Scheduling 101

Over the last weeks, we have gone over all the different kinds of work we need to incorporate into our fitness routines.  It’s a lot, so we might feel a little overwhelmed about how we are going to manage to do fitness and anything else in our lives, too.

 

Never fear!  Today I’m going to talk about scheduling and how to make it all work together.

 

One traditional way to make it all fit is to stagger workouts.  We do our cardio every day and add in strength training with some stretching and balance work on two days a week.  Maybe on one day we forego the cardio and take a yoga or Pilates class to increase our commitment to flexibility and balance.  It’s perfectly workable and gives our weight-training muscles a chance to rest.

 

However, there are a couple of tweaks to the traditional system that make it work better in less time.  May I introduce everyone to my two favorite things:  interval training and circuit training.

 

Interval training (sometimes called High Intensity Interval Training, or HIIT) allows us to burn more calories and improve our cardio fitness in less time.  Once we are warmed up, we intersperse whatever cardio thing we are doing with bursts of about a minute of going as fast and/or hard as we can.  If we are, say, walking on a treadmill, we increase the incline and/or speed for a minute.  Then we recover for a minute or two and repeat.  If we are biking, we add hills.  If we are swimming, we go faster.  Our hour-long workout becomes half an hour.  What’s not to like?

 

When we combine this concept with circuit training on our two or three days a week that we plan to do strength training, we get even more efficient.  We combine our weight work with cardio intervals and we’re done with both cardio and strength in 45 minutes.  (Note:  the workouts I post every Monday are designed on this principle, so we have plenty of resources available!)  With a bit of planning, we can ensure that we are building in balance moves right there in the circuit.  This is why there are always core moves and often asymmetric or single-leg versions of exercises included in the workouts I write.

 

So a weekly workout plan might look like this:

 

Monday: half hour interval cardio, 5-10 minutes stretching

Tuesday:  circuit strength training interval workout, 5-10 minutes stretching

Wednesday: same as Monday

Thursday:  same as Tuesday

Friday:  same as Monday

Saturday: Pilates or yoga

Sunday: gentle walk and stretching

 

We’re done in under an hour every day except possibly Saturday, depending on class length.

 

Go play.