Incorporating the Different Aspects of Fitness Into Your Workouts
What a mouthful.
Incorporating what? For you to reach the top of YOUR fitness game, you need to do different things during each of your workouts for different reasons.
First of all, our bodies are very efficient machines.
They will get used to you doing the same thing over and over again, adapt to that and will use as little energy as possible to get you through the activity.
What you need to do is keep your body guessing all the time and by doing that, the efficiency goes out the window, the body cannot assume what you are going to do next and that is when the "miracle" body transformation begins.
Not that much of a "miracle" just effective planning on your side.
Let us look at a breakdown of what is important when compiling an exercise program for yourself.
oCardiovascular - Basically this is physical conditioning that exercises the heart, lungs and blood vessels.
We know it as sweating over a treadmill, stationary bike, elliptical machine or the stepper for long periods of time.
Is this effective? Not as much as we think! It is needed, but let us put a bit of a spin on the long time frame, boost up the effort levels while you are doing it and it is actually more effective than the long boring cardio, and who said cardio must be done on machine? The dictionary definition say nothing about it needs to be on a stationary piece of equipment inside a building! oStrength - To use resistance to perform muscular contractions, in other words to flex and extend a certain muscle in the body in order for that muscle to grow.
Ladies, do not run away from the word GROW! To tone a muscle, means for it to become a little bigger, so yes, GROW! The resistance we use comes from different avenues, machines, free weights or the best machine ever, your body.
oPower - This is basically to use your maximum strength in the shortest possible time.
Power training will include plyometric training with jumps and hops.
So, you can be very strong but that does not mean that you have a lot of power.
This will be very important for a person that participate in sport, but also needed for a well rounded workout program.
oFlexibility - The part of the program that is mostly left behind.
You either run out of time, are too tired after a rough workout or just too lazy.
Flexibility is the range of motion around a muscle joint and a lack of it can lead to serious injury.
Increased flexibility will lead to better and stronger workouts and decrease your risk of pulling a muscle and not being able to train at all! So how do you put all these aspects of training into a well rounded workout plan for a week? The trick is to include most of the above mentioned fitness principles in one super workout.
Let us look at a sample workout: 5 Rounds of: o50 Skips o10 Push ups o10 Box jumps o10 Bent over rows o50 Skips This workout includes all the fitness principles.
The skips will cover the cardiovascular training.
You will feel your heart beating fast, meaning that you are training the heart muscle, lungs and blood vessels.
Push ups and bent over rows cover the strength training and in a clever way training opposing muscle groups as well.
The box jumps cover the power principle.
Not mentioned in this example workout is the unwritten rule of warming up, stretching, cooling down and stretching, this will cover your flexibility principle.
This workout will take you less than 30 minutes to complete and covers all the fitness principles to get you into peak shape.
Would you not rather give your workout an all out effort and spend less than 45 minutes doing it and see amazing results, versus spending countless, useless hours per week on a stationary cardio "monster" and see very little results? Option number one looks much more promising.
Remember to always train within your fitness boundaries and take your scheduled rest days.
Remember, the body builds muscle and shed the fat when in rest, not when you are busy working out!
Incorporating what? For you to reach the top of YOUR fitness game, you need to do different things during each of your workouts for different reasons.
First of all, our bodies are very efficient machines.
They will get used to you doing the same thing over and over again, adapt to that and will use as little energy as possible to get you through the activity.
What you need to do is keep your body guessing all the time and by doing that, the efficiency goes out the window, the body cannot assume what you are going to do next and that is when the "miracle" body transformation begins.
Not that much of a "miracle" just effective planning on your side.
Let us look at a breakdown of what is important when compiling an exercise program for yourself.
oCardiovascular - Basically this is physical conditioning that exercises the heart, lungs and blood vessels.
We know it as sweating over a treadmill, stationary bike, elliptical machine or the stepper for long periods of time.
Is this effective? Not as much as we think! It is needed, but let us put a bit of a spin on the long time frame, boost up the effort levels while you are doing it and it is actually more effective than the long boring cardio, and who said cardio must be done on machine? The dictionary definition say nothing about it needs to be on a stationary piece of equipment inside a building! oStrength - To use resistance to perform muscular contractions, in other words to flex and extend a certain muscle in the body in order for that muscle to grow.
Ladies, do not run away from the word GROW! To tone a muscle, means for it to become a little bigger, so yes, GROW! The resistance we use comes from different avenues, machines, free weights or the best machine ever, your body.
oPower - This is basically to use your maximum strength in the shortest possible time.
Power training will include plyometric training with jumps and hops.
So, you can be very strong but that does not mean that you have a lot of power.
This will be very important for a person that participate in sport, but also needed for a well rounded workout program.
oFlexibility - The part of the program that is mostly left behind.
You either run out of time, are too tired after a rough workout or just too lazy.
Flexibility is the range of motion around a muscle joint and a lack of it can lead to serious injury.
Increased flexibility will lead to better and stronger workouts and decrease your risk of pulling a muscle and not being able to train at all! So how do you put all these aspects of training into a well rounded workout plan for a week? The trick is to include most of the above mentioned fitness principles in one super workout.
Let us look at a sample workout: 5 Rounds of: o50 Skips o10 Push ups o10 Box jumps o10 Bent over rows o50 Skips This workout includes all the fitness principles.
The skips will cover the cardiovascular training.
You will feel your heart beating fast, meaning that you are training the heart muscle, lungs and blood vessels.
Push ups and bent over rows cover the strength training and in a clever way training opposing muscle groups as well.
The box jumps cover the power principle.
Not mentioned in this example workout is the unwritten rule of warming up, stretching, cooling down and stretching, this will cover your flexibility principle.
This workout will take you less than 30 minutes to complete and covers all the fitness principles to get you into peak shape.
Would you not rather give your workout an all out effort and spend less than 45 minutes doing it and see amazing results, versus spending countless, useless hours per week on a stationary cardio "monster" and see very little results? Option number one looks much more promising.
Remember to always train within your fitness boundaries and take your scheduled rest days.
Remember, the body builds muscle and shed the fat when in rest, not when you are busy working out!
