The Workouts

Saturday, December 13, 2008

I have posted a lot about diet, so I thought I should post some on exercise - I definitely don't profess to be any kind of fitness expert, but hey, perhaps I will have some useful tips!

Cardio:

My cardio routine is nothing too exciting, I do the elliptical 3-4 times a week for an hour. One thing to focus on is to try to make sure that you have got a good resistance, your strides per minute (SPM) are high, etc. and monitor your heartrate.

See, the reason the elliptical seems so much easier than the treadmill is that it is easy if you keep it on a Resistance of 2, and put the ramp on 2, and do like 120 strides per minute - that's not to say that it isn't good to do this as a beginning workout, but it's more like walking than running. So, over time I have tried to keep my resistance at 7 (I have worked up from 5-7, I am going to try to go up to 8 at some point, but haven't done it yet), my SPM at at least 150 (before my trainer, I never really realized I was always doing only around 130, so I have bumped it up), and do the weight loss interval workout.

As for heartrate, I think my max heartrate is like 196; and getting your heartrate up is definitely the best monitor of how good of a workout you're getting. I usually get up to like 175 as a max, which I think is decently good.

Strength Training - Ab Workout

So, it's kind of hard to explain strength training on a blog, it's kind of a visual thing, but I'll try to throw out there all the exercises you can do at home with just three things - 5 lb weights, 10 lb weights, and an exercise ball (I got the ball with the weight at the bottom so the ball stays balanced on the floor). I do strength training 2-3 days a week.Today I'll go through some ab stuff you can do:

I have found that the ab workouts that really kill that Kerry has me do are:

(1) Laying down on the floor, a mat, lifting your legs like in the picture and just doing a regular crunch; and not pulling your neck too much. Do 10 of these.

(2) Lift your legs straight up (as straight as possible, that part is hard for me!) like in the pic; place a 5 lb weight behind your head - reach back with your arms to grab the weight (hold one end of the dumbell with each hand) and then lift the weight up to your ankles. Do this 10 times.

(3) Do bicycle crunches - lift your legs up like the first picture and just touch your right elbow to your left knee, then left elbow to right knee, etc. (and the other leg that is not touching your elbow should be completely straight - this is harder than it sounds!)

Repeat all 3 (another 10 times of each) - it doesn't sound that hard, but do it and your abs will really hurt, especially if this is in conjunction with other strength training!