Wednesday, April 3, 2013

A new sprint workout and "What do you mean by detox?"

Good morning lovely readers!

Day 2 in a row of taking time in the early morning to blog. Look at how consistent I am becoming! :p Let's start by talking about a new workout I tried yesterday - I found it to be challenging but not impossible. All you need to complete this work out is a treadmill and some free weights (I used 20's lbs)



I am a fan of using the preprogrammed hill workouts on the ellipticals and treadmills in the gym. You should always have the resistance up to make-up for the fact that these machines are actually helping you propel yourself. It always makes me shake my head to see people on the ellipticals with no resistance - you're basically taking a ride on that machine, not doing too much physically. Usually I make up for that by using the "Aerobic" or "Aerobic Plus" hill workouts which will take you on an incline of anywhere from 0.0 to 3.0-5.0 depending on which one you choose.

So, set the treadmill to one of the hill pre-programmed workouts and lets get started!
Remember, if you try this - use the paces that you are comfortable with. Some will be faster than me and some will be slower and that's okay!

Warm Up - 10 Minutes Jog at a easy pace - for me 6.1 about a 9:50 mile.

Then we get into the real meat of the work out.

10:00-12:00 Fast paced jog - for example, I took it up to 6.6
12:00-12:30 SPRINT! 30 second sprint , I took it up to 8.2
12:30-13:00 Rest on the sides of the treadmill
13:00-13:30 SPRINT AGAIN!
13:30-14:00 Rest
14:00-14:30 You guessed it, ANOTHER SPRINT!
14:30-15:00 Rest
15:00-15:30 Sprint one more time!
15:30-16:00 Rest
16:00-18:00 Fast paced jog - back to 6.5

Repeat this jog/sprint/rest four times. By the time you are done, you will be up to 35 or so minutes on the treadmill and your heart will be pounding! It will keep your body guessing since you don't know on each sprint whether you will be at a 0.0 elevation or 3.0.

Cool Down with a 5 minute walk

I like to end my heavy cardio workouts with light weightlifting to also act as a cool down. So I ended with

3 sets of 10 Bench Press w/ Free Weights
3 sets of 10 Lat Pull Downs

Today is the beginning of day 3 in a week long stretch of detoxing from a weekend on the road. One of the words that I used in that sentence is very interesting -detox. I have spoken to a few people in my life about detoxing and I realized that most people use this term in VERY different ways. When I talk about a "detox" basically I am saying that I will cut out any unnatural sugar and processed grains from my diet, replace them with more fruits, some brown rice, protein and vegetables and drink lots of tea and water. Basically being strict about clean eating.
Yeesh! Don't do it people!


When some people talk about detoxing, they are referring to weird concoctions of liquids or an actual chemical drink that flushes their system or "cleanses" them. Some of you might be toying around with the idea of buying a detox drink or drinking lemon water mixed with maple syrup and cayenne pepper and you thought about reading this blog for some tips or perhaps my opinion on the whole matter. Well, here it is! I strongly believe that the BEST detox of any kind that a person can do is to clean up your eating and drink plenty of natural liquids. I do NOT condone the use of the chemical detox programs and drinks. These detox drinks can cause major health issues AND its not what our bodies were meant to do. The body has very specific ways of detoxing itself without the use of chemicals or weird drinks. You simply have to let it do its THANG by fueling it correctly.

These detoxes or cleanses promise you that you will lose 20 pounds in a week! WOW! but let's be honest - if you lost 20 pounds in a week than you probably have a serious medical condition or it's all water weight and now you have dehydrated yourself. I challenge any reader to do a week "healthy eating" cleanse and see how you feel after 7 days. No processed foods,  only fruits, vegetables, whole and complete grains, a ton of water and some lean protein (eggs, chicken, turkey, etc) and sorry - no alcohol but it's only for a week! : ) Track how you feel on day 1 versus day 7. I promise you -the difference will be much better than any cleanse!

There is also a movie that you can find for free on HULU.com that I really liked that is about cleansing naturally. Its called Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead and it follows a man around the world finding out about processed vs healthy foods while juicing. Obviously, I don't think its possible for people to juice all their food and I wouldn't recommend that either but it's a short and interesting video.

No comments:

Post a Comment