Components of Exercise

Whether you are creating an exercise program with your health care team or on your own, it's important to understand your response to the exercise you choose, understand your current health status, have a lifestyle that will support your new activities (see chapter 3 Planning Your Lifestyle), know your goals, and be able to adjust to new challenges. It is also important to understand that by exercising you are decreasing your risk factors for chronic diseases, and that the amount of exercise you need to do to is significantly less than what you'll need for attaining a high physical fitness level. Many people starting new programs begin with their goals set too high. As mentioned earlier, 30 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise on most or all days of the week can be effective in controlling glucose, even if you split up the 30 minutes of exercise into three 10-minute sessions per day.

Let's take a look at the five different components of exercise (mode, intensity, duration, frequency, and progression) so that you will better understand how to create a program. These components are summarized in table 4.4.

Table 4.4 Exercise Components

Mode

Intensity

Duration

Frequency

Progression