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The best sport for you is the one that you will be able to practice with greatest consistency, regardless of the expected results.
If you feel you lack consistency and drive when it comes to physical activity, you should practice a sport that is fun and has a playful side to it, such as skating, tennis, ball games, aerobic exercise, dancing, etc., perhaps even in a group, rather than alone. The company and the fun will help ease the fatigue.
If your temperament and will are strong, you will probably be more satisfied by practicing a sport that allows you to monitor results (in terms of physical condition) across time. Examples include body-building, martial arts, and swimming.
When choosing a sport always consider your physical characteristics. For instance, a person who stands 2 meters and is long-limbed does not predisposed to practice judo. On the other hand, an individual who is 1.5 meters tall should avoid venturing into basketball. If you ignore this simple principle, you will risk incurring frustrations with your sport.
If your objective is to lose weight, you will need to orient your choice towards cardiovascular and resistance sports (requiring protracted efforts of medium intensity), such as: jogging, cycling, standard free-body exercise, low-impact aerobics, etc….You will need to pay attention to your diet, because your appetite will increase together with your energy consumption through exercise.
If your goal is muscle strengthening, you should seek a sport that requires brief and intense efforts. Examples include: Exercise with weights, body-building, and gymnastics.
By its very nature, your body tends to adjust to external impulses and environmental changes and can easily adapt to the exercise regimen you choose, as long as the frequency and intensity of training sessions is increased gradually.
Practicing a sport, even as a strict amateur, requires some planning. It is advisable to set targets to be reached within specific timeframes. The more realistic the targets are (based on one's physical characteristics), the more rapid and gratifying the results!
Targets should be set for the short-, medium, and long-term. Make a special effort to set realistic targets for yourself, especially when you begin practicing a sport, and mistrust anyone who promises you "miraculous" results within a short time.
The frequency of your training sessions should be such that it allows you to fully recover your energy during the interval between one session and the next. Your initial enthusiasm and drive, as you start practicing a sport are positive impulses; however, please remember that an untrained body is fit to sustain, on average, two weekly "strengthening" sessions and three weekly "weight-loss" sessions. By beginning your activity at this pace, you will avoid overstraining your body.
You will need to increase the intensity of your efforts session by session in order to obtain results. Keeping up the same routine (i.e., the same level of effort) session after session will effectively allow you to maintain your condition, without however improving it.
In raising your level of effort from one training session to the next, you are advised to apply one - and only one - of the following three principles: (i) "proceed from the technically easiest exercise to the technically hardest one"; OR (ii) "proceed from the least to the most intense effort"; OR, finally (iii) "proceed from the least to the most protracted (i.e., longest) effort".
If you chose a complex sport (in terms of technique, rules, safety measures, etc.), it is relatively necessary that an instructor assist you. Examples of such sports include: Martial arts; gymnastics; dancing; sky-diving, among others.
Specifically, you will need an instructor whenever one or more of the following conditions applies:
Your daily energy supply is guaranteed by the following three substances, which need to be present in your diet in different proportions:
Sources of vitamins, minerals and fibers are primarily fruits and vegetables. These foods are important, but their value in terms of energy supply is a function of the amount of carbohydrates they contain (which is usually limited).
Mix of nutrients proportions. We should make sure that our daily diet include a mix of nutrients in such proportions as to ensure a proper supply of energy to the body. Because of the complexity of the biochemical processes that regulate the absorption of energy by the body, the drastic reduction in the intake of foods containing any one of the above nutrients (e.g., carbohydrates) can cause harmful metabolic imbalances.
Our dietary regimen includes the three main meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner) and snacks of different kinds.
Main meals that precede physical activity - be it work- or sports-related - should include a high proportion of carbohydrates (pasta, rice, bread, etc.) and a lesser share of fats (cheeses, dairy products, etc.). These nutrients provide the essential energy supply we require. We should avoid foods containing large amounts of protein prior to physical activity. An excessively protein-based diet can be intoxicating, and cause - for example - the premature deterioration of the skin.
