Making Your Workouts Count
Effective, heart-pumping, calorie-burning workouts are part of your workout goals. Workouts count when they overload or challenge your body. So you'll need to learn how to make your workouts challenging enough to create changes in your body. One of the best ways to do this is with intervals.
Intervals involve a repeated series of intense exercise workouts interspersed with more moderate exercise periods. Intervals are commonly used to make gains in endurance, strength, speed, or some combination of those, and are used to improve both aerobic and anaerobic performance and conditioning. They are so effective they are like hitting a fast-forward button of progress, as long as they are not overdone.
Interval workouts train your body to work more efficiently by using short periods of high-intensity exercise to challenge your typical workout program. Intervals are fun because of their variety and intensity, and your feelings of satisfaction after completing them. Plus, when you use your heart-rate monitor, you can watch your different heart-rate responses.
Adapt your exercise time to work with your frequency and intensity. For instance, if you normally exercise five times per week but have a hectic week approaching that allows for only three times per week, you can adjust your exercise time for longer periods to compensate for the lower frequency. Also, if you want to exercise at a higher intensity level than normal, you should shorten your time of exercise accordingly.
Designing Your Own Interval Session
You can design interval sessions for any activity. Here are some key points to consider when planning your interval training session.
Always include a thorough warm-up.
Remember that intervals are for limited periods of time, and are not to be practiced for the entire portion of an exercise session.
Interval sessions should not exceed two times per week.
The benefits of interval training can be achieved by exercising at intensity levels that are higher aerobic levels, or by crossing the threshold into anaerobic levels.
To interval train, adjust your exercise session either by increasing the exercise intensity or length of the intense work interval, decreasing the length of the rest and recovery phase, or increasing the number of intervals per session.
When you return to exercise or perform work at the previous aerobic levels, it will feel easier. This is because your cardiovascular system, through the overload principle, has become more efficient. You are now able to do more with less effort. This is a good sign. It means that you are getting more fit and are in better condition.
Tips for Beginners
When the subject is exercise, more is not always better. You may not remember this, but before you learned to walk, you had to crawl. Well, the same is true for your fitness.
If you want to be successful with your fitness program and want to feel good both during and after exercise, you will need to start in small increments of time and effort, and then increase gradually. This is where many people set themselves up to fail. They expect their bodies to perform activity at levels that are neither realistic nor recommended. Afterward they feel bad, and then wrongly insist that it's the exercise itself that makes them feel worse.
Warm-ups and cool-downs are important, and it is up to you to make sure you incorporate them into your exercise time. A warm-up should last 5 to 10 minutes and get you feeling ready to work. To cool down, reduce the intensity level of exercise gradually, over about 5 minutes.
It is particularly important to start slowly if you have not exercised recently. When you begin an exercise program, you should be gentle with your body. If you start slowly, your body will respond favorably, and you will reinforce the positive effects of your new exercise program. To set yourself up for success, start with small increments of time at low intensity levels until your body has had time to adjust to the new activity.
