Get Healthy & Fit wants to answer your questions about health and fitness. Some of the top personal trainers in the country will answer the questions that are on everone's mind. Many people have simmilar questions, so even if we don't answer your question personally you may still find the answers you are looking for. Here is this weeks question and answer.
Here is this week's question and answer:
"I go to the gym 3-4 times per week and I'm pretty consistent with doing cardio. Even know I feel a little better, I'm just not seeing many results. What am I doing wrong?"
Michelle H, Coral Gables, FL
A: Michelle, I know how frustrating it can be to work so hard and not get the results you want to have. However, there are a few things you can do to make your time in the gym and outside the gym as efficient as possible.
You can work as hard as you want but if you don't back your training up with solid eating habits, you are doing worse than shooting your own foot, you are cutting it off. Almost everyone thinks they eat "pretty good" but when I have my clients keep a food journal for me, they are surprised to see that they aren't eating as healthy as they thought. Try keeping a food journal, write down everything that you take in to your body and write down when you eat/drink it. This will hold you accountable for your actions and will also provide you with some insight into your eating patterns. This can be a great tool because there might be an easy fix somewhere in there that you never noticed before.
The other factor is your gym time. Are you maximizing your time? I know it sounds cliché, but you can get so much further in the gym if you work smarter and harder. Try these strategies and you will break through your plateau:
First, try lifting heavier than you have been and adjust your rep range to be b/n 6-8reps. Lifting heavier will lead to more calorie burning, it will also amp up your metabolism for hours after your workout.
That means that when you are home and resting, you will still be burning more calories because of the intensity of your workout! (a unique benefit of resistance training). Oh, just in case you're thinking it, let me be clear; You will not "bulk up" by lifting heavier weights!! You will build feminine muscle tone because you have greater amounts of estrogen in your body as opposed to men who have the testosterone (men have 10 to 40 times the testosterone of women) so don't worry about bulking up!
Maximize your cardio as well so you don't have to run for an hour every time you're in the gym. We will use "interval training" in order to facilitate the calorie burning in a much shorter time frame. After you warm up, get to your normal jogging pace and jog for two minutes. Then you will increase your speed by 50% and run for thirty seconds. (ex. if your jog=4.0, then your run=6.0) this is one interval. If you have your speeds adjusted right, you should be able to do no more than 10 intervals, that's only twenty five minutes of cardio! If you aren't spent after that, then you went too slow. You can eventually play with the lengths of your jog and run to make it more challenging so you can still be done in twenty minutes or so.
Michelle, I know that is a very long answer to a short question, but the reality is that there are many things that must be taken into account to create a program that can meet your expectations. I've given you the framework to do so. If you do this, I know that you will have all the results you deserve to have and then some.
Max Hoyt: IFPA-CPT
maxtraining365@hotmail.com
