Hello, I was talking with my friend the other day and she was complaining that she had reached a ‘plateau’ and was not getting results at the gym anymore.

I asked her how long she was at the gym and she replied, “An hour and a half.” Wow, I was stunned! No wonder she plateaued! If she is there that long, than she is obviously not working herself hard enough. She said she does an hour of cardio. This is too much. If you can do cardio for an entire hour than you are going at it too easy. The machines are moving you, instead of you moving the machine. Think about that.

I told her to do short bursts of intense cardio such as 30 sec. fast (I mean burn out!) on the bike and followed by 30 sec. slow. Interval like this for 10 minutes with not only burn you right out, but will keep up your metabolism afterwards for hours! She is now going to do this for 2 days of the week and walk at a brisk pace on the treadmill twice a week.

If some of you have experienced at plateau, please let me know. You may need more variety in your workouts, you may need to lift heavier weights. Worse yet, you may have fallen into the wrong thinking that ‘weight lifting will make you look huge.’ If you are not doing any resistance training, you are lacking what is at the fundamental core to achieve a lean, healthy, sexy, body.

You NEED TO DO RESISTANCE TRAINING! No, you do not need to spend an hour doing this either. I follow The Fit Chic Year of Workouts and this component is only 20 minutes for me! I get a great pump to my muscles and it feels awesome. You really can REDUCE your workout time, and still get an effective workout or BETTER!

Another critical component when it comes to cardio is doing something that you love. You may not enjoy jogging. Then don’t jog! I love to spice up my cardio. So sometimes I skip, bike, jog…all at the same time. (as an interval) I also love to put on some dance music and just MOVE with my kids. This is the best! We all have a blast…so find what you like to do and just ….you know the saying…DO IT!

Have a great day!

Cheers to health,

Angie

C.P.T.
B.Ed.