hmm..i'm not so sure what to blog about today. I really need to get a video-blog up, but my memory is about as good as a goldfish. My sweet ass moms got me a new gym bag. Not that I necessarily needed one-but I wanted one, which is really just as important, she's prettty awesome! I have nothing constructive to do today other than bum around and wait for cardio and biggest loser time, and since those things aren't all occuring until later in the evening, i'm just waisting time vegetating :). let's chat a little cardio-that's a question I get asked a lot. how much cardio do you do, what kind of cardio, in the morning or in the night, fasted or not fasted..etc.
How much cardio I do varies on my particular goal. For maintence I do about 5 days of 30 minutes of cardio, 2-3 of those being high intensity intervals, one being steady state, and one being a spin class. 30 minutes is easy for me to get through and doing it makes me stay relatively tight-as long as my food intake is clean and on track as well. If i'm trying to lean down I bring the length of time up or add a day, but I try not to exceed an hour, that's craziness. And I don't think you can keep up with an hour of HIIT-well maybe YOU can, but I cannot!
What kind of cardio I do depends on my mood. My staple machines are: stairmaster (or stairmill-whatever the hell it's called), elliptical (with arms), elliptical (without arms), treadmill, spin bikes, and the recumbent bike. For the treadmill I like doing interval runs (2 min run, 2 min incline walk) and I like doing high incline hikes (downhill and uphill). If i'm feeling real energetic I'll take dumbells up there and do lunges (very slow speed on treadmill) or do an incline walk with them-- thank you sarah cincotta. :) For the stairmill I usually alternate between all of the workout selections you can choose from (this is the only machine I don't do manual on-it's hard to motivate yourself to change the levels and speed), I do about a level of 7-15 depending on my energy level and I range from 15-30 minutes at a time. On the elliptical with arms I do intervals with a constant speed of around 9-11 and I just change the resistance level up and down. For the elliptical without arms I kinda just chill ;). That's the cardio I do when I don't really wanna do cardio! For the recumbent bike I like to alternate the resistance level for a few minutes or I do 40 second sprints with 20 second recovery time. The recumbent bike is my new found cardio love :)
Actually I like doing my cardio later in the day, right before my last meal of the day. A lot of people like doing their cardio early in the morning, and on days that I don't have a lot of time-I usually do that too. But I find that when I'm trying to lean out it's easier for me and my body to do it at the end of the day because then I can use all the rest of my energy and then be able to relax the rest of the day. Doing crazy cardio first thing in the morning sometimes wipes me out for the entire rest of the day!
If I do cardio first thing in the morning I like to eat some fruit before I go. I can't do ANYTHING on an empty stomach, so I have a few strawberries on my way and then eat a real breakfast afterwards, that seeems to work best for me. There is a ton of controversy on fasted/non fasted cardio, and although I'm sure there are a lot of benefits -I can barely function on the couch without food, I can't do anything physical without it either!
Speaking of food, it's about 30 minutes until meal time so i'm going to go sit and stare into the kitchen until go time! Happy sweating :)
--------------------------------update!
Okay so it's now 9pm and i'm watching the biggest loser which is pretty much the highlight of my Tuesday's-yes i'm super exciting.
I just wanted to add a quick point that between training hammies yesterday and my running intervals/lunges on the treadmill my lower back is certainly broken. Yep, I'm convinced tomorrow i'll be in a back brace. I'm ibuprofen 800'd up with a heating pad on my back, tomorrow is going to be horrible.
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