Sunday, August 10, 2008

Exercise Do's and Don'ts

Do's and Dont's of Cardio and exercise!

-Don't run or try to embrace another form of low impact cardio. Believe me, your muscle mass and your joints will thank me! Fitness models and other professionals lean towards the "no running" principle because it's known to "eat away" at the muscle you work so hard to gain.

-Don't work against yourself and defeat your progress by running. It takes a lot of energy with no real gains, except for cardiovascular. You can receive cardiovascular benefits from other low impact versions such as using the Elliptical, Nordic Track, Air Stepper, and the Stair Master.
Don't do less than 25 minutes, or more than 45 minutes (unless you are prepping to compete). This "magic zone" between 25 to 45 burns fat as well as keeping your heart rate between 130-140 bpm. If you do more than that your body "hits a plateau" and your body "hits a wall" and you slow/stop your progress.

-Don't focus soley (added in for clarification 8-29-08) on cardio! In order to have that strong, sleek and sexy, muscle tone, you need to focus more on weight training to build it up. Don't do excessive cardio which will "eat away" at your muscle mass.

-Don't overtrain! If you overtrain, your appetite will increase and you will start eating like a 250 pound football player and not a fitness model. Rather do just enough to blast fat, and not to hit a plateau. Again if you overtrain, your body will "lock up" and not allow you to burn the fat off that you need too, because it will reach a state of "shock", thus holding onto the fat.

-Do understand that fitness is a journey to be enjoyed, not a one time event. Like the old adage goes, "Rome wasn't built in a day." Your body too is a masterpiece in progress. Take it one day at a time, and enjoy the process.

(source)

2 comments:

verycooldyke said...

"Don't focus on cardio!...Focus more on weight training to build it up..."

In response to this:

if you have layers of fat on top of your muscles, and focus solely on weight training, you will only be building your muscles below fat making you seem even fatter. You would want to first focus on cardio to burn the fat, then weight training to build up the sexy muscle.

Nu-U Fitness Of San Antonio said...

Hi Rachel,
The reason I wrote this was, the more lean muscle mass you build THE MORE FAT YOU ACTUALLY BURN. It takes the body more energy to maintain lean muscle mass than it does to maintain fat. So there are lasting effects after a work out and building muscle...meaing after you stop working out you are still burning fat. As opposed to JUST doing cardio (if you get your heart rate up too high you stop burning fat, if its too low you stop burning fat...very sensitive)which helps but most hit a plateau in the first month. Granted there is a three fold system to losing weight if you want to do it symmetrically meaning cardio, diet, and resistance training.

Thank you for the comment.

Meagan