This piece spun out of a conversation in the comments on our most recent guest column over at WoW.com, and it seems to be addressing a concern that many people of the geeky persuasion, fairly or unfairly, may have with the picking up of somewhat heavier things than they’re used to. Some folks are concerned about injury, or don’t want to bulk up, or simply have never considered themselves the weightlifting type.

Lifting heavy weights is not, in and of itself, unhealthy, as long as proper form is used. There are actually a lot of benefits to strength training – stronger bones, for instance, in addition to stronger and more balanced muscles. There are the aesthetic aspects, of course, even if you’re like me, and  have no designs on becoming a professional, or even amateur, bodybuilder. I just want to look good with my shirt off.

"I just see cardio... weights... redhead...." (Image by Patrick Hoesly)

Settle down, everybody, I’m not going to bust out something like COBOL or, even worse FORTRAN (which, during my one programming class in college, I got a D in). Rather, this goes out to the folks who are ready to take things to the next level and are thinking about coming up with their own workout plan and strategy.

Much like developing a character spec or laying out the route for a road trip, it’s often best to approach things from the far end and work your way back to where you are now, so you know both where you want to end up, and how to get there. As the man behind the Jabberwock (no, not American McGee) said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.”

There are a handful of things you need to build a good fitness program for yourself.

Okay, who's the wise guy? (Image courtesy of RBerteig on Flickr)

It’s no surprise that the amount of time that experts say you should exercise has some variability to it. The same goes for the intensity of your workouts. Heck, Mike and I don’t always agree, we’re not even experts! So what should you do if you’ve found yourself in a portion of your fitness world where you haven’t explored the map yet? Well, for one thing, you could take a page out of the Galaxy Quest handbook: “Never give up. Never surrender!” Let’s assume that’s a given. Now, how long should you keep up the fight, and how hard?

Health experts say that, at a minimum, folks should at least try to reach the recommended exercise allotment. For kids and teenagers, that’s an hour a day. For adults, on any given week, we should try and get two and a half hours of moderate intensity activity (walking or dancing or some other active hobby) or about half that much (75 minutes) of vigorous activity (jogging, weightlifting, or playing a sport). It’s a very reachable goal – going for a brisk half hour walk or bike ride, Monday through Friday? Doing a couple of dance or yoga classes, or maybe learning a martial art? Piece of cake!

Image via geishboy500 on flickr

Are you tired of the same old exercise routine but not quite brave enough to strap on the leg warmers and swing around a pole? Are you convinced that Max Brooks is a prophet and not just an international bestselling author? Do you get pissed off anytime someone makes a joke about zombies craving brains because that was something that was added in by the folks who made Return of the Living Dead and was never part of George Romero’s universe?

If so, we’ve got the workout for you.

So, it looks like those brain-stimulating games may have had #include <hot.air> as part of their marketing source code. I know, it’s shocking – advertizing claims might be divorced from reality! But, unfortunately for the creative minds behind the brain-training game industry, a recent study of the field suggests that they’re not actually making folks smarter.

Modest effects have been reported in some studies of older individuals and preschool children, and video-game players outperform non-players on some tests of visual attention. However, the widely held belief that commercially available computerized brain-training programs improve general cognitive function in the wider population in our opinion lacks empirical support. The central question is not whether performance on cognitive tests can be improved by training, but rather, whether those benefits transfer to other untrained tasks or lead to any general improvement in the level of cognitive functioning. Here we report the results of a six-week online study in which 11,430 participants trained several times each week on cognitive tasks…. Although improvements were observed in every one of the cognitive tasks that were trained, no evidence was found for transfer effects to untrained tasks, even when those tasks were cognitively closely related.

- Adrian M. Owen, et al

However, all is not gloom, doom, and more money to spend on power-leveling services new sneakers.