Lean Bodies Health and Fitness

Do you guys like to dance?  I sure as heck DON’T!  Probobly because I can’t do it.  So I feel a little bit (or a lotta bit) retarded.  But when I do my cardio “dancing” on the arc trainer at the gym I feel like this:

(PS.  Is that Lauren from So You Think You Can Dance?  I loved her!)

I call this workout a “Match the Beat” Dancing workout.  I like to do it on the Arc Trainer, but a regular elliptical will do.  On an Arc Trainer you can adjust the incline AND resistance as opposed to just the resistance like on many ellipticals.  So, here’s what you do:

After a warm up you find the next good song on your ipod.  With that song going  you set the incline to your elliptical (I like to change it up between 3, 5, 8, and 10 on an incline scale of 1-10) and you do this interval:

1 minute – moderate intensity - you want to match the beat of the song.  If it is a faster song you will probobly have it on less of an incline and be moving your feet faster.  Find a good moderate level resistance.  Keep it here matching your beat and dancing (in your head) away for a minute.

1 minute – all out intensity - keep your pace and incline the same but up your resistance.  You want to be really pushing it here.  About half way through this minute reevaluate and increase resistance if needed.  Remember to keep your feet moving to the beat.  That’s the fun, dance-y part!

1 minute – recover - I take it down to a low resistance and low incline for 30 seconds.  For the next 30 seconds I fast forward to my next song on my Ipod, and figure out a good incline for the beat.  When this recovery minute is over you repeat the interval with your new song, new incline, new resistance and best of all, new beat!

It’s crazy and not at all dance-y really, I know.  But my point is that that’s about as close as I come to dancing.  And I’m ok with it.  In fact, I love it.  I love this workout.

Here is a workout that is designed to help increase your power output.  If you are training for any sort of race or just want the ability to speed up (or exert any type of power quickly) you should include power intervals in your workouts.  This workout is a basic interval workout where you will alternate short-ish high intensity intervals and moderate intervals.

Workout                     Time      RPE

Warm up                    5 min      4
Moderate Push       2 min      6
Hard Push                2 min      7-8
Moderate Push       2 min      6
Hard Push                2 min      7-8
Moderate Push       2 min      6
Hard Push                2 min      7-8
Moderate Push       2 min      6
Hard Push                2 min      7-8
Moderate Push       2 min      6
Hard Push                2 min      7-8
Cool Down               5 min      3

TOTAL TIME:  30 min

We all know why intervals are much more effective for burning fat than slow, steady paced cardio right?  If not, read this.

Here’s a new interval workout I tried this week and it kicked my butt!  The idea is to do gutt wrenching intervals for 5 minutes, then recover for 5 minutes and do the intervals again for 5 minutes.  Here’s how my workout looked:

After warm up:

• 30 sec sprint (10 incline/8mph?  I actually can’t remember my speed…)
• 30 sec recover standing on the sides of the treadmill heaving 
• Repeat 4 more times
• 5 min walk at 3.8 mph
• 30 sec hard sprint (15 incline/4.3 mph)
• 30 sec standing on the sides of treadmill
• Repeat 4 more times

Cool Down

Try it out and tell me what you think!

For those of you who don’t know, HIIT stands for High Intensity Interval Training.  While lower intensity steady state cardio workouts do have their place, hard intervals are much better for fat loss.  With intervals you definately will burn more calories in a shorter amount of time, but you will also increase your resting metabolism for about 24 hours after the workout.  Who doesn’t want to burn more calories at rest?  I know I do! 

I have a serious case of cardio “ADD”.  I get bored doing one thing for longer than, oh, 2 minutes.  The other day I wanted to do a HIIT workout but I wanted to mix it up even further so here’s what I did:

5 min warm up

• 20 sec sprint (and I mean sprint – I did 9.0 mph – I can sprint faster but I considered this a warm up sprint)
• 40 sec recovery (walk)
• 30 sec sprint (I did 9.0 mph)
• 60 sec recovery
• 45 sec sprint (9.0 mph)
• 60 sec recovery
• 60 sec sprint (9.0mph)
• 60 sec recovery
• 45 sec sprint (9.5 mph)
• 60 sec recovery
• 30 sec sprint (10.0 mph)
• 60 sec recovery
• 20 sec sprint (10.5 mph – I haven’t hit this speed since before I got pregnant!)
• 40 seco recovery

5 min cool down

So, next time you want some serious HIIT and are feeling a little case of “cardio ADD” coming on, try Power HIIT!

Are you looking for a great time?  Try these intervals I’ve been doing lately.  I’d absolutely love to say that I’ve been running in a gorgeous park by the beach and that this picture is of me, but, it is not so.  I’ve been doing most of my training indoors lately.  I’m hoping to move it back outside soon enough though.  Anyway, on to the good time I was talking about:

After a warm up, here is the interval you repeat for as long as you want your workout to be:

• 30 seconds medium hard (run, RPE 7)
• 60 seconds easy-medium (jog, RPE 5)
• 30 seconds hard (sprint, RPE 9)
• 60 seconds easy (walk, RPE 4)

That’s a three min interval you will repeat.  It really is a great time.  I promise.

In my world today:

I don’t know what has gotten into me lately.  I’ve been waking up early.  And actually liking it.  This is so not me.  Thursday I got up at, are you ready for this, 5:20.  Yes, thats AM.  Went to the gym and did an hour of cardio (it was my cardio day) and then came home and got ready for the day.  I loved being ready for the day at 8am.  Then today I got up at 6:30, yes, on a Saturday, to workout (45 min lifting, 15 min cardio).  It was wonderful to be done working out before 10am when I usually finish.  I may start doing this periodically…

Last night I tried my hand (or should I say fingers, forearms, shoulders and legs) at rock climbing.  It was a lot of fun.  I don’t know how good I was but I don’t think my husband was embarassed so I must not have been too bad.

Today we went to my Grandma’s place for an easter egg hunt for the kids.  It was a lot of fun.   My grandma is 95 years old and she loves having us visit.  Afterwards, we drove up to the hills and went in search of a good trail to go trail running and mountain biking on.  I wouldn’t say we went hiking, but we got out of the car and walked on trails for a while with the kids.  We had a lot of fun and it got the kids moving which is always a good thing! 

What did you guys do this weekend?  Please share!

Has spring sprung were  you live yet?  It sure has here!  For a few days at least.  I think it’s supposed to snow this next week.  But this last week has been beautiful!  Something I did a couple of times for my workout this week was to go to the parking lot of the Church in our neighborhood.  My son rode his bike around the big parking lot and my friend, Saundra, and I ran intervals while I pushed the girls in the stroller.  It was a lot of fun!  We also brought our jump ropes and incorporated some of that in too. 

We did sprints and jump roping this week.  What are some different types of exercises you do when you take your workouts outside?