Keep getting stronger after rehab: how to safely progress your exercise plan by adjusting frequency, time, and intensity for both cardio and strength training.

As you go through Movn rehab and start to exercise regularly, your exercise capacity — how much you can do — will improve. Consistency is key to receiving the physical and mental benefits of exercise. Since your body adapts over time, the same exercise that you do at the start of the program may be too easy and not challenging enough for you later on. No matter what type of exercise you're doing, it's important to keep progressing your exercise plan on your own after you graduate from Movn rehab, to continually improve your health. So how do you progress your exercise plan?

First, take a look at how frequently and how long you exercise. If you're not up to the goal of exercising for 150 minutes a week, try to add in another day or increase your exercise time. You do not want to exercise for more than 300 minutes a week, because it can have negative effects — an appropriate amount of rest is important as well. So try to get up to at least 150 minutes, and up to 300 minutes maximum, per week. Remember that you can spread this time out throughout the week: for example, you can walk three times per week for 50 minutes, or five times per week for 30 minutes. You can also split up the time throughout the day, such as three 10-minute walks per day.

Second, if you are already doing the maximum amount of exercise time, or the most that you can do, try increasing the intensity. If you are actively in the Movn rehab program, make sure you ask your care manager whether it is safe to increase intensity, and talk to them about ways you can progress on your own after Movn rehab. You can increase exercise intensity in many ways, but first make sure you're in a comfortable place to do so. If your intensity is light, or you can breathe while talking in full sentences, you're probably exercising at an easier intensity and can look into increasing it slightly. If you're breathing heavily and cannot get out more than one to two words at a time, you should slow down your intensity. And if you're at a fairly light to somewhat hard intensity, that's a good intensity to maintain while exercising.

Increasing intensity depends on the type of exercise you're doing. For cardiovascular exercise like walking, swimming, or biking — or any other activity — try increasing speed or pace, adding light resistance, and decreasing rest time. You can increase your speed or pace by pedaling, walking, or swimming a bit faster; for example, try taking your daily walk from a casual stroll to a brisk walk. By increasing your speed, you'll feel a difference in intensity. Adding light resistance could mean walking with light weight, such as a backpack or ankle weights; you could also walk up a hill to increase your incline, and walking on softer surfaces such as sand or grass can be more challenging compared to walking on pavement. Decreasing your rest time — resting for 60 seconds instead of a couple of minutes — can help improve your endurance and let you go for longer periods of time.

For resistance training, you can increase intensity by trying a new exercise or progressing the exercise to a harder version, increasing the number of repetitions and sets, increasing the resistance, and decreasing rest time. To progress an exercise to a harder version, you can try it standing or without support if possible, use both legs or arms at a time, or add in more resistance. Rest time for resistance exercises should be 30 to 90 seconds, although you can do exercises back to back in supersets. A superset is when you do two exercises that target different muscle groups without resting in between — you continue exercising a different muscle group while letting the other area relax. After completing both exercises, you would take a full rest break for 30 to 90 seconds before repeating the superset. This method allows you to progress while still giving your body breaks.

According to the National Academy of Sports Medicine, you should try to increase your resistance during strength training by about 10% each week. For example, if you're doing eight repetitions of a bicep curl, try adding one more rep to each set each week, up to 15 reps. Or, if you're using five pounds for a bicep curl, try going up to 5.5 pounds the next week. This is reasonable when you're training two to three times per week, which is the recommended amount. If you're doing resistance training less often, you should progress at a slower rate and focus on working up to two to three training days per week. And that is how you progress exercise to continually improve your health. You can find more videos on exercise in the resource section of the app.

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