Doing workouts is not like shopping at warehouse stores. Or at least not in this way: we don’t always get the best value from the ginormous pack. Professional athletes need to work out a lot. Regular humans don’t need quite so much. Remember that enormous bag of tortilla chips that seemed like such a good deal? The one that was the size of a ten-year-old? And the first few inches of chips were great, but then everyone was sick of chips and by the time the semester ended there was this looming rock of stale corn products that everyone was afraid to approach? Yeah, not such a good choice after all, right?
The metaphor got maybe a little out of control there, but there is a point in there somewhere. And it is: we need to work out the right amount for our goals. If our goal is basic health, we want to commit to about 30 minutes of moderate cardio (it’s moderate if we have enough breath to chat, but not enough to sing) at least five days a week, one or two sessions of weight training on non-consecutive days, and some daily stretching/balance/core work. That may sound like a lot if we’ve just been holding down the couch, but it averages out to less than an hour a day. (Also, if we have been truly holding down the couch for weeks or months, we want to work up to that 30 minutes of cardio over a month or so…)
If we want to lose weight, it gets slightly more onerous, but only slightly. We need to make the cardio a little harder and a little longer. We want to commit to two or three weight training sessions a week. And yes, we still have to do the stretching/balance/core stuff. We also need to keep track of what we’re eating so we don’t undo all our good work at the gym.
And when we’re done with our workouts, we get to stop and rest. We don’t need to do another hour on the treadmill or elliptical trainer or four hours of weight lifting. Remember the chips: more is not always better.
No comments:
Post a Comment