Exercising hard and pushing yourself to your maximum can be very important to reaching your overall fitness goals, no matter what your goals may be. However, knowing when to take it easy can be just as important but can be a difficult concept to apply.

Taking it easy is not necessarily a difficult idea - who doesn't want to take it easy? The tricky part is knowing when to take it easy and how easy you can go and still be able to make headway towards your fitness goals.

Knowing the signals your body sends out is something that you have to take a "learn as you go" approach to. It is very difficult to explain the sensory feelings of pain and stiffness associated with exercise especially when trying to explain the differences between what is ok and what is not. One pain is good whereas another is bad, as well as one stretch is good where another is bad. Each one of these feelings has to be learned over time so you know when to keep pushing and when to take it easy.

Another one of theses "feelings" is that of soreness brought on by your last workout. Sometimes taking 24-48 hours to show up, deep muscle sorriness, ligament, tendon, and muscle stiffness as well as joint aches and pains, caused by strenuous, intense workouts, is not something you want to ignore.   Often people will try to push through the pain and do another intense cardio or strength training program not realizing that they are just re-injuring areas that were already injured, starting the healing process all over again and potentially causing more damage. All this does is slow your progress as you have to let your body heal before doing another intense workout.

That is where workouts like this video come in handy, though it may be hard enough to be an intense workout for someone who has never been physically active before. For most of the population it will be a low intensity workout that will do a great job of burning calories without taxing your body to the point of re-injuring muscles, tendons, ligaments, or joints that may be sore form a previous workout. This workout's ability to do just that is what makes it a great recovery day workout.

So, if you are ever feeling sore from a workout this routine would be a great way to keep your momentum going without causing more harm than good by going too intense. Pay attention to your body and don't overwork yourself. If you are not sure whether or not you should do an intense workout then always err on the side of caution and go for less intense over more intense. You may not burn as many calories that day as you could have but you will make sure your body has plenty of time to heal up and get ready for that next intense routine.

Just because this video is low impact does not mean it does not burn calories.  Even when you are working out at a lower intensity you are still burning calories and the total body motions in this video definitely keep the average calorie burn up. You can expect to burn anywhere from 5 calories per minute on the low end, up to 9 calories per minute on the high end, giving you a total calorie burn of 150 to 270 calories for this 30 minute video.