FREE Routines

Availability

The routines given here are freely available to anyone. No public acknowledgement is required, but if you use or adapt any of the individual routines or complete classes we would appreciate it if you would let us know, as the satisfaction of knowing that we may have helped you is our only reward! Please send a short e-mail to david@exercisetomusic.info. Thank you.

If you refer to these routines on another web site or in a printed document, please provide a link back to the front page of this site using the address www.exercisetomusic.info. Thank you.

Class Structure

The classes described here all have the structure shown in the table below and are designed to last for about an hour and a quarter. Part or all of the body conditioning section can be omitted, but the workout may then need to be extended to achieve a class of at least an hour in length.

The aerobic workout addresses all aspects of fitness except strength and whilst arm movements are included they provide limited benefits for the upper body and are intended more to increase the level of the cardiovascular workout. The body conditioning section, for which we originally provided just a few mat exercises, was extended to its present form to add a strength component to the classes and provide more work for the upper body, as well as including some additional challenges to the coordination of the participants. (The step straps are available from Fitness Professionals, see Equipment Advice.)

Many classes that we have attended skip quickly through the stretches leaving the clients with acheing muscles the following day. Thorough stretching is important and many clients have remarked at how little muscle pain they have experienced following our classes, which always conclude with the full relax & stretch sequence. Such discomfort as does occur is usually due to over-enthusiasm with the weights.

Teaching Points

It is generally recommended to keep to the same class (i.e the same set of routines) each week for at least six weeks. In fact we found that our clients preferred to stay with a class for 9 or 10 weeks once they had become familiar with it. They also preferred us to change the class a section at a time, with a new warm-up the first week, a new workout and cool down the second week and new body conditioning and stretches the third week. This way they were not presented with all new routines at the same time.

Our three most successful combinations of routines are the ones that are given here as Classes #1, #2 and #3. The warm-ups consist of mobilisation (the early part, for loosening up the muscles) and pulse raising (the later part, to prepare for the workout). The main workout using the step should start gently and build to a peak which is then held for about 20 minutes; this is then followed by a gradual slow down (the cool down). For the weights and straps section your participants should choose weights and straps consistent with their own strength (see Equipment Advice for further details).

The MSE (Muscular Strength and Endurance) routines are designed to be used on successive weeks in a 3-week cycle irrespective of the other routines and they are the same for all three classes given here. (The weights and straps routines are also MSE work, but they are different for each class and are listed separately.)

There are only two stretching routines with relatively small differences between them. They are used alternately in the classes shown here.

You may find at first that parts of some routines are quite difficult to teach, as a good deal of variation is incorporated to avoid or disguise monotonous repeats. So be kind to yourself and do not try to teach the complete routines on your very first attempt, but simplify them a little and build up to the full routines over two or three weeks.

If you would like further clarification of the class descriptions or any other related information or advice, please feel free to send your request to us at david@exercisetomusic.info. We will do our best to answer your query and we will try to reply within a couple of days.

The Routines

The routine names used here have no particular significance from your point of view. They were the names used when storing the routines on computer, the numbers giving you some idea of the number of routines we generated over the years.

For details of each routine, select the relevant link from the table above.

You will need to choose music separately for the warm-up, the workout (including the cool down), the MSE (including the weights and straps section) and the relaxation and stretching. See Choice of Music in the Equipment Advice section for further advice on choice of music and tempos.

Also available is DEMO#1. This is a more advanced, but condensed, complete workout designed to be used as a demonstration at public events. It should take about fifteen minutes to run through, but you will need some of your more experienced class members for this and they will need to practice with you in advance.