Char­maine Dais­ley

His week­ly four-day work­out still en­tails a car­dio work­out be­fore a weight train­ing ses­sion. On Mon­days he con­cen­trates on chest/shoul­ders, Tues­days on back/arms, Wednes­days on legs/calves, and Thurs­days on the com­plete body, fol­lowed by the reg­u­lar push-ups. Now let's be hon­est. This is not some fit­ness rou­tine fit for a king on­ly. It is the sim­ple and ded­i­cat­ed rou­tine of a reg­u­lar guy who ap­pre­ci­ates the ben­e­fits of prepar­ing his body for life. And you can achieve this too. If you want to be ready to take on the fetes and the pa­rade route this car­ni­val, you can start to­day to get fit, if you haven't be­gun to do so al­ready. Here's Stephen's ad­vice on what the av­er­age per­son can do to get ready with­in a two-week pe­ri­od. He point­ed out the im­por­tance of check­ing with a doc­tor be­fore be­gin­ning any ex­er­cise pro­gramme.

"A good two-week fit­ness plan to get ready for Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day should en­tail

(1) lots of brisk walk­ing

(2) jog­ging or run­ning

(3) some spin class­es or oth­er car­dio ex­er­cis­es,

(4) the reg­u­lar push-up ex­er­cis­es. The use of weights and weight train­ing doesn't re­al­ly play a part at this time," he ex­plained.

He al­so ad­vised that the first set of ex­er­cise ses­sions should be around 15 min­utes long. When the per­son feels they can go for longer they can then progress to half hour, then to 45 min­utes. "Al­so, be­cause it's the legs that are car­ry­ing the body all the time and tak­ing a high-im­pact beat­ing, peo­ple should pay par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion to strength­en­ing them," he rec­om­mend­ed. He ad­vis­es squats, lunges, and walk­ing up stairs, for leg strength. Stephen cau­tions though that the en­thu­si­asm for ex­er­cise and be­ing fit should not dis­ap­pear at the dawn of Ash Wednes­day. "My per­son­al phi­los­o­phy on the im­por­tance of keep­ing fit is that ex­er­cis­ing should not on­ly be for the Car­ni­val sea­son. It should be all year through. It keeps you healthy, look­ing much younger, re­lieves the day's stress and en­hances your sex life. So we all should start keep­ing fit from to­day," he en­cour­aged.