Sensible Fitness

at 7:53 AM

My motto of the day for you is to challenge yourself in your workouts everyday, in small but appreciable steps. If you are doing cardio (running, stairmaster, etc), throw in a little fartlek ( I did not make this word up). Fartlek is swedish for 'speed play'. This type of conditioning puts stress on the aerobic energy system due to the continuous nature of the exercise. The difference between doing fartlek training and continuous aerobic exercise is you basically vary the intensity of the exercise. So if you are on the stairmaster or my favorite machines the spin bike or the ellliptical you go hard for about 30 seconds then you recover for a minute or two. You can play with these numbers until you come up with the formula that works for you. Obviously at first you want to keep your time of high intensity to a minimum and have a longer recovery time. And remember you only need to do this type of training once or at most twice a week. After a few weeks you can gradually increase the time of your 'high intensity intervals' and sprinkle in your rest intervals. Remember to make this fun so you don't burn out or worse get injured. This is merely one way of aerobically challenging yourself. You can also simply add time to your regular cardio. If you are typically doing 30 minutes increase it to 45 minutes a couple of times a week. Or if you are already at 45 minutes go for an hour or more then celebrate with a nice crunchy apple afterwards!
You can and should also make your weight lifting routines more difficult as well. If you keep doing the same routine, your body gets used to it and the results will be minimal. I can think of numerous ways to make your strength training more challenging. One of the best ways is to lift heavier. Say you are doing bicep curls and using 15 lb dumbbells and can do 12-15 reps. For a good burn, use 17.5 or 20 lb dumbbells and do as many reps as you can which may be 6-8 reps. Repeat this for another set and then for the third rep drop back to 15 lb dumbbells and try to do 15-20 reps. You can even change the angle at which you hold your dumbbells and make your workout different. These small but noticeable differences will make your workouts harder.