The 7 keys to getting fit

3. One-tenth rule: your brain will fool you!
After meeting with more than 200,000 patients during 40 years of sports medicine practice, it became clear that, after a period of inactivity or injury, everyone overestimates their ability to exercise. Our miscalculation leads to renewed injury and failure to respond to training because the exercise load is damaging. That's why I devised the one-tenth rule. It says that slowly graduated loads of exercise should happen on alternate days, about 3 times per week.

The first time you exercise, you should do one-tenth of what you think you can do. For example, if you used to be active but haven’t trained during the past 8 weeks, and you thought that 30 minutes of running would be about right, divide that target time by 10 and begin with 3 minutes. During your first week, you would run 3 minutes on Monday, 6 minutes on Wednesday and 9 minutes on Saturday. During the second week, you would continue increasing by one-tenth of your target running time per session, so that in week 2 you would run 12 minutes on Monday, 15 minutes on Wednesday and 18 minutes on Friday. In week 3 you would run 21 minutes on Monday, 24 minutes on Wednesday and 27 minutes on Friday. By the beginning of the fourth week the program you would be running your target time of 30 minutes on alternate days.

The one-tenth rule provides time for your muscles to recover and adapt to exercise so that you avoid overuse injury. It applies to all forms of exercise, including weight training, where you would increase your weight by one-tenth your target each time you lift weights on alternate days.

4. Use it or lose it
The body's capacity to work rises and falls in response to the demands put on its systems. If we are forced to be physically inactive either because of injury, illness or a poor choice of lifestyle, then our bodies respond by reducing their capacities. The muscle cells shrink, losing their power and endurance in a process called atrophy. Bones become thinner and weaker. We become "out of shape". This loss of conditioning can be reversed. If training is interrupted, always restart your activity using the one-tenth rule.

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Excerpted from Start Fresh! Your Complete Guide to Midlifestyle Food and Fitness, copyright 2008 by Diane and Dr. Doug Clement. Excerpted with permission from Whitecap Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced except with permission in writing from the publisher.