Having the time and motivation for an effective fitness routine has always been a problem for me. This time around, I have the advantage of knowing where I fell down each time I gave up before. Working out for me was mostly based on running for as long and as far as I could; this always seemed to me to be the most important exercise as I wanted to lose weight. I couldn't have been more wrong! This was never going to work for me. I was getting bored while running and there was nothing to distract from how out of breath I was, so I would eventually end up walking. A steady state run is great for building endurance but will use a relatively small amount of energy only while you are running. I would have needed to be running for at least an hour to burn a significant amount of energy. It is important to include cardiovascular exercises in your exercise plan (whether that be running, cycling, rowing machine, dancing etc.), as cardio improves lung and heart function, does wonders for your mood and, of course, aids in weight loss. However, if you are interested in weight loss, high intensity intervals have been shown to be an effective workout for fat loss. This was seriously appealing to me as switching from high to low intensity during my run would mean better results and less time running! My idea is to try to be efficient and balanced with my run, so I will be mixing up my runs by adding intervals of lower and higher intensities. I'm hoping it will help to get more out of my workout and also stop me from getting bored!
If I'm honest, I was one of those girls who wouldn't touch a heavy weight because I didn't want to have big muscles. But the reality is (and I know I'm not the first one to have this revelation) that women don't have enough testosterone to build large muscles like men do. Lifting weights is fantastic for fat loss as it causes an "after-burn" effect where the body continues to use energy to repair and rebuild the muscle after your workout. In the last paragraph, I alluded to the fact that you only use up energy on a run while you're running. Before, I would never lift weights, just run, so when I heard about the after-burn effect of weight lifting, I had to try it out! But don't completely replace your runs with weight lifting; I did this before and I increased my strength but I wasn't exactly taking the stairs two at a time either! This isn't just about appearance, this is about making your body as fit, healthy and strong as it can be so it's important to strike a balance between strength and cardio training. Weight lifting also builds muscle (duh), making you stronger and giving a lean physique. I'm not going to attempt to explain the physiological effects of weight lifting, but if you are interested, there is a fantastic article here that explains how weight lifting builds muscle. So, if you want to lose fat, but have been keeping your distance from barbels and dumbells in favour of an hour long session on the treadmill, stop what you're doing and jog on over to the weights section! After all, strong is the new sexy! ;)
Lastly, I'm going to be including some yoga in my weekly fitness routine. I absolutely love doing yoga, I always feel fantastic after it! Yoga is not just about stretching and flexibility (although they are elements of it). It also increases strength, balance and awareness of your body; it can help you to relax and de-stress but can also be a challenging and demanding workout. I'm not able to do headstands...yet, but the benefits that are associated with practising yoga (you only need to do a quick google search to see this long list of improvements in strength, flexibility, joint health, blood pressure, posture, mood and immune system functionality to name a few) are too great to not include it in your fitness routine.
So from now on, I'm going to try and incorporate a mixture of cardio, intervals, strength training and yoga throughout the week as part of my fitness routine. This will be a serious change up from only going for long runs (where I often end up walking most of it) and it will be tough but, as they say, nothing that's worth doing is ever easy!
Niamh xxx
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