types of exercise will help make your choice a little easier. Ideally, you should be combining different types of exercise to increase benefits.
Generally speaking, exercise can be divided into the following types:
Cardio
This is aerobic exercise that strengthens the heart. It makes you breathe hard and sweat. Typical examples are Fitness walking, Nordic walking, jogging, indoor cycling, swimming, group exercise etc.
Strength training and body toning
This is exercise that increases muscle strength, e.g. training with free weights or resistance machines, alone or in groups.
Flexibility
These are types of exercise that improve range of motion by stretching muscles, tendons and ligaments; they improve joint function and muscular performance and may prevent injury.
Body & Mind
Exercise that engages the mind as well as the body is usually referred to as Body & Mind. It is practiced in deep concentration and often targets core body muscles. It improves body alignment, posture and balance. It also promotes relaxation and all-round well-being. Typical examples are Yoga, Pilates and Taiji.
Next, you can give a thought to where you prefer exercising. This increases your choices even further.
Health or fitness clubs
It’s social and offers a wide range of workout options: treadmills, stationary bikes, group fitness classes like dancing, martial arts, resistance machines, Yoga etc.
Home
It’s safe and convenient. Popular home exercise equipment include stairclimbers, treadmills, stationary bikes and elliptical motion trainers.
Outdoors
The sky’s the limit. Fitness walking, Nordic walking, jogging, cycling or inline skating, the choice is virtually endless.

4. TESTING YOUR FITNESS

It is important to consider your current fitness level before you begin designing your exercise plan. Having this information will help you choose a more accurate and realistic goal for yourself, and, in fact, will infl uence the entire makeup of your program. But what does being fit mean? And how can it be tested?
What is fitness?
There are four main elements that define physical fitness:

• aerobic (cardiovascular) fitness: your ability to take in and supply your body with oxygen

• muscular fitness: muscle strength and endurance

• fl exibility: ability to move joints and stretch muscles

• body composition: the proportion of body fat to fat-free mass.
All these are important elements to consider when analyzing your personal fitness. But aerobic fitness is a central component. Increasing your aerobic fitness has many health benefits, and can best be improved with exercise that dynamically employs large muscle groups, such as Nordic walking, jogging and cycling.
All these are important elements to consider when analyzing your personal fitness. But aerobic fitness is a central component. Increasing your aerobic fitness has many health benefits, and can best be improved with exercise that dynamically employs large muscle groups, such as Nordic walking, jogging and cycling.
Testing your aerobic fitness
There are numerous ways to test your aerobic fitness, ranging from sophisticated lab tests to simple field tests. All are designed to measure or predict maximal oxygen uptake. The easiest way to test your own fitness level is the Polar Fitness Test™.
The Polar Fitness Test
You can perform the Polar Fitness Test* easily and reliably in the privacy of your own home. All you need is your Polar Heart Rate Monitor and five, short minutes to get a measure of your current fitness level. It is a safe test, even if you are unfit, as it does not require any physical exertion whatsoever. In fact, you should perform the test at complete rest. The test is based on several variables (heart rate, heart rate variability, age, body weight, gender and level of physical activity). The result of the Polar Fitness Test is OwnIndex®. This is a value that is comparable to your maximal oxygen uptake (VO2max), a commonly used descriptor of aerobic fitness. OwnIndex rises as you get fitter, and can range from about 25 for sedentary or unfit persons to 95, a level reached by some Olympic-level endurance athletes.

5. YOUR PERSONAL FITNESS PROGRAM

The makeup of your exercise program depends on your current fitness level and fitness goals. You know where you are at now, and where you want to be in the future. What you still need is a plan to reach your target, a plan that will let you know how, what and when. The Polar Keeps U Fit™ - Own Workout Program is designed just for that. Polar Keeps U Fit - Own Workout Program is included in Polar F11 and F55 fitness heart rate monitors. Alternatively, you can register at www.PolarFitnessTrainer.com for the Polar Fitness Trainer web service. This grants access to the Polar Keeps U Fit - Own Workout Program and provides interesting and useful information and training tips.
The Polar Keeps U Fit - Own Workout ProgramThe elements in a Polar Keeps U Fit - Own Workout Program include

