Yesterday I mentioned that we need to do cardio, weights, flexibility, and core and balance work. How are we supposed to fit all that in?
Circuit training. And specifically, high intensity interval circuits.
High intensity intervals are the key to getting a lot of cardio in a short amount of time. We do minute-long bursts of exercises that get our heart rates elevated and then recover with less-intense exercise for a minute or two. If we use that recovery period to lift weights and work on our core and balance, we just need to finish up with stretching at the end and voila! It’s a little more complicated than that, but not that much.
Here’s how we plan.
First we plan a warm-up. This is about five minutes (more if we are older, stiffer, recovering from injury, or beginners) of gentle movement, something like brisk walking or light jogging, and maybe a stretch or two toward the end.
Then we pick a few cardio exercises. Think of things like jacks, mountain climbers, step-ups, jump squats, woodchoppers, anything that gets the heart rate really moving. (Don’t do them yet! We’re still planning!)
We need some weight training exercises now. We want to pick more or less the same number of upper body and lower body exercises, so we might choose squats, bench press, deadlift, and flies.
Next, we need a couple of core and balance exercises. This is where we might do multi-directional lunges and crunches.
(We’ll save most of our flexibility exercises for the end.)
Now that we have all our parts, we put them together like this: cardio interval, lower body exercise, upper body exercise, core and balance. Then we repeat with the other cardio, weight, and core/balance exercises we picked. I usually create a circuit of about nine exercises and repeat it three times with rests spaced before the cardio intervals, but experimentation is good. Finish with some SMR and stretching and call it a day! Most people can finish what I’ve just described in under an hour.
Go play.
