Free Workout Friday: Total Body

You'll need a little bit of a push to get through today's free workout:  Total Body With Intervals! Tough it out, and you'll be glad you did.  Here's how to adapt it for yourself:

Everyone starts with a 5 minute warm-up that is easy and conversational.  Everyone can also spend the next 5 minutes building intensity.  That means that your effort increases.  Now, here's where we begin to make a distinction;  individuals that are new to exercise, should increase intensity a little, while individuals who have been exercising regularly can increase intensity a bit more.  Your body should be adequately warmed up.

After the build, you'll be 10 minutes into your workout and will be ready to begin the interval set.  The goal of intervals is to give you variety, change your metabolism, and make your heart stronger.  The more you change your heart rate (adding variability), the more your fitness improves.  Here are some tips:

• Beginners should change their heart rate (or effort) just a little, while intermediate and experienced individuals should change their heart rate as much as they are comfortable (or slightly uncomfortable).
• How much you change your heart rate is totally up to you.

• For best results, use a heart rate monitor (see below)

• Use the grips on most machines, if working out indoors and look for a 5-20 beat change, depending on your fitness level

•  If working out outdoors, use a heart rate monitor, or play a game of "fartlek", which is increasing your speed or tempo to the next streetlamp, corner or tree, then recovering to the next corner or tree, etc...

• Use perceived exertion on a scale of 1-10 (modified Borg) for rpe (rating of perceived exertion):

"Easy" is conversational and breathing is fine; 1-3rpe

"Moderate" is more "strained" with increased breathing and conversation more difficult; 4-7rpe, and

"Hard" is where breathing is deep and rapid and conversation is difficult; 8-10rpe

• These intervals are equal parts work and recovery in a 1:1 ratio.  That means that you will "go hard" for 1 minute, followed by a 1 minute easy recovery.

A heart rate monitor is one of the best ways for you to know if you are exercising at the right intensity.  For example, using a Blink heart rate monitor (available on my website), you can pre-program YOUR thresholds (easy to do with my help, or with this youtube demonstration).  Then, your very own heart rate monitor will blink "blue" when easy, "yellow" when moderate, and "red" when hard.  Individuals new to exercise would therefore complete their intervals using just blue (for recovery) and yellow (for moderate).  Individuals who have been exercising for awhile, may choose to use either blue or yellow for the recovery and "red" for the hard.

And...while supplies last, you can get a copy of Sally Edward's newest book, ZONING, Fitness in a Blink with any Blink heart rate monitor purchase on my website.

The rest of the workout is a total body workout, if you're not sure of anything, please let me know and I'll demonstrate it for you with a Youtube video or answer it on the blog.

Have fun!

Kathy