Tuesday 1 February 2011

How to get the best out of your workout

I've been reading quite a bit about working out lately. I even got some books out of the library, just to get some inspiration to keep my home workouts interesting.

More and more often do I read, that it's not the hour long cardio, which will make your fat melt away and giving you a strong body, that it's rather the short full out bursts that will keep your metabolism raging for a long time. It does make sense, when you compare the bodies of the skinny marathon runners with the überathletic sprinters.

I mean apart from the fact that I don't have time to spend hours on end training (one of the reasons why I don't want to run a marathon), I do understand that bigger muscles burn more calories all day round. For muscles to grow, they have to be put under stress to be forced to up their performance. That means you have to ache afterwards.

I'm by no means an expert in these things, but I try to educate myself a bit in that area. It also makes sense to me, that when your doing the same thing over and over again, that your body gets used to it and just hits a plateau.

So what do I get out of that for myself? For me still the main factor is that it stays fun. So I will still do gentle jogs. I have to anyway, because I have to train up for the 10k in the summer, and I don´t plan to break any records. But I also try to do at least two days of full body workouts, which should give me some sore muscles the days after. To get them I understand that it´s no use to two million reps with miniscule weights. I rather put on my tabata timer and go full out in these intervals. The same with the cardio. Going full out, short rest, full out aso.

The funny thing is, the thing I got the most problem with, is giving the muscles the recovery time. Another thing I read is that the muscles need 48hrs to recover. That would mean 2 full days of rest between workouts???????? Sorry can´t do that. I was quite proud of myself to have 1 complete day yesterday after my PT session on Sunday, which definitely resulted in sore muscles.

So, time for me to shoot. I´m working at the football again tonight. That means sleep deprivation again. I hate not getting my 8hrs! But it´s the only midweek game in a while, so I suppose I´ll survive. And looking at my credit card bill and the big red number on our account, I don´t have much of a choice anyway.

Oh, one good thing to finish. When I went on the scales with my PT, I lost over 2kg and over 1% bodyfat. I´m happy with that, especially considering it was my birthday week.

Happy weightloss everyone

XX

1 comment:

  1. Yay good job! I am definitely going to have to crank up the working out on my end. I can't seem to be motivated but I am going to do it now if it kills me. Which it wont.

    You are an inspiration!

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