Main meals that follow any kind of physical activity should include protein-rich foods (meats, eggs, etc.). Proteins are in fact necessary to rebuild tissue that was "damaged" through our physical effort. These meals should also include vegetables and fruit, which are both required to replenish the minerals we may have lost through sweat.
All meals that are not eaten prior to - or after - physical activity should ideally contain the standard desirable mix of the three basic nutrients; these meals should also be smaller on average, in order to avoid the accumulation of fats in the body.
Snacks should be primarily composed of carbohydrates (bread, biscuits, fruit, etc.). The closer the snack to training time, the smaller it should be.
If your goal is to lose weight you will need to reduce the number of snacks you have, or even give up snacks altogether. You may even also to reduce the size of your three regular meals, taking care not to eliminate from your diet all of the foods that contain one of the three key nutrients. Please note that it is unhealthy to lose more than approximately 2% of one's total body weight in any 10-day period. While it is possible to lose weight faster, by doing so you will find it very difficult to maintain your "ideal" weight stable, once you have attained it.
If your objective is physical strengthening
you will need to break-up your daily regimen into several snacks (or "complementary" meals), in order to ease the absorption of nutrients across any 24-hour period.
You may also need to increase the size of your regular, main meals and further increase your-protein intake during meals that are distant from your training time.
Any changes to your diet need to be gradual and phased. In this way, your body be able to adapt and you will maintain the results you obtained from your exercise.
A further word of caution: Every time you regain the weight you just lost following a so-called "miracle-diet", it will be as if you had undergone a diet to gain rather than to lose weight, because your body will become accustomed to recuperating the weight it lost, and with interest…because each time you will regain a little more than the previous time.
These are highly concentrated nutrients containing some of the substances that are found in regular foods, such as: Proteins, amino-acids, minerals, vitamins and fiber.
Dietary supplements are useful to ensure the proper intake of nutrients by the body beyond what is supplied through our regular meals. In some cases, dietary supplements can replace normal foods.
These products often contain chemically synthesized substances , such as preservatives colors and others. In some individuals, these are not well-tolerated.
Dietary supplements are not at all essential in amateur sports even though they are often advertised as such. By following a sound dietary regimen, supplements can be avoided altogether.
Dietary supplements must be chosen carefully and consumed wisely, because their indiscriminate use can be harmful to the body.
As any other substance, when consumed in excess, dietary supplements are simply expulsed by the body, without generating any benefits and placing undo strain on kidneys and liver.
Amino-acid and protein supplements, can be useful when practicing competitive sports that require considerable muscle growth, particularly when - for whatever reason - it is not possible to maintain an adequate dietary regimen.
Mineral supplements, are appropriate when practicing endurance sports for several hours at a time, and can help the athlete avoid muscle cramps when sweating profusely (heavy perspiration is the main cause of cramps).
Those who train for up to one and a half hours, even if they sweat profusely, can easily avoid mineral supplements. They may simply choose to increase the mineral content of the meal that immediately follows the training session and drink plenty of water.
Anabolic substances - even those that are taken by mouth - are NOT dietary supplements. They are real drugs (in the pharmaceutical sense) which, intervening at the level of our endocrine system, may alter our hormonal balance, causing the emergence of potentially serious - or even irreversible - physical malfunctions (the GH hormone is an example of this). Only a physician specialized in endocrinology can reduce the risks associated with the intake of anabolic substances, but their use is in any case not advised.
Rest constitutes the anabolic (i.e., "building") phase of our daily cycle. It is required to allow the body to restore - rapidly and at a progressing pace - the energy and tissue that were consumed or depleted during the day's physical activity.
Training, on the other hand, constitutes the catabolic ("breakdown") phase of our cycle. It is by undergoing this breakdown through training that the body actually stimulates itself to "restore" energy and tissue more and more effectively (during rest), thereby improving muscle mass and increasing strength.
In the absence of adequate rest any training program is destined to fail or - worse yet - actually reduce both the body's overall physical performance and the response of its immune system.
When training sessions are too intense or too frequent the body cannot regenerate enough energy between sessions, so that instead of improving our performance over time and feeling better, we actually feel worse. This is called "over-training" and typical symptoms include insomnia, loss of appetite and nervousness.
