Okay, so I'm not quite yet ready to hit the gym and sweat in front of people, but I am kicking butt on my Wii Fit and making good progress.
I started out doing an hour a day like this:
10 min. yoga
15 min. strength training
20 min. aerobics
15 min. balance exercises
Now, it's more like this:
5 min. yoga
10 min. strength training
35 min. aerobics
10 min. balance exercises
I'm wondering if I'm making the most effective use of my time, spending 35 minutes on aerobics. Sometimes, it's more like 40 minutes of aerobics and I skip yoga altogether. Really just depends on how much WORK I'm excited to do, etc. (Seeing as I'm totally obsessed with my Wii Fit, I'm really having a blast and the excitement levels seem to be high every day.)
I look at it this way:
Before now, I was a full-on couch potato. My exercise regimen consisted of walking from the sofa to the kitchen, from the sofa to the bathroom, from the sofa to the bed. You get the idea.
So, the fact that I'm doing ANYTHING makes me VERY happy and I'm definitely seeing results. Yay!
Okay, so my thought was, at first, that I needed to build up some strength so that my muscles--especially the big, really strong upper thigh ones and glutes from decades of dance, decades ago--would burn fuel more efficiently WHEN I did other forms of exercise, like aerobics. (And, again, I'm not too worried about doing it "wrong," since ALL of it is me MOVING again, which is a very positive thing.)
But now I'm having so much fun with the aerobics and I SO enjoy the big sweat, that I'm sometimes not doing any strength training and I'm wondering if that's a good idea. I mean, I need to be sure my muscles ARE getting stronger, so that they burn better during all activities, right?
So, I guess this is the "weight training vs. cardio" question, huh? Yeah.
Any opinions?
(I can elaborate on exactly what types of exercise I'm doing, if you need more specific information. I just realized as I was typing this that it's probably a pretty common question: "Weights vs. cardio--which is more efficient use of my exercise hour?")
Okay. Any feedback is welcome. Thanks in advance!!