Define your Fitness Goal

More muscle strength can be achieved through resistance training, either by using weights or your own body weight. In addition to stronger muscles, resistance training can also improve bone density and strength.

You can increase muscle strength by choosing exercises that will overload your muscles with repetitions and weight. The workout should be done at least 1-2 times per week targeting different muscle groups.

Exercising with the goal of just staying healthy is easier than you think. A minimum of 30 minutes of low intensity exercise five times per week is enough to keep you healthy. Just by choosing to walk more, cycle instead of drive or take the stairs instead of the lift you can fulfil this fitness goal. And yes, gardening and cleaning are considered low level exercise. 

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Training to increase muscle mass is similar to the strength routine except that the number of repetitions of exercises increases as well as the number of sets. Different muscle groups can be trained separately keeping up a training routine of 2-3 times per week. Special attention also needs to be paid to the nutritional intake. 

Strength and endurance training usually go hand in hand. Endurance training specifically requires more repetitions which can be done with weights, resistance bands or bodyweight. The overload in the muscle is created by repeating the exercise more often rather than adding more weight to the exercise.

Training for endurance should be done at least 2-3 times per week targeting different muscle groups.

Cardiovascular fitness is the ability of our heart and lungs to utilise the inhaled oxygen. It takes moderate to high level exercises to bring up our heart rate for at least two minutes time at least twice during a workout session to improve our cardio fitness. Cardio sessions should be done three times per week ideally. Cardio fitness is where dance fitness ticks all the boxes in intensity, targeted muscle groups and happiness factor. 

Most individuals start their fitness journey with this goal in mind. The good news is there isn't on particular  "fat-burning zone" that needs to reached. It is actually much more simple than that. Weight is lost when more energy is burned than taken in. So working out more and eating a little less can already produce results. The bad news is you have to get sweaty during your workout to burn that energy.  To lower the energy intake it helps to make healthier food choices like less meat, more vegetables and no processed foods.