How Often Should I Exercise My Upper And Lower Body?

by Mary
(MA)

Hi, how often should I do lower body exercises as well as strength training for arms? I do have left sciatica, which sometimes hurts when I lift my left leg.

I have a pear shape...most of weight falls in thighs and hips. Thanks, Mary

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How Often Should I Exercise My Upper And Lower Body?

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Jun 17, 2009
 Get Rid Of Sciatica AND Lose Weight
by: Tom

Hi there Mary,

This really depends on what you want to achieve. Do you want to be a little bit stronger? Do you want to build huge muscles? Or do you want to lose weight? All of these goals would have different approaches...

I'm going to assume that you want to lose weight. Well...fat to be correct.

Training the big muscles in your body is going to be very important for losing weight. The more muscle you have on your body the more energy you're going to burn throughout the day. This is really the key to burning large amounts of fat.

Try training your lower body 2-3 times per week. Do glutes, thighs and hamstrings. This will burn fat from all over your body.

Maybe train your arms a little less, say 1 - 2 times per week. This will give you general strengthening benefits and it might balance out your body shape a little.

Also do a couple of high intensity interval training sessions and you should begin to see some results very quickly.

As for sciatica, it's not something you have to live with. Go online, find out what other people have done to get rid of their sciatica and do the same thing.

As a starting point check out this video. A lot of people have had success with this simple stretch.



Also try trigger point therapy. This book is an absolute winner for getting rid of pain. I used to have such bad ankle pain and I was able to completely remove it by learning to massage my leg!!! Pain doesn't always come from where you expect it to.

I've lent my copy to my grandmother at the moment so I can't give you any points from it. Sorry!

Hope that helps :)
Tom
FTAH.com

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