Changing Up Your Workouts

Changing up your workouts is essential in your progress of perusing a healthier lifestyle. Muscle have memory, and need to be confused in order to progress. If you are constantly doing the same workouts time and time again, your body will become accustom to what you’re doing and reach a plateau, in affect causing a halt to the progress you’re making. You’re muscles need variety just as we do as people. We can’t continue to do the same things and expect to keep moving forward in life, because people are moving and times are changing…and we have to keep up. The same goes for your body and muscles. If we keep saying the same exact things to our muscles, they will reach the place where they’ve been maximized and just not grow or perform the way we want them to.

Changing up your workouts, trying different techniques and routines are all great ways to keep variety in your workouts!

What is a Resistance Band?

Resistance Bands are particularly strong tubing with 2 handles attached to each end. It acts as a giant rubber band supplying resistance according to how much slack you give each side of the band. Resistance Bands are so small and compact, generally about 45 inches in length and 1 inch in circumference, they can be used practically anywhere!

A Few Benefits of using Resistance Bands

Resistance Band training is a perfect solution for getting a great workout, quickly in the privacy of your own home or anyplace for that matter. One of the many benefits of using a Resistance Band is that it allows you to easily incorporate a cardiovascular workout into your resistance training. Simply transition from one exercise to another without stopping to switch position is a great way to tone muscle while keeping your HR elevated.

For example, you can begin with bi-ceps curls, go directly to shoulder press and then move immediately into tri-ceps extensions, all without having to do anything except change your arm position. That is just one example of how to make these easy transitions.

Another huge benefit of using a Resistance Band is that you are able to perform more reps per set. Here’s an example…Say you’re on rep #8 of 12 and you’re becoming fatigued. At that point, simply decrease the amount of resistance by giving the band some slack. This immediately takes tension off the Resistance band allowing you to pump out those extra reps and really maximize your set.

Resistance Bands are lightweight and easy to carry if you’re a traveler, so I’d suggest carrying one in your bag. Having a Resistance Band, anywhere you are is a great place to get a good solid workout.

What is Circuit Training?

Simply put, Circuit Training combines cardiovascular exercise with strength training in the same workout. A circuit can be made up of 3 or 4 exercises with a short rest in between each or up to as many as 9 or 10 exercises with a short rest in between for a chosen number of reps or certain period of time.

Pound for pound, I think this is one of the most effective types of training there is because you are able to elevate your HR for cardio and also tone muscle at the same time. Here are just a few benefits of Circuit Training:

- Burns fat

- Burn calories

- Tones muscle

- Increase flexibility

- great use of time

- variety of exercises

- create your own custom workout

- can be sport specific

- typically doesn’t require expensive equipment

- can use almost any size workout space

What are Cardiovascular (cardio) Exercises?

Cardio exercises are exercises that typically use big muscle groups and increase the heart rate for a span of time, such as running, dancing, jogging or swimming amongst other.

The truth about cardio is that you need to find a few different types of cardio that make it fun for you! For me, I love hitting the heavy bag (boxing) or playing basketball for my cardio. I feel like I’m having fun hitting the bag or playing ball rather than just thinking about how tired I’m getting doing cardio. There are other things I like doing, or at least don’t mind doing also, like walking or jogging on the treadmill. Increasing your heart rate for a certain amount of time is the key to cardio. Be sure to get into your training heart rate range so you will burn fat at the most efficient rate. That’s what we want, right? To burn fat! You will adjust the level of intensity accordingly.

Some of the Benefits of Cardio:

• Lower Blood Pressure
• Burn fat
• Increase of Energy
• Increase oxygen intake to the muscles
• Increase heart strength
• Increase in blood circulation
• Burn Calories
• Increase lung capacity
• Helps reduce risk of heart attack
• Promotes better sleep

Here are some different types of cardio exercises you can do:

• Jogging (in place or regular jogging)
• Sprints
• Boxing (heavy bag)
• Cycling
• Squat jumps
• Jumps
• Dance
• Basketball
• Burpies
• Jumping jacks
• Skiers
• Up/downs

Training Heart Rate Range

What is Training Heart Rate Range?

Your Training Heart Rate Range is the range that your heart rate needs to be in, in order to burn fat at its most efficient rate. This is a critical part of cardio fitness because if you don’t know where you’re HR is at during your workout, you may not be doing the necessary amount of work, or reach the level of intensity in order to meet your goals.

People make the common mistake of thinking that just because they’re sweating, that they’re burning fat. This can be a costly error because in my opinion, it’s one of the biggest factors in people giving up on their workout program. Sweating doesn’t equal burning fat, getting to your training heart rate range burns fat!

