Metabolic Habit #5
August, 2009
by Morella Devost
This week we're moving on to habit #5 for a healthy metabolism. If you missed the previous 4 habits, you can find all of our past articles in our articles & archives page.
Habit #5: Mix up your workouts. Alternate cardiovascular training, resistance training and interval training.
Before we say ANYTHING about exercising, I'll say this: your workouts MUST be fun. You have to enjoy yourself while you're exercising in order to stick to it and also to reap the most benefit. Don't add the negativity of feeling resentful of your workout or wishing it to be over. Your body more readily accepts something you enjoy. Now to the good stuff...
Many people get stuck in their health, fitness and weight goals because they get in a workout rut. Firstly, it is important to note that no matter how great your exercise routine, if you fail to combine it with good food you will fall well short of your health goals. You may be skinny, but not necessarily healthy.
The rut of exercising is that most people have one predominant activity they do: the elliptical, walk 2 miles every day, swim 20 laps, stationary bike, yoga 3 times a week, etc. and they rarely combine it with anything else. At first they see great results, but later they plateau and seem to have the hardest time improving or losing more weight.
Is this you? Do you know why do you need to mix it up?
Here's the essence of different types of exercise in a nutshell. Please excuse the oversimplification for the purposes of brevity:
- Cardiovascular exercise: this is your walking, running, swimming, elliptical type of activities. In common terms, these are the main activities that require a lot of energy or, as you may have heard, "burn more calories". They're called "cardio" because they strengthen your heart as they require it to pump more blood through the body.
- Resistance training: these are your pushups, squats, free-weight workouts, weight machines, pilates, etc. With these exercises you isolate specific groups of muscles and work with your own body weight or external weights to strengthen those muscles.
- Interval training: this includes activities such as jumping jacks, jump-rope and sprinting. These exercises are very fast paced for a short period of time, followed by rest or more moderate activity. They require a lot of energy and coordination and, therefore, fire up all of the cells in your body at once.
- Stretching: this encompasses simple stretches after working out and also yoga, of course. The main goal with these exercises is to build and maintain flexibility throughout your body and prevent injuries.
You need to do a little bit of all of them.
If you are frustrated in your weight loss and you've been doing the same workout for months, you either (a) need to switch it up, (b) you are not eating according to your metabolic type, or (c) your metabolic hormones are a bit out-of-whack and are not instructing your body to lose fat effectively.
Today we're going to focus on (a) switching up your workouts.
When you alternate resistance training and cardio exercise, you make the most out of every workout. Building and strengthening muscle through weight training helps you burn more calories the next time you go for a walk. Muscle requires a lot more energy than fat given that fat is inert for the most part, whereas muscle is moving you around.
Then you bring in interval training. That's when you start to intersperse quick burst of running or sprinting into your walks; or when you start jumping rope for a minute or two in between your resistance training workouts. Intervals of fast-paced activity increase your heart rate and your energy requirements throughout your body, it essentially jolts all of the cells of your body into action and therefore increases your metabolic rate. The consequence is that your body will remain consuming more energy (calories) throughout the rest of your workout.
Yoga in particular is especially beneficial to round up your workouts. Not only does yoga build greater flexibility and prevent tendon and ligament tears, it also works out some of the smaller muscles as you maintain intricate poses. In addition, it develops flexibility in your spine which helps prevent back injuries and nerve pressure.
As you read this, think about your workouts and ask yourself which piece could be better? Would you benefit from working out with a personal trainer, doing yoga or maybe adding intervals to your workout?
Pick one action to focus on this week.
If you feel that exercise is not really the core of your issue, feel free to write us for a free consultation. Again, there may be other things keeping you stuck in your health goals and we'd be happy to help you. Contact us.