Energy for Life and Living!
20 November 2006If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Quote of the day…“An army run without profanity couldn’t fight its way out of a piss soaked bag.” General George Patton
Winter is here: do you have a fitness battle plan? Speaking of “Two Gun” Patton, (he carried two pearl handled pistols) in fitness as in war you want to be on the offensive, not the defensive. Rather than reacting to maladies as they occur far better to be in good general physical condition. Preventative maintenance is preferable to remedial effort every time. Energy is the basic coin of the fitness realm and without it it’s damned difficult to mount any kind of serious fitness effort. Energy is needed to power through a workout: if you are tired all the time, exhausted by life and unable to get it together physically or psychologically, I would suggest some immediate lifestyle changes – alter the sheer amount of food you eat and clean up the content of the food you eat. I would also suggest early morning cardio: my favorite mode is outdoor walking in the early morning. Overeating is an energy-sapping culprit. Too many calories, particularly the wrong kind of calories, cause insulin to spike and that’s a bad thing. Certain nutrients convert easily into body fat and coincidentally these foods drain energy faster than leaving the car door open all night and keeping the lights on. Early morning walking done out of doors is invigorating and elevates the basal metabolic rate, the rate at which the body oxidizes calories at rest. Early morning cardio kicks up the metabolic burn rate and the metabolism will stay elevated for hours after the cessation of a significantly intense session. Please do early morning cardio on an empty stomach: when intense cardio is done in a glycogen-depleted state, the body is forced to burn stored body fat. The worst thing you could do is load up on fruit juice or some other simple carb before cardio.
Glycogen is the emulsified version of carbohydrate and we want to avoid carbs until after the session. Another trick of the trade is to have a cup of coffee or a caffeine-laced tea before the cardio walk. Caffeine on an empty stomach in combination with exercise accelerates the mobilization of trans-fatty acids. After an all-night sleep/fast, the body is low on glycogen, the emulsified form of carbohydrate. When aerobic activity is performed in the glycogen-depleted state, the body burns stored body fat in order to fuel the torrid cardio activity. If you ever visit a hardcore bodybuilding gym early in the morning you’ll see all the hulking bodybuilders performing early AM cardio. They are there to take advantage of the physiological anomaly and burn off body fat via pre-breakfast cardio. An aerobic exercise session before breakfast elevates to metabolism for hours after the conclusion of the session and elevating the heart rate in a systematic fashion improves heart and lung functionality and food digestion. A strong rationale for early morning cardio is that by doing it 1st thing – it GETS DONE! Life has a way of throwing obstacles galore into our path as the day’s events unfold. Hit the cardio 1st thing and daily events, cumulative mental fatigue and stress will not derail the session. If you are new to cardio I suggest starting off with a comfortable walk of say 15-minutes at a brisk pace. Each subsequent day add one minute to the session length. If you power walk five times a week and start off with a 15-minute session, at the end of a month the session duration will be up to 30-minutes. At that point (30-minutes five times a week) kick things to the next level: keep the frequency and the duration the same but consciously seek to increase the intensity, i.e. walk faster.
Creeping incrementalism eases you into the game. In conjunction with the walking, cut back on the caloric intake. After gross calories are reduced, clean up the food selection. All these changes flow together in a loose, momentum-building effort. Early morning power walking, fewer calories, better food selections all combine to improve cardiovascular functions and build endurance. Within two weeks you will see energy skyrocket. The effort unfolds in a sane rational fashion. Add progressive resistance training to the mix and you’ll feel as if you’ve been shot from the proverbial fitness cannon. Early morning outdoor walking a joyful experience and when we truly enjoy an activity we seek to repeat it – this melding of enthusiasm with exercise is the long-term secret to fitness success. One last bit of advice: don’t dawdle and lollygag – unless the cardio is of sufficient intensity the effort is wasted. Too many trainees walk as if they were walking around the mall window shopping. You have to push yourself! Imagine two-gun Patton barking profoundly profane commands in your ear as you walk. Pump those elbows and always seek to walk faster! Don’t let the cold weather deter you! Dress for it! Also cover your mouth with a scarf if it’s below 30-degrees as sucking frigid air into overheated lungs leads to sickness – I speak from personal experience on this one! Let’s get at it you #@$!
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