Healthy Andy

If you’re like me, you consider plodding along on a treadmill at such and such a pace for some blah amount of time to pretty much equate to slow, agonizing death.  Maybe it’s my ADD, maybe it’s weakness,  I don’t know and I don’t care.  I’m not a big believer in making myself miserable with my exercise… it’s contrary to the goal of having an exercise program for the rest of your life.  After all, who’s going to volunteer to beat themselves up on a regular basis?  Sooner or later, you’re going to get tired, or overwhelmed at work, or the kids are going to set the house on fire, or SOMETHING is going to come up and make you say, “Nah”, when it comes time to exercise… IF that exercise makes you miserable.

So don’t fight it.  Human nature is Natural Law, and fighting against it is like swimming against the current.  Instead, create a cardio program that you WILL stick with, because you either find it enjoyable, or at least tolerable.

Case in point… I hate running for distance at a constant rate.  HATE it.  I think it’s because I used to run cross country when would really have rather played football.  Instead of doing what I wanted, I felt forced by my track coaches to run cross country, which is, of course, running for distance at a (relatively) constant rate.  So, once I graduated, I said the hell with that, I’m never doing it again.

It took some time to get past that and acknowledge that I had to do SOME cardio, and I finally came up with a routine that I really ended up liking.  The only drawback is, it’s time consuming.  But still, if I have the time, I will gladly do this cardio all day long if I can.

It’s a mix of surge training, jogging, and hiking.  You see, I like to sprint, and I like to hike.  And by constantly changing it up with no rhyme or reason, I remove that feeling of “I HAVE to keep this pace up” that a lot of people dread when they do plod-along running.  I don’t know about you, but I hate being told what to do.  So when I get out to play, I don’t want anybody telling me I have to run at X speed for Y length of time.  When that happens, my inner rebellious teenager comes out and I say “Whateva!  Whateva!  I’ll do what I want!”

Again, why fight that?  Instead, I go out on the trail and start hiking.  When the urge comes on, I’ll start jogging, and then ramp up into a sprint for maybe two to four hundred meters, then back down to a jog, then hike, then sprint, then jog, hike, jog, hike, jog, sprint…. and so on and so forth.  There’s no pattern.  I just go and play outdoors.

Stop beating yourself up with your workouts!  You know, exercise CAN be fun… it doesn’t have to be slogging drudgery that you feel you have to drag yourself through out of some sort of obligation to the Gods of Fitness.  Play with it.  Change things up.  Do what’s fun.

Now, this doesn’t work too well for people who are training big-time for an event of some sort.  This is advice for you folks who can’t seem to keep up with some part of your workout because you secretly hate it.  Of course, if you’re training for a half-marathon or something like that, you’re going to have to exercise in a particular way in a regimented program if you want to accomplish your goal.  That’s different.

For most of us, though, we’re not trying to break a twenty minute 5K time or something like that.  So try out my cardio play day if you find you can’t bear to chug along at the same nine minute mile for four miles or whatever you have learned to hate.  Get out on a running trail, start hiking, and when you feel like it, break into a jog.  Or a sprint.  Then switch back and forth as you want to.  That’s right.  Nobody can tell you what to do.  Go as far as you like, then that’s it.  You don’t have to measure distance, time, pace, anything.  Just get outside, explore, and get the ”play” back into your exercise routine.  Ipods are also a blessing for this.

You may just find yourself going longer, further, and faster than you ever thought you would- and, God Forbid, you might enjoy it!

Stay healthy!

You know, it’s always funny when I fall prey to one of the common pitfalls I advise people to avoid when it come to health and fitness.  Happens to the best of us, folks.  This time, it was over-training.

Specifically, taking on too much too fast.  I’ve been focusing on pushing the surge training component of my cardio exercise, and I pushed it too far too fast. 

Surge training, by the way, is basically intermittent sprinting.  It doesn’t have to be done with running- you can apply the basic principles to biking, swimming, any cardio- but the basic idea is, you sprint like crazy for about 60 seconds, then slow down for a bit, then sprint again, then slow down for a bit, and so on and so forth. 

It’s a great way to boost your growth hormone levels.  More than that, it keeps people like me, with too much ADHD for just running along forever at a regular pace, amused long enough to get me through an intense cardio workout.

HOWEVER.  As I always tell people, the down-side to intensity, is risk.  Risk of injury, to be specific.  The more intense you go, the more results you’ll get… but the more likely you are to injure yourself .  So, really, you have to ramp up to intensity, to try to avoid injury.

My ramp was a little too steep.  So, now I’m nursing a minor soleus (deep calf muscle) pull.  Oh, well.  It’s rather minor and will only translate to a week or so off from running- which will give me a good excuse to get on the rowing machine and in the pool.  Cross-training is a great way to deal with injuries.

So, take care out there, my friends!  Overall, consistency is more important than intensity, so don’t think you have to kill yourself to get ahead.