Workout of the Day: Knock It Up A Notch

I was doing oh so well through October with the early morning cardio and the weight lifting in the evening and the window eating/intermittent fasting but a hectic personal and professional schedule has nearly sabotaged my efforts this past week. There's no reason to get down about it as hey, life happens. I'm just under my monthly workouts goal and have nearly three days to get there so I should be in good shape. While I've been doing mainly steady state cardio in the Frank Zane mold of Ab-Aerobics, 1-2 minutes per station (treadmill, jump rope, bike, shadow boxing, stair climber, etc) for 20-30 minutes, today I kicked it up to make up for an evening full of good friends and fried food. The body can always use a rest so after a couple of days off I figured I could push myself.

Intervals make your body work harder because it doesn't know what's coming next. You can burn more calories outside of training because the body is burning more to recuperate. As always, just think of the body of a sprinter versus a marathon runner. One is muscular and strong while the other is pretty normal looking or a bit thin. On the treadmill, always at an incline to put less stress on the knees and up calorie burn, I walked for 30 seconds then upped the speed for a 20 second sprint, then upped it again to go for another 20. With jump rope it was regular pace for 10 seconds followed by 20 seconds of all out. Same thing on the bike and stairclimber. After 25 minutes my heart was thumping and the sweat was pouring. My shoulders and arms are a little sore from jump roping with the extra force. While the body can do so much, you can always push a little harder mentally to keep going. Find a positive mantra and repeat it to yourself, pump yourself up, semi-hyper ventilate, whatever you need to do to keep going just a little more.