Ayurvedic Guidelines for Healthy Exercise

One of the classic Ayurveda texts states: "By physical exercise, one gets lightness, capacity to work, firmness, tolerance of difficulties, diminution of physical impurities and strengthening of digestion and metabolism."
Exercise creates energy!

Exercise should be performed in moderation.
You should use only 50 percent of your maximum capacity, exercising every day, preferably in the morning from 6am to 10am.

If you can run 10km, go for 5. The lower limit makes exercise more efficient, because you are not giving your body so much repair work to do afterward, and your cardiovascular system will have an easier time returning to normal after your workout. You should feel energetic and comfortable, never too strained or tired.

Exercise should get you all ready and pumped up and excited to take on the brand new day with all its challenges thrown at you. Exercise should not be breaking you down before you even get started. In that case, you might as well use the time to sleep in and continue with your sweet dream until it's time to get up for the day's work.

Also this is not detrimental to your fitness. With regular exercise, your capacity will grow. By gradually increasing the amount of exercise, as time goes by, you will start to speed up while your heart rate and sense of effort and intensity remain constant.

In the heat of competitive sports, you may not notice how strenuously you are exerting yourself. If it is fun to play, then carry on. But if you are pushing on just to win the game or simply to prove that you can keep up with someone else, your attitude is needlessly punishing your body.

Make the distinction between fitness and health. "Fitness is the physical ability to perform athletic activity. Health is the state where all the systems of the body -nervous, muscular, skeletal, circulatory, digestive, lymphatic, hormonal, etc - are working in an optimal way." Health should lead and guide fitness. Not the other way around.

It isn't "no pain, no gain".
It's "no pain, no pain"!
So remember: No strain produces maximum gain.

Saw Sun(-rise)? Run.
Heard Gun(-shot)? Start Run.
No Fun? Stop Run!