To maintain your fitness (and to be able to eat without gaining weight) it’s best to shoot for a minimum of 3-4 cardio workouts a week. To be effective, the workouts should be 30 minutes or longer. But – consistency is more important than intensity. If all you have is 10 minutes, then do one of these 10 minute workouts or go for a fast 10 minute walk in the hospital. If you can do three separate 10 minute workouts in a day, it is just as effective (at least for maintenance of fitness) as a 30 minute session.
Some people have incredible discipline about this (and the rest of us hate them.) For mere mortals who basically have to really work at this, you have to have a different strategy….
The first thing you have to do is choose what kind of cardio you want to do. The trick here is feeling like you are playing, not working. Dancing counts… so does jumping rope. You have to look for fun ways to exercise
American College of Sports Medicine exercise guidelines for healthy adults
www.life123.com Examples of aerobic exercise
www.livestrong.com list of cardio exercises
For many people, music is the difference between feeling like you are playing during a workout vs. working. Use music to create your own “Fartlek” workout. Fartlek workouts are also called “speed play” – the idea is to incorporate random intervals of speed work into your workout so you don’t just plod along at the same rate. One way to do this is to put your music on a random shuffle, or find a good (and free) music source that you can stream. Change your speed and intensity based on the song, or part of the song you are listening to. If the song is slow, decrease your speed (but increase the resistance if you are on a machine). If the song is fast, move with it – increase your effort (e.g sprint if you are running) to keep in time with the music.
Have fun! Go out and play!
Internet music sites:
- http://www.pandora.com– internet radio that lets you design your own radio stations or choose from a large selection
- http://www.folkalley.com– singer songwriters, irish music, bluegrass, etc
- I’m sure there are a lot of other sites… if you have any that you use, comment below or email me.
Information on Fartlek workouts
- How to do a Fartlek workout from Runner’s World: http://www.runnersworld.com/article/0,7120,s6-238-263–12081-0,00.html
- Fartlek workouts for cyclists: http://www.training4cyclists.com/fartlek-as-interval-training/
I’ve always loved working out but found that my career really facilitated a “weekend warrior” type workout regimen. On my weekends off, I would end up doing marathon workouts, lifting, yoga, spin class, and maybe a run on top of it all. Not the healthiest way to exercise and made me prone to over exercising and injury. It takes a lot of discipline to find the extra hour on two or three weekdays a week to avoid that.
For me, I carry around yoga class schedules of 3 studios that I’m a member of so anytime I get off of work, I can scan my options since getting off of work can be a variable hour. A good option is also Houston Yoga which has mysore style classes so you can jump in anytime from 530-800.
Just running and following up with some pushups is a nice option since you can do that anytime. A quick five K run followed by a few sets of pushups will make you feel like a new person.