At the weekend I received an email from a reader of the blog Kelly. She wanted to know where to buy or where to find an exercise wall chart to maintain and follow a good exercise routine.

As I’ve been a subscriber to many different fitness magazines I’ve managed collect a fair few of these “wall charts” during my subscription base, many of which proved quite useful when working out at home.

Fitness magazines such as Men’s Fitness (this is the best by a long way for wall charts), Men’s Health and many other fitness magazines always include these handy wall charts in their monthly magazine, and if no wall chart is included then you will always get an exercise routine with photographs in the back few pages.

I’d advise leafing through this month’s fitness magazine editions in WHSmiths to see if you can find a fitness wall chart with a program that will suit you.

The dumbbells I recently bought online also included a large wall chart which helped with my exercise routine. Most home gym fitness equipment includes wall charts and wall planners to help you with your home fitness routine. The wall chart I got with the dumbbells was more of a large list of exercises you can do with dumbbells, rather than an exercise program, but it’s still proved helpful.

I also found a website that sells the fitness wall charts online:

Fitness Wall Charts

If you cannot find any that are what you’re looking for here, or not willing to pay a premium for a fitness wall chart, I’d recommend buying a large wall year planner to track and write up your fitness program. You could buy a few fitness magazines, cut out many of the different exercises they demonstrate and compile your very own customised fitness wall chart!

Weights

Weights develop and build muscle; with a good weights routine you can also work the full mobilisation of joints and muscles from each and every angle!

You can achieve things you quite simply can’t achieve on the treadmill. Weights give you a large metabolic spike after training and this lasts for

hours afterwards, even the recovery and repair process of the muscles burns calories too. The more muscle you can get, in theory, the more efficient your

body will become at burning fat. Weight training is also very good as working out a specific area of the body and allows you to target specific muscle

groups. You can alternate between quick repetitive sets, with a short amount of rest, through to the other extreme of exercising just one rep max exercises.

Cardio

Cardio allows your body to maximise calorie burn, remember; the key to losing FAT is to exercise at least 30 minutes a minimum of 3 times a week, with

cardio workouts you can simply increase the intensity and/or duration of a session. A short intense session may burn as much as a long steady session.

It’s true that weight training boosts metabolism afterwards, but cardio works in much the same way, and takes hours for your metabolism to return to its

normal level.

A great thing about cardio is all you need is a good pair of trainers so some may argue; it’s easier and cheaper to get a good workout done.
Bottom line is both Weights and Cardio have their advantages but to get any sort of progress I’d recommend planning your goals and deciding you want from

your fitness routine. You’re not going to become Arnold Schwarzenegger over night but it’s important to have a balanced training program as far too much of

one over the other won’t be ideal. A balanced routine is what you’ll see most benefit from.

If you fancy a good run this weekend and you are in or around London, why not check out the 2008 London Tree-Athlon being held this weekend, Saturday 20th September 2008 in Battersea Park, it's also good for the environment

as you get your very own tree sibling to plant and helps fund raising efforts for “trees in cities", which can only be a good thing.

Many people that knew I used to swim have commented on the swimmers bodies at the Olympic Games, but it’s not as easy to get as toned as that without some hard work!

But if you want a toned body like a swimmer.... you’ve got to do laps like a swimmer.... all year long. That's the bad news for those who get bored after one length of the local swimming baths.

When I used to swim when at university I swam 60 thousand meters a week which was 9 x 2 hour swimming sessions. Michael Phelps is reported to do 80 thousand meters a week! Since this amount of meterage I’ve managed to keep fit through running and general aerobic activity while maintaining my high metabolism, but you needn’t be swimming 24/7 to get fit...

The good news is that you can get toned and fitter through Aerobic exercise!

Aerobic Aerobic Aerobic!

If you can keep up a steady routine of 30 minutes of aerobic exercise at least 3 times a week and eat healthily then you’ll notice physical and fitness improvements after 3 weeks. There is no need in hitting the gym daily to get bigger without the aerobic exercise as you’ll be bulking up without seeing the difference underneath. Shed the fat and you’ll look much, much fitter.