• how often - the number of exercise sessions per week

• how hard - the intensity of each exercise session (as heart rate)

• how long - the duration of each exercise session
These comprise your exercise dose. The type of sports or exercise is, of course, free for you to choose.
The Polar Keeps U Fit - Own Workout Program will recommend an individual exercise dose per week according to your fitness level and goal. An exercise dose is expressed in kilocalories to be burnt during one week, and is broken down into a specific number of exercise sessions per week, with assigned exercise duration, a heart rate target zone and kilocalorie target for every session.
The Polar Keeps U Fit - Own Workout Program is divided into three categories based on your personal exercise target: to maintain, improve or maximize aerobic fitness.

### Program target

### Maintain

This is a program to maintain the fi tness level you are currently at. Such a program requires not more than three exercise sessions a week. Since it is advisable to start out slowly, this program is also suitable for beginners or if you haven’t exercised in a long time. But even if your fi tness level is high, following a maintain program during recovery periods, for instance, will be benefi cial.

### Improve

If improving fi tness is your goal, then your exercise program will be about twice as demanding as a program to maintain fi tness at current level. For this, you will need to reserve time for more sessions per week, and some of the sessions will need to be longer and tougher.

### Maximize

A program that maximizes your fi tness level goes slightly towards what athletes do in their training. To move on from the Improve level, this program increases exercise volumes even further. Go for this program only after a 10-12 week period of regular training in maintain or improve volumes.

### Program intensity levels

### Heart rate measures intensity

Heart rate is an accurate measure for training intensity. Maximum heart rate, or HRmax, is the highest number of heartbeats per minute (bpm) achieved in an all-out effort. HRmax is a useful tool in determining training intensities, which can be expressed as percentages of HRmax.

### Heart Rate Target Zones

In the Polar Keeps U Fit - Own Workout Program, there are three different exercise zones with three different intensity levels. Each of these intensity levels corresponds to various health and fi tness improving mechanisms in your body.
In the Maintain program, the emphasis is on the moderate intensity zone including some exercising in lighter intensity. In Improve and Maximize programs, the main emphasis is on the moderate intensity zone, but a clearer combination of light as well as hard intensity zones are also included.

### The Polar Body Workout™

The Polar Body Workout* is a strength training routine that caters to all fi tness levels. A workout consists of one to three sets of a variety of strength movements using free weights or weight resistance equipment. Once activated in your wrist unit, the program provides a recommended number of sets, repetitions and weights. Sets and weights may be reduced or increased according to preference. Strength training should be made a part of any fi tness program. It defi nes muscles, tones the body and decreases body fat. So, if your exercise regimen is high on cardio, the Polar Body Workout will round it off nicely and give it a benefi cial kick.

6. BURN CALORIES

Calories are energy units, and the energy you burn is a measurement of the work your body does. Daily and weekly exercise targets can conveniently and easily be set in terms of kilocalories.
Knowing how many calories you burnt during your morning run, for instance, gives you information on how much (or little) you worked. Also, keeping tabs on calories is a great motivational tool. Aiming to burn e.g. 2000 kilocalories per week through exercise, for example, is a goal you can easily verify. Learning about how and how much your body burns calories during exercise is also useful for weight management.
The calorie counter in your Polar heart rate monitor counts the calories burnt during your exercise session, and saves the information as a running sum over as many exercise sessions as you choose. This way, you can crosscheck that information against your target, or for weight management, against the calories in your food.

### When do they burn?

The amount of calories burnt during exercise depends on workout duration and intensity, and your body weight. In other words, the longer an exercise session and the higher the intensity, the more calories will burn. A heavier person will burn more calories than a lighter person doing the same exercise. And men will burn more calories than women for the same exercise because men have more muscles. Moreover, calories burn more readily during exercise that employs large muscles, like rowing or running. Exercise that requires you to support your own weight will generally use up more energy than if weight is supported by equipment.

