Adult onset Diabetes, or Diabetes II, may cause you to ask yourself, what is the best exercise for diabetics. Assuming you have no medical condition that would prevent you from exercising, review the following tips and see if some would work for you.

Traditionally, "cardio" oriented exercise has been grossly over rated. This kind of activity usually means walking briskly, jogging, and running. However, if you are diabetic and overweight, with weight loss in mind, enthusiastic jogging or running may result in damage to your ankle, knee and hip joints.

There Is A Better Way

Combining a lesser intensity activity with a high intensity activity that challenges your heart and lung abilities, achieves specific results for you that may reduce your insulin resistance. High intensity activity that exhausts your fast twitch muscle fibers (the kind that trigger your body to increase the bulk of your muscle fibers) also begins a cascade of cellular activity that continues your muscle recovery for an extended length of time, burning more calories.

Not only that, but as you gradually build up more muscle mass, you will be burning more calories all the time, including while you sleep. And probably you will sleep better, just from having added an effective exercise routine into your lifestyle.Or improved upon one that you used previously.

Do You Need An Exercise Machine?

You do not need a machine necessarily, although to take the path of least resistance, sometimes a machine helps trim down both the time and space required to perform an exercise regimen regularly, and with the least interference in your weekly life.

A treadmill, an elliptical machine, or a recumbent bike can all work. An exercise program can be entered into the settings, depending on the sophistication of the device. Or, using a timer for the less technical machines will work too.

Treadmills have really shrunk in size and so have bikes. In fact for a bike you can get a pedal - only device that fits under a desk or sits in front of wherever you want to sit. The resistance can be changed, and you can rig up your work out any way you like.

So What Will I Be Doing Exactly?

You will be alternating from a lower intensity - less resistance on your machine or type of movement, to a higher intensity or resistance muscle challenge. And the timing will matter, since you don't want to over-challenge muscles, or under challenge them.

As basic as walking for example: you could walk briskly for a certain amount of time. Then really turn up the pace for about ninety seconds, until you are gasping for breath. Then slow down, but keeping the heart rate up a little, and catching your breath. Then doing repetitions, working up to a specific amount.

On an extremely sophisticated machine, you would program an intensity and time duration. Then add into the program, a switch up to an entirely different, shorter intensity. If the machine accommodated it, you would be wearing a heart monitor and your rate would display for you. There are recumbent bikes and other machines that do this.

But say you live in a 450 square foot apartment, with about 28 square feet of open floor space in the living room. You have some choices here. You could walk briskly, (on the spot) your low intensity phase, timed. Then for high intensity, you could switch to a power walk, pumping as fast as you can, and then to finish this phase, actually affect a sprint by jogging on the spot lifting your knees as high as you can, FAST.

Your heart rate monitor would guide you as to the speed/length/ duration you need.

I know it's a little difficult to picture this, and a visual guide would help you learn your best exercise for diabetics.