7 Tips for a Great Cardio Workout
1. Follow a Training Plan
If you have an effective and well thought out plan to follow (which matches your level of fitness) you are more likely to keep to it and less likely to injure yourself by doing too much too soon.
Don’t have a plan? Find one on the net like these great resources for example…
Cool Running Couch-to-5k training plan (This is the one I’m currently following - Week 6 day 2 just now)
Do it for Charity Cycling Training Guide
Alternatively borrow a book from the library or pay for a session with a personal trainer to help you formulate a workout schedule for the coming weeks.
2. Vary It
Cardio can get very boring if you do the same activities and use the same machines or follow the same routes every time - and besides, if you keep on doing the same old routine it does not challenge your body as well as it could.
Make the effort to switch around your activities, equipment and environment. Vary the intensity too - some long slower sessions, some interval training, some medium intensity, medium length sessions too.
3. Entertain Yourself
Add to your enjoyment by using music or tapes while you work out. Watch TV at the gym. A long session on the treadmill can go very quickly with your favorite show. Don’t forget to focus on what you’re doing too though.
4. Protect Yourself
Keep yourself safe and free from injury by wearing the right clothes and footwear and keeping to well-populated areas. If there’s a lot of traffic go easy on the music so you can hear as well as see vehicles approaching. Let someone know where you are going.
5. Eating
Wait a couple of hours after eating a full meal before working out. If you are too hungry to work out a light snack such as a banana can be enough to satisfy you before your session. Also you may find you get more out of an early morning work out if you have a light breakfast first.
If you want the full fat-burning effect of a cardio workout don’t eat straight after your session but wait an hour or so before having a meal.
6. Stay Hydrated
For a normal cardio session plain water is best. Before, during (depending on the length of your session) and after. Avoid sugar loaded sports drinks - you don’t need them. Good performance requires hydration not sugar.
7. Stretching
Don’t forget to do your stretches after your workout to avoid soreness. Doing a lot of cardio (and building muscle) can reduce flexibility - so stretching is essential. Also taking up something like yoga and practising on non-cardio days can be particularly beneficial in maintaining flexibility.
Bonus Tip : The main thing to have an effective cardio workout is just to “Do It” because chances are you will feel great whenever you do and not so great when you have avoided getting out there and getting it done for a week. Once you have a plan, log your workouts so that you can see you are making progress. A heart rate monitor too is a great tool for seeing how far you have come before you can even feel the difference.
Tags: cardio, Fitness, heart rate, routine, running, workout5 Ways to Make Exercise Easier on Yourself
1. Plan Ahead
Always have your exercise kit ready and available. Have enough workout clothing so you can get a fresh kit together right after your workout while you’re still feeling good about having gone out for a run or to the gym. And keep it in a handy place at home ready to grab and go or store it in your car trunk so it’s always with you.
2. Follow a Program
Follow a work out program which is suitable for whatever stage of fitness you have reached. If you follow a pre-designed program you never have to think about what to do today - it’s all worked out in advance. If you are more experienced, you can create your own workout plan making sure that you don’t go too far too fast to avoid injury and over-training.
3. Get the Intensity Right
Use a heart rate monitor in conjunction with your program to ensure you are working at the right cardio intensity. You will also be able to follow your progress by seeing a reduction in your resting heart rate and the rate for any particular cardio exercise as you get fitter.
4. Schedule Your Exercise
Make an appointment with yourself as if you had a personal trainer turning up and expecting you to be ready to work out. Write it in your diary and schedule the rest of your life around your exercise sessions so that you make time for them.
5. Stay Healthy
Good food, plenty of sleep, proper hydration and avoiding cigarettes and too much alcohol and will make the job of keeping fit a lot easier than if your life is filled with late night booze sessions and junk food. If you do feel ill, give yourself a break from exercise and don’t force your body to work when it needs rest and recuperation. You’ll get back to full strength a lot faster.
Tags: exercise, Fitness, get fit, gym, heart rate, program, workoutWork Out for Longer Without Noticing
Photo by mikebaird
Do you find yourself glancing at your watch every 30 seconds after a while during your cardio session? Are you just trying to get to the end without giving up? I know my eyes are often glued on the time when I go jogging to try and improve my fitness.
But there are also certain times when I don’t focus on just getting through it… sometimes I hardly notice I’m working out at all and the time goes by very quickly.
What is different about those times? Is it just that my motivation varies from one workout to another?
It seems that during the fitness sessions when the time passes quickly, distraction is the key - I am focused on something other than all the effort I’m making.
Here’s what seems to work for me…
- having something to think about. Sometimes at the start of a session I decide to think about a particular issue or topic that’s bothering me while I’m working out. Bonus is that I often come up with great ideas during that time.
- having something to listen to - whether it’s great music, a radio show or a book on CD it passes the time without it feeling like a trial
- having a companion. Mostly I work out alone but on the rare occasions I jog with someone else the session seems to go faster as we chat away 19 to the dozen
- having something to watch. The better the scenery, the more that’s going on, the more interesting the jog. This one also comes into it’s own when I work out at home in front of the TV - with a favorite show on view I often end up exercising for longer than I intended
Just a couple of things to watch out for if you decide to use distraction to keep yourself going for longer
- stay safe - make sure you are still aware of what’s going on around you - for example don’t have your music so loud that you can’t hear the traffic
- don’t forget to keep up the pace of your workout - keep checking that you are working hard enough - the best way (so you don’t have to keep reminding yourself how hard you’re working) is to use a heart rate monitor with a built-in alarm signal which will sound if you reduce (or increase) your pace outside the right zone for you.
What do you use to get yourself through a workout?
Tags: Fitness, heart rate, jogging, motivation, workoutExercise Myth Debunked: Fat Burning Zone
I don’t know how many times I’ve read and heard that you are better to do moderate exercise if you want to burn fat - and exercise for at least 30 minutes to start burning it. I think I even believed it myself at one time I heard it so often.
It’s true of course that all exercise is good for fat burning - a calorie burned is a calorie burned after all (although you are probably not burning as many as you think - so no, you can’t have that Snickers Bar after the gym, no matter how hard you think you worked, without making your visit pretty much a waste of time as far as calorie burning goes).
Anyway I digress.
The truth is that you will burn a lot more calories (and in the end shed more fat) if you vary the intensity of exercise during your session rather than sticking to a moderate pace the whole time.
So for example, you would go at a moderate pace for 3 minutes and then go as fast as you can for 3 minutes before returning to your moderate pace for 3 minutes - essentially alternating moderate and fast pace for the duration of your session a.k.a. interval training
The advantages to this:-
- you are working harder for half your session and so directly burning more calories
- you will be working wonders for your level of cardio fitness - interval training is one of the best ways of getting fit fast
- you get an added calorie-burning boost AFTER your workout. Research shows that you burn 25 per cent as many calories in the hour after your interval training session as you do during it. So, that means if you burn 400 calories during your session - you’ll burn an extra 100 calories in the following hour while you sit with your feet up! Why? It seems the body has to make more effort to get back to normal after intense exercise.
If you feel a bit distraught at the idea of all that intense exercise, don’t let it put you off working out altogether. Remember some exercise is ALWAYS better than none and if you are doing anything at all then good on ya!
Tags: burn fat, calories, exercise, Fitness, gym, heart rate, workout
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