Question: How much cardio should I be doing a week? John
Answer: John, I’m going to turn this over to my friend, Kate since we’ve been talking about cardio this week (check this post out). Here’s Kate’s answer:
In late November 2012, the Wall Street Journal reported on the harmful effects of excessive cardio on your heart. According to the WSJ, research to be published in the British journal “Heart”: Running 20-25 miles or more per week eliminates the benefit of the exercise as you grow older and causes excessive wear and tear on the heart.
Damn, that’s bad news if you’re an exercise ADDICT. The sad thing is, most of these folks will ignore this blatant fact and continue on their merry way.
But the truth about cardio is this:
- You can get more effective fat burning workout in less time
- Spending less time exercising means less wear and tear on your heart, joints and muscles
- You can free up a TON of time, at least 200-250 minutes/week if you’re running a 10 minute mile, and spend it doing more important things
Even Dr. Kenneth Cooper agrees. The father of ‘aerobics’ has said, “If you are running more than 15 miles a week, you are doing it for some reason other than health.”
So is a grizzly bear chasing you? There’s a valid reason to get your run on. But in all seriousness, there are no bears where I live in New York City (just other scary people) and as you can see, the fat loss benefits of “cardio confessional time” are minimal.
As an avid marathon runner, plenty of my friends pointed out this fact to me. The thing is, my marathon training programs no longer involve running more than 12-15 miles/week, or even longer than 60 minutes continuously in a session. Instead, the workouts include training with total body movements and lifting heavy to get stronger, metabolic resistance training and tortuous high intensity intervals. Each workout typically lasts no more than 20-35 minutes.
The shocking thing is this works. No overuse injuries, no carb loading and it helped me shave 54 minutes off my marathon time. So listen, if you want to exercise for health, fat loss while increasing your energy and vitality, you need to train with bursts of intensity in shorter workouts.
That’s why I created Fat Loss Accelerators <– Get 31 workouts here
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Question: I noticed that Kate has a lot of high pulls in her Fat Loss Accelerators program. My shoulder gets a little tender, what’s a good alternative?
Answer: I asked Kate about this. She suggests bent over BB rows, DB rev flies in place of the high pull. She also says (and I agree) that if the high pull is too much on the shoulder, eliminate it. There’s enough work in her circuits that you’ll still benefit. Her Fat Loss Accelerators are really a ton of fun, a great alternative to long slow boring cardio, and guess what? It’s always great to get results too. Check out HER transformation HERE.
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Question: I can’t seem to get or keep up a jump rope rhythm unless I do “double hops” every time the rope goes around. I know that this is really inefficient but when I try to just do a single hop, it becomes hopeless. Will the double hops just stop on their own as I get more practice? Should I make more of an effort to stop that habit, even though I can’t get in more than a few jumps when I do that? Delany
Answer: I’m thrilled that I’ve been an influence on your fitness, that’s so great to hear. As far as the jump rope goes, keep at it. You WILL improve as you feel more coordinated and fit, you’ll be able to move from the double hop to the single hop. Try the single hop jumps when you are fresh and as you tire, it’s totally fine to go to the double hop. It’s frustrating if you keep missing the rope, and your intensity will drop, so when that starts to happen, go back to the double hops. Every day challenge yourself to get MORE single hop jumps. Soon you’ll be doing single hops all the time. Keep us posted okay? (Grab the Jump Rope program HERE)
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Question: So I have the Challenge Jump Rope program, how do you organize it into a system? The challenge workouts had which ones to do and the number of days per week. How often and which order should these jump rope workouts be done?
Answer: The Challenge Jump Rope workouts can be done in ANY order you please. You can do a workout a day (7 days a week) if you want since the workouts are body weight and very short. For best results try to do a minimum of 4 workouts per week.
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Mom’s get to brag right? Instead of hanging my son’s painting on the fridge, I get to post it to my blog. Sam is 16 and saw a 30 second commercial using this painting technique and wanted to try it. He ran out and bought some paints and was done in about two hours. I’m stupified by his talent, he clearly did not get it from his maternal side.