### What burns?

When you burn calories, your body uses fat and carbohydrates as sources of energy. The amount of fat burnt varies according to exercise intensity. Even though more calories burn at higher exercise intensity, the proportion of fat use of total energy expenditure is less than at lower intensities.
Here are a few examples of burnt kilocalories per hour for a person weighing 155 pounds / 70 kg:

7. OWNZONE TRAINING

### What is Polar OwnZone®

The unique Polar OwnZone* defi nes your personal exercise zone for effective and safe training. The OwnZone function guides you through your warm-up and, taking your present physical and mental condition into account, will automatically determine an individual exercise intensity zone, your OwnZone.

### How to use the Polar OwnZone

For effective and versatile training

• make use of the entire OwnZone range by exercising mostly at moderate and lower intensities and, if you are in good condition, occasionally, at hard intensity.
To adjust the training zones of your Polar Keeps U Fit - Own Workout Program

• your OwnZone can be determined for every individual exercise session, but should especially be used when changing exercise environment or exercise type, or if you are unsure about your present physical or mental state.

### Why Train With Polar OwnZone?

Listening to and interpreting the signals your body sends during physical exertion is an important part of getting fi t. Since warm-up routines differ for different types of exercise, and since your physical and mental state may also vary from day to day (e.g. due to stress or illness), using the OwnZone function for every session guarantees the most effective heart rate target zone for that particular type of exercise and day.
Training within the heart rate limits of your Polar OwnZone:

• improves overall fi tness

• supports your weight management goals

• decreases stress levels

• improves health

• boosts general performance

8.IT’S NOT ONLY EXERCISE!

Regardless of the type of sport you choose, warm-up, cool-down and stretching are as important to fi tness as exercise itself. Including recovery periods in your weekly schedule is crucial to fi tness, as well. To maximize the benefi ts to your heart and safeguard against injuries, be sure your workout session always includes all three of the following phases:

1. Warm-up

2. Exercise in target heart rate zone

3. Cool-down and stretching.

### Warm-up

A proper warm-up prior to an exercise session prepares your heart and muscles for the action that lies ahead. It stimulates blood circulation and makes muscles more fl exible. It is considered a crucial part of injury prevention. Begin each workout slowly, giving your body a chance to warm up for 5 to 10 minutes at a heart rate below your selected target zone. Then gradually increase the intensity of your exercise until your heart rate reaches your target zone.

### Exercise in Target Zone

Once your heart rate has reached your target zone, maintain that intensity for a set amount of time (typically 20 minutes or more), making sure you stay inside your target zone. It’s important to be sensitive to your body’s reactions while you exercise. Be sure to keep your breathing regular. If you feel exceptionally breathless or dizzy, you’re probably working too hard (and pushing your heart rate beyond your target zone), so ease up a little.

### Cool-Down and Stretching

Cool down by gradually reducing the intensity of your exercise to bring your heart rate back down to below your target zone. Then, stretch the main muscles you just worked to prevent injury and stiffness. For example, stretch your leg muscles after a run. And keep the following guidelines in mind while stretching:

• Don’t bounce

• Stretch slowly and steadily

• Hold the stretch for a slow count of ten

• Don’t push yourself into a painful stretch

### Recovery

Exercise puts positive stress on the body by forcing it to function outside its comfort zone. During rest, the body will make adjustments to better face the challenge next time you exercise. These adjustments are what will make your body stronger. In other words, fi tness improves not during exercise but during rest. Giving your body ample time to recover from exercise is therefore crucial to getting fi t. Disregarding the need to rest and recover is quite common practice and may lead to injury, overtraining or fatigue. Resting properly isn’t the same as skipping workouts or being lazy. Resting is about giving your body the time it needs to get stronger and fi tter. With the Polar OwnRelax™, you can measure how rested your body is.

### Polar OwnRelax

For most of us, a hectic and stressful pace at work, school and home is a rule rather than an exception. Unless a conscious effort is made to keep stress levels manageable, our energies can seriously be sapped leaving us tired and listless. The Polar OwnRelax* is a feature that reminds you of the importance of taking a break every day to relax and recharge. During an easy 5-minute Polar relaxation session, measurements are taken of your heart rate and heart rate variability, resulting in your OwnRelax. This is a value that corresponds to your body’s state of relaxation.
Take the test several times under similar conditions over a longer period of time. This way you can calculate your average OwnRelax and monitor changes over time. As a general rule, the higher the OwnRelax and the lower the heart rate (bpm), the more relaxed and better rested your body is.