In order for us to determine what our Training Heart Rate Range is, we must first know what our resting heart rate is. Age, resting heart rate and level of fitness are all determining factors for your Training Heart Rate Range.

The more work we do in our Training Heart Rate, the more fat we will burn! Being in your targeted range is the most efficient way to burn fat.

There are multiple ways to determine your Training Heart Rate Range, but the one I’ve used for my personal training clients as well as myself is the “Karvonen Formula”. It calculates what your Training Heart Rate Range should be during your cardio workouts.

THE FOLLOWING IS ONLY AN EXAMPLE OF WHAT A TRAINING HEART RATE RANGE COULD BE:

Age – 32

Resting Heart Rate – 78

60% of max - 144bpm

85% of max - 172bpm

THE PREVIOUS INFO IS ONLY AN EXAMPLE OF WHAT A TRAINING HEART RATE RANGE COULD BE:

Interval Training

Interval training consists of a movement at a very high intensity for a chosen period of time, directly followed by a low intensity movement or total rest for a chosen period of time. The movements can be made up of almost any cardio style workout, that’s one of the reasons I like this style so much…its flexible.

Here are a few examples of interval training:

- Weightless squats at 85-90% max effort for 30 seconds

- Light jog in place for 10 seconds. Repeat 5 to 7 times.

or

- 60 yard Sprint at max effort

- Walk back to starting line. Repeat 5 to 7 times.

or

- Hitting the heavy bag for 60 seconds at 85-90% of max effort

- Full rest for 20 seconds. Repeat 5-7 times.

Depending on your fitness level, you will determine the time periods and effort levels accordingly.

As you can see, Interval training is a great way to mix up your workout routines to keep them fresh and most of all, to keep your body guessing what’s coming next.

Here are a few benefits of interval training:

- Improves aerobic ability to exercise longer at different levels of intensity

- Effectively stimulates fat loss compared to typical training at a moderate intensity level for the same time duration.

- The higher level of intensity, the more calories you’ll burn

Resting Heart Rate

PLEASE CONSULT YOUR PHYSICIAN BEFORE PERFORMING ANY PHYSICAL EXERCISE!

What is “Resting Heart Rate”? What does it mean to you?

Your resting heart rate is your heart rate at rest. What does this mean to you? It means that the lower your resting heart rate is, generally speaking, the more physically fit you are. It also means that you’re heart is working more efficiently than if you had a higher resting heart rate.

The average resting heart rate is somewhere between 60 – 100 beats per minute. The better shape your heart muscle is in, the more efficient it is. When your heart beats, it pumps blood throughout your body. The fewer beats it takes to do this, the stronger the heart will be.

The best way to check your resting heart rate is to check your heart rate first thing in the morning before you get out of bed. This tells you how many times per minute your heart beats when you’re relaxed. Typically, the lower your resting heart rate the better. I like to think of it like this…the more beats per minute your heart beats at rest means that your heart has to work that much harder to make your body run efficiently. The fewer beats per minute your heart beats at rest, means that your heart doesn’t have to work quite as hard to make your body run efficiently.

This is a widely used example, but it’s a great one. Lance Armstrong, Multiple times Tour de France Champion was reported to have a resting heart rate of 32 beats per minute! That’s right, 32 beats per minute! This means that his heart muscle, at the time, was in such great shape that it pumped out enough blood for his entire body almost every other second. That is a model of efficiency! See, the more you exercise the muscle, the better it will perform. He practiced, rode his bike and exercised so much that his heart was the beneficiary of all that hard work, in turn giving him great reserves to draw from while competing.

Obviously, we’re all not Lance Armstrong, but we can exercise our hearts to perform more efficiently than they are now with simple cardiovascular exercise.

How do I check my resting heart rate?

Checking your resting heart rate is simple. First thing in the morning, start with your palm supinated (facing upward). Put two fingers on the thumb side of your wrist. It can be a little tricky, so you may have to move your fingers around a bit to find your pulse. Once you feel your pulse, count the number of beats for 6 seconds (you’ll need a watch or clock with a seconds hand on it). Once you’ve completed the 6 second count, add a zero to the number of beats…this gives you your resting heart rate. So if you get 7 beats in 6 seconds, this means that you have a resting heart rate of 70 beats per minute.

Be aware that there are many reasons your resting heart rate can fluctuate, here are just a few:

- Amount of activity

- Caffeine Consumption

- Change in Body Position (standing or sitting)

- Use of Medication

- Mood

The reason the best time to get your resting heart rate is first thing in the morning is because you haven’t had coffee yet, you haven’t gotten up and starting running around the house getting ready for work or haven’t taken any medication yet…this gives you a true “resting” heart rate.

PLEASE CONSULT YOUR PHYSICIAN BEFORE PERFORMING ANY PHYSICAL EXERCISE!