When "over-training" sets in our best option is to suspend physical activity for a period of one-two weeks, in order to allow the body to recover completely. We will then need to resume our training program at a level of intensity slightly lower than when we left off. Just as a track runner who cannot expect to jump over the obstacle from the exact point where he fell, we will also need to take "a step back".
Specific symptoms of over-training
The human body requires ideally eight consecutive hours of sleep in order to sustain a training regimen aimed at constant progress over time, as well as a normal working/professional activity.
You should always wear athletic cotton socks (at
least 70% cotton) that reduce sweat accumulation and thus keep the foot as
dry as possible.
This will prevent you from contracting "athlete's foot" and
other fungi.
Nylon and other synthetic fabrics should not be worn on the area of the crotch, in contact with our genitalia., These fabrics can cause vaginal infections (candidia vaginalis) in women and other fungi in both women and men.
In general, it is preferable to wear cotton, against the skin, especially when we perspire a lot. Synthetic materials can look good and be fashionable, but expose us to irritations of the skin.
In addition to changing our socks every day (of course!), we should also disinfect our gym shoes once a week with a sterilizing spray, in order to avoid to reduce or eliminate unpleasant odors.
At the gym, we should always carry a towel to wipe off sweat and to spread over benches and other equipment we use.
It is not always necessary to use soap or shampoo, when showering, if we train every day. When used in excess, detergents significantly weaken the skin's natural defenses, favoring the mycosis and fungi.
If we train five times/week, we could - for example - use a shower gel three times, and no detergent at all the remaining two times.
We should avoid walking barefoot when in locker rooms, because of the risk of planter's warts. Plastic flip-flops are preferable to wooden or leather ones, which absorb water.
Remember to empty your gym bag completely when you return home after each session.
If you are sure that you have the consistency to train at home (and have not been lured by the words of TV salesmen!), you may consider purchasing one or more pieces of equipment.
The best equipment is the multi-functional one, that will allow you to perform a number of "complete" movements basic exercises
Equipment that is based on elastics to ensure flexion and extension is not ideal. It does not guarantee a constant distribution of the effort during each repetition, and can be dangerous, especially when fatigue prevents us from executing the movement maintaining perfect form.
Machines based on weight plates are preferable, as long as the total number of plates is sufficient to train the larger muscles of the body, and (ii) there are sufficient plates to allow a gradual progression in the intensity of each exercise (when training certain muscles, increases of as little as one kg are advisable).
Equipment that is intended to support our entire body weight (cycling and rowing machines, benches, etc.) needs to be sturdy. Knobs, levers and other devices that regulate the setting (inclination, height) of these machines need to be well-built and assembled properly, so as to ensure the proper execution of exercises and prevent accidents.
Equipment that carries weight plates and disks (i.e. dumb bells, weight bars, etc.) needs to be built in such a way as to allow us to increase and decrease loads significantly, based on both the type of exercise and on our progress in the execution of each exercise over time.
Avoid buying single-weight dumb bells: they will quickly become useless to you.
Pay special attention to blocks and pins a frequent weak spot in much of the equipment currently available on the market. These blockage mechanisms must be relatively reliable, if accidents are to be avoided, particularly on machines that need to support our weight.
We should always test any machine or other equipment prior to purchase, to make sure that they meet the safety and functional criteria discussed above.
Above all, beware of TV sales! Much of the equipment offered is of sub-standard quality. TV salespeople, who usually know nothing at all about bio-mechanics and physiology, hide their pitches to the audience behind absurd "scientific" explanations about their products.
In electro-stimulation low-power electrodes are placed over the muscles and activated, in order to increase the muscles' overall performance (strength, resistance, volume, speed).
Benefits of electro-stimulation:
Drawbacks:
Overall electro-stimulation is primarily used as a post-traumatic therapy and, more rarely, in highly specialized training programs. In no case can electro-stimulation replace traditional exercise, which is the vehicle for strengthening, improved muscle tone, coordination, etc.
