Daily Cardio Foundations

Five short walks a week, twenty-five to thirty-five minutes each, for somebody who has not exercised in a year or more or has never trained at all. Nothing in it leaves the ground and nothing in it is hard.

It needs a pair of shoes and somewhere to lie down for the stretches at the end, and every session has a warm-up and a cool-down built into it rather than left to you.

Pain in a tendon or joint that is worst on the first few steps in the morning and eases as you move is a loading problem rather than stiffness, and it does not respond to stretching or to pushing through.

Take the impact out of the week and see a physiotherapist if it is still there in a fortnight.

Before you start, please read this one. Aerobic exercise is among the safest and most useful things most people can do for their health, and it is also the setting in which a heart problem nobody knew about is most likely to announce itself.

Get medical clearance before you begin if any of the following is true of you. Chest pain, pressure or tightness on exertion, including anything that comes on when you hurry, climb stairs or carry shopping and eases when you stop.

Dizziness, light-headedness or fainting, on effort or when you stand up. Known heart disease, a heart-rhythm problem, or a heart attack, stent, bypass, ablation or any cardiac procedure at any point in your life.

Or no regular exercise for a year or more, if you are also over 40, or you smoke, or you have high blood pressure, high cholesterol or diabetes, or a parent or sibling who had heart disease before 55 in men or 65 in women.

Any of those means speak to your GP before you start, and follow what they tell you over anything written here. Which one applies changes what to do while you wait.

If it is the last one — no regular exercise for a year or more alongside those risk factors — then this is one of the two programmes to be on in the meantime: walking at a pace where you can talk in full sentences, with nothing hard in it anywhere.

If it is chest pain on exertion, dizziness or fainting on effort, or known heart disease or a cardiac procedure, do not start this or anything else here until you have been seen.

Those three are the ones where waiting is the instruction rather than walking.

Also speak to your GP or a physiotherapist first if you are pregnant or within a year of giving birth, if your blood pressure or diabetes is not currently controlled, if you have low bone density or osteoporosis, if you have a lung condition, or if a joint or tendon is flaring.

Stop the session and get medical advice the same day for chest pain, pressure or tightness; pain spreading into the jaw, neck, back or an arm; breathlessness far out of proportion to the effort; dizziness or feeling you might faint; a heartbeat that is unusually fast, slow or irregular; or a cold sweat with any of those.

Call emergency services rather than driving yourself. Nothing here is medical advice.