Well here we are again; the last couple of days have been quite hectic, doing my daily work and in my spare time I have tried my hand at E-zine article writing. I have submitted a 1000 word article for review before it can be published, so I am waiting to see if it is good enough for the Web. This writing malarkey doesn’t come easy, so I hope it get’s accepted.
Training wise I have done a few sessions, one called the Watan 500 challenge which is on our website, there are 3 versions, Recruit, Veteran and Special Ops. I did the Special Ops one on Wednesday and it was a fair effort, 40 minutes of constant work (you can rest when you want, but the idea is to get it done and dusted as fast as possible) I was totally drained after it. Then a speed session on Thursday, where I injured my Achilles Tendon, this is due to the ground being so unforgiving out here, sprinting on concrete at my age? Probably not the best option, but beggars can’t be choosers. Then yesterday was range day as per normal Friday routine, I had a great shoot and think I must have been in the zone, one of those occasions when it all comes together with no effort, it is a great experience when this happens, it’s a shame that it doesn’t happen more often. There are strategies that you can use to get you in to it and I will cover the mental side of things in a later blog.
But for the moment I just want to cover some of the options open to you once you have sorted out your nutrition and want to take your fat loss and healthy living to another level. I spoke about training for a healthy life in an earlier blog, but just want to give you a more in depth insight into what type of training you can do and what it will do for you.
First of all I will go into everyone’s main obsession when they start out on a new fitness regimen and that is Cardio Vascular Training.
Cardiovascular Training is really anything that takes you Heart Rate to around 60% of its maximum beats per minute.
As a rule of thumb, your maximum Heart rate is 220 Beats per minute, ladies are slightly higher, around 226 Beats per minute (BPM) minus your age. I say rule of thumb, because this is not really all that accurate, but will do for starting out on any training regimen. When and if you become more interested in your training and maybe want to compete in some sort of event, you will need to be more accurate, but until then this method will suffice.
So that you understand what I mean. If you are a female and are 20 years old, your Maximum Heart Rate (MHR) would be 226 – 20 = 206
So if the same female wanted to get some sort of cardio vascular workout, then she would need to elevate her Heart rate to 206*60% = 124 BPM. She would have to hold this Heart Rate for a minimum time of 20 minutes. Now this is pretty easy to start out on, unless you are really out of shape, where it may feel slightly more challenging.
Just by doing this for 20 minutes is going to help your fat loss immensely, and has the added benefits of improving the performance of your Heart and Lungs along with a whole host of other benefits to be covered at the end of this blog. So you can see from this explanation that you don’t have to go around with a look of horrendous pain on your face and feeling shattered to get some great benefits.
Now as long as you are getting your Heart rate up there, it doesn’t matter what activity you are doing. It can be a brisk walk, a bike ride, a jog, dancing, anything! The choice is yours, just try and stay at the right Heart rate for the required time.
If you did this on a daily basis, you would start to see the results fairly quickly.
Now if you want to ramp up your Cardio training a bit more, once you have started to get used to this low level exercise all you need to do is increase your intensity (effort) Take your Heart rate to 70-75% of max. Using our female example again 206*75% = 154 BPM, if she sustains this for 20 minutes she will increase the benefits by making her Heart work harder and she will burn more calories, she will be a bit redder in the face and breathing heavier and it will take more effort but if she has done a few weeks of the lower level stuff it will not be long before she is comfortable with this effort.
Once she is used to this, she can start to do what is known as Interval training. This is going up another gear again.
Interval Training is just a name for doing repeated efforts at a higher intensity for a set time and then following the effort up with a period of rest or decreased intensity. For example, she could do 1 minute of work harder than her usual 154 BPM, say up to 175 BPM (85% of max) and then reduce her effort until her heart rate drops to 130 BPM. As soon as her Heart Rate reaches 130BPM, off she would go again up to 175BPM for 1 minute followed by the rest period again. She could start off with 5 * 1 minute efforts with her recovery periods inserted after each effort. It would take about 30 minutes to complete at the most, but she would increase the benefits again and she would elevate the calories that she burns at rest for several hours after she had finished her session.
Two sessions of this type and one steady 20-30 minute session at 70-75% of her MAX Heart rate per week would suffice to get her all the health benefits she needs and will get her burning more calories to accelerate her fat loss.
How do you measure your Heart Rate?
The easiest way is to buy a simple Heart Rate Monitor; they are quite cheap these days, very effective and easy to use. I won’t go into detail about how to use them as there are many different versions.
The other way is to check your pulse at the Carotid Artery Click here to see how.
If you can’t be bothered to check your pulse, you can use what is known as the Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE). To work this out, if you think of a scale of 1-10, one being no exertion and ten being extremely hard exertion. If you want to work at 60% of max, it will correspond to a 6 out of 10 on your RPE Scale, 80% of max will be 8 out of ten on your RPE scale. Not that accurate, but if you are not an Olympic Athlete it would be close enough.
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Here is a list of some of the benefits of Cardio vascular training.
- The heart muscle develops larger chambers for blood to enter
- Your Heart beats more slowly when you are resting.
- Every time your heart beats, it will deliver more blood around your body.
- You will recover quicker after you have exercised.
- Your Heart works more efficiently. Your lungs will deliver Oxygen more efficiently.
- Your Arteries will have increased elasticity so more efficient blood flow is achieved.
- The number of Capillaries is increased within your muscles achieving better blood supply.
- With the increased supply of blood supplied with each beat of the heart you will get better delivery of Oxygen to your working muscles.
- Blood Cholesterol Levels decrease.
- Chemicals called Endorphins may be released causing you to feel happier and healthier.
- Your Muscles and joints will become stronger
- Increased calorie expenditure and higher metabolic rate (the rate at which your body burns calories) means you will burn fat more effectively even at rest.
As you can see, the benefits of Cardio Vascular Training are many fold and you really do not need to do a lot of it to reap the rewards.
On the next Blog I will go into a bit of depth about Resistance training. Terminology and benefits and how you really can become a fat burning machine.
Until then, have a great weekend whatever you may be doing.
FALL SEVEN TIMES, STAND UP EIGHT!!
Steve
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