Do you feel like your cardio program isn’t working for you? Or maybe you lost a bunch of weight with your program, and keep gaining it back?
If you are struggling to reach, or maintain your weight loss goals, Keep reading…
What is wrong?
There are a few factors to consider when trying to figure out how to make your workout routine work for you. The first one to consider is your current eating habits. Are they falling in line with your fitness goals? Check to make sure your eating habits support and fuel your fitness goals, otherwise you will be setting yourself up for failure before you see any progress. If you are burning 500 calories in your run, but overeating 600 calories per day, you are going gain weight, not lose it.
Your cardio workouts could also be failing you because the capacity of each workout may not be shocking enough to your body to increase your metabolic burn rate. Another common reason can be injury from a sudden onset of high impact exercise. The fonts and muscles weren’t prepared for the change in exercises, and they panic! If this is the case, it can also be a sign that injury is on the rise, and may stop us from exercising all together if we do not make some changes to our program.
What should I do?
Here are two of our best practices in making our cardio days count!
- Thoroughly warm up the hips and shoulders before and after cardio. Using bands to tense these muscles do a great job of waking up many dormant muscle groups needed for a pain-free run.
- Alternate your workouts with resistance training. It is one of the best ways to keep your body shocked enough to maintain progress, and also prevent injury. Cardio burn stops as soon as your heart rate comes down, and your body goes back to normal for the rest of the day. Resistance training requires much more time after the workout is over to recover, which means that it will cost your body more calories for up to 2 days after the workout is over. This is the result of increasing your metabolic rate.
How often should I exercise to maintain results?
When determining your workout schedule, keep in mind that the average human should take part in moderate exercise at least 3 times a week for overall health. If you are doing resistance training, this should be sufficient enough to give you moderate result. Your body will continue to burn higher amounts of calories for up to 2 days post workout (increase in metabolic rate). This is really helpful in working towards weight loss, without having to be in the gym every day. Unfortunately, if cardio is your only source of exercise during the week, your calorie burn stops when your workout ends. Keeping a daily routine of calorie burn will be more vital to your progress.
Our Advice:
If you are looking to lose a lot of weight fast, alternate resistance training with cardio workouts. You get the benefit of that super-burn after a resistance workout, while burning lots of instant calories from cardio. If you are strapped for time and can only devote 3 days max to moderate exercise, then try interval training. Its the best way to burn a ton of calories while stressing muscle tissue for that long-term metabolic burn. Here is one of our favorite home High intensity interval training (H.I.I.T) workouts:
45 seconds / 15 seconds Rest
3 Rounds = 15 minutes
Be sure to add in a warm up routine (we recommend 5-10 minutes) and a cool down (we like slow and steady cardio 10- 20 minutes).
1. Stair Climbers (use stairs in home, or a step)
2. Push ups (Standard, or on your knees)
3. Squat Jumps (or Bodyweight squats)
4. Mountain Climbers
5. Burpees
Level Up Fitness Waltham offer Small Group Training sessions, including high intensity H.I.I.T Classes. Click here to sign up for a Small Group H.I.I.T Session!
OR Check Out our FREE Workshop Series December 8th 2018! Learn to build better workouts at home! Click here to register now!