Your Training Countdown
Getting visible results from training takes time. While internal changes begin immediately from your very first session, it takes about six to eight weeks for you to see those results in the mirror. You may start to feel better more quickly and notice that you have more energy, sleep better, and are in a better mood, but other adaptations to training require a longer time investment. This is where your commitment to the process of integrating more activity into your lifestyle becomes extremely important.
How to Choose Your Workout Program
Your initial fitness level and how much time you have before your wedding date determine your training approach. This is assuming that you have no medical conditions that require clearance from your health care provider before you get started. The basic workouts in this book are designed for those who are new or returning to fitness after a long period of being inactive. If you haven't been training consistently, it's best to stick with a basic program for at least two months before progressing to intermediate workouts. Otherwise, you risk injuring yourself, which is something you definitely want to avoid before your wedding.
After consistently training aerobically for four weeks, your body begins to become a more efficient fat burner. Your breathing should become a bit easier during your cardio-workouts and you should notice that you're not huffing and puffing as much when you climb stairs.
The intermediate workouts build upon the base of fitness developed during the initial program. If you're already fit and eager to get started with a more challenging routine, then begin with the intermediate workouts. In the last eight weeks before the important event, move to fine-tuning workouts. Fine-tuning is fun because you focus on the particular assets that you want to emphasize while you wear your wedding dress. For example, you can focus on developing more tone and definition in your shoulders and arms if you're wearing a sleeveless gown.
Before you get started, it's helpful to understand the body's process of physically adapting to the demands of training. With this knowledge, you can anticipate the changes that you will be experiencing. Keep in mind that everyone's response to exercise is individual. Therefore, you may experience these changes at a slightly different rate, depending on your base level of fitness, your age, your physique, whether or not you've been fit in the past, and how often and how hard you train.
Adaptations to Cardio-Training
When you train the cardio-respiratory system, you improve your heart's health and reduce your total amount of body fat. With consistent training over time the heart increases in size. This is positive because a larger heart pumps an increased amount of blood from the heart with every contraction of the heart muscle, resulting in a slower heart beat when you are at rest and a lower blood pressure. These changes can start happening in as few as two weeks or as many as ten weeks of regular training.
Other important physiological changes include the fact that your body becomes more efficient at burning stored fat for fuel and you're able to keep going for longer periods of time. These are key training developments if you want to lose extra weight or to avoid gaining weight over the years. Cardio or aerobic training is important to making your body an efficient burner of fat. Extra fat on your body is nothing more than stored energy. Think of it as extra fuel. In order to use up this extra fuel, you need an efficiently running engine and you need to be able to move for longer periods of time at higher levels of work that uss up more fuel. All of these fuel management changes occur as a direct result of your training.
The primary source of fuel for the body during aerobic exercise is fat. Moderate aerobic exercise, such as a brisk walk for thirty minutes daily, is recommended to maintain health. This walk is also beneficial if it is broken up into three ten minute walks, rather than thirty minutes at a time. If weight loss is a goal, daily walking up to one hour or longer on a cumulative basis is recommended.
Adaptations to Weight Training
When you train your musculoskeletal system, you improve the strength and the endurance of your muscles, you improve your bone density, and you increase your resting metabolic rate, which is the amount of energy or calories that your body burns even when you're sleeping. With consistent training over time, you improve your neuromuscular connection. What that means is that more nerve fibers are connected to your muscles and you can increase the amount of your lean body or muscle mass. These are positive changes. When your neuromuscular system is highly developed, you have more control over your body, and you have more body awareness. When your muscles are stronger and have more endurance, you're able to complete physical tasks with more energy and less fatigue. You reduce your chances of injury and, with stronger bones, you're less likely to experience debilitating and painful bone fractures. You can also avoid the onset of osteoporosis.
Before fine-tuning your exercise plan, think first things first. You'd never be able to choose the colors of your table linens until you have a reception location, right? So don't zero in on rock-solid abs until you kick into a strong cardio routine. Put the basics in place, then step up to specifics when you're ready.
Muscle conditioning also affects your appearance. More muscle tone gives your body shape and definition. Your physique has more lift rather than droop. Your skin is healthier and has better tone because it receives more circulation from healthy muscles beneath the skin. You look energized and radiant, like a picture of good health.
When you weight train, in contrast to aerobic training, your muscles primarily burn sugar for fuel, also referred to as muscle glycogen. This is positive because you're burning energy. Regardless of whether your body uses fats or uses sugars for fuel, the result at the end of the day is a net deficit if you burn up more energy than you take in. Excess sugars in your body that you don't use for energy are simply converted into stored fat.
Calorie for calorie, the activity of weight training burns as much, if not more, than aerobic training. The difference, however, is we cannot sustain weight training at a continuous level in the way that we can with aerobic training. For example, let's say you can walk consistently without resting for ten, twenty, or thirty minutes. In contrast, you would be absolutely unable to lift any weight for typically more than one minute, at the most two minutes, without the need to take some time out for rest.
With respect to reducing your total amount of body fat, the benefits of weight training for weight management come primarily from two important changes. One, increasing your muscle mass and reducing your overall body fat leads to a higher metabolism (the number of calories that you burn to stay alive). Two, weight training tends to lead to an increase in overall activity levels because you have more energy from your improved muscular strength and endurance. More activity results in more burned calories.
Studies show the most effective training programs to target weight loss combine both aerobic exercise and strength training. Researchers have compared those who only did only cardio-training, did only weight training, or who combined both for the same time period. Those who did both not only lost the most amount of fat, they also gained the greatest amount of muscle.
Muscle is metabolically more active than fat. It requires a lot more circulation. It is also denser and heavier than fat. Five pounds of muscle is much smaller than five pounds of fat. Therefore, as you begin training, do not be overly concerned with numbers on your scale. It's common for people who begin exercising to actually get smaller in size and stay the same weight or even gain a few pounds. This is a healthy and positive weight gain as it means that you're building more lean body mass. Therefore, do not be too worried about your total weight on the scale. What is more important is your percentage of lean body mass compared to your fat mass.
To see a visible change in muscle tone and definition from weight training requires consistent training, two to three times a week for six to eight weeks. This is because improvements in the mind-body connection through the neuromuscular system must occur first before you see changes in muscle tone or size. Concentrate on the muscles that you're working during each training session to improve results.
At a minimum, therefore, to see visible results from your training, you need to start at least six weeks before your wedding. The more time that you have the better. And, if you start three months, six months, or even one year in advance, you're going to need to pay particular attention in the last six weeks before the big event. For best results, you can use the last six to eight weeks to work on maintaining the fitness level that you have achieved and focus on fine-tuning, rather than general conditioning.
