smallkine blogger

It would be so much easier to exercise every day if life just cooperated a little more. But, most of us will face times when we can’t exercise and even the most devoted exerciser will eventually have to abandon his workout routine for any number of reasons. Illness, moving, having a baby, getting married, out-of-town guests…these things and more will happen at some point and, as a result you may find your exercise routine going right out the window. The trick isn’t necessarily in avoiding these situations but in learning how to keep going in spite of them.

If you find yourself a long way from your workouts, wondering how to get back on track, there is a way to make the road back a little easier.

Ease Into It
Getting back to your routine doesn’t necessarily mean jumping right back into the same program you were following before. The biggest mistake many of us make when getting back to exercise is overdoing it…or what I call the Guilt Response. When we get off track, our first response is often to jump back in and do twice as much work to make up for what we missed. But, there are a number of problems with that response:

• Loss of strength and endurance. If you’ve been off exercise for more than 2-3 weeks, you’ve lost some of that strength and endurance you once had. As a result, your body won’t be capable of doing the same level of training you were doing before.
• Injuries and DOMS. Going full-speed with your workouts from the start means you’ll be experiencing plenty of muscle soreness (DOMS) and if you keep trying to workout when you’re very sore, you run the risk of injuring yourself.
• Dreading your workouts.

Create Your Workout Schedule
When creating a workout schedule, you may not know what your strength and endurance is after your break. It can be frustrating to feel that you’re starting all over, but your body will remember how to exercise and your strength/endurance will come back 100% if you give your body some time. Try this approach when hammering out your workout schedule:

• Schedule your workout days. To do this, you might look at your old workout schedule and create a lighter version. For example, if you used to workout 5 or 6 days a week, set up a schedule for 3-4 days of exercise and just squeeze in the basics – a little cardio, a little strength and a little flexibility.
• Plan your cardio workouts. Again, look at your old schedule and then set up a routine that’s a bit lighter than what you were doing before.

If you used to run 5 days a week, you might start with a walk/run program for 3 days. If you used to workout for 45-60 minutes, try for 20-30 your first week or two out.

Plan your strength workouts. Your strength workouts may be where you experience the most soreness. To avoid that or at least minimize it, plan on a light program. For example, you might choose 8-10 exercises targeting the whole body and perform one set of each exercise. It may feel like you’re going backwards to start with a light workout, but it’s better to take it easy than to get so sore, you can’t workout at all.

Some things to consider when first starting out:

• Schedule more recovery days. You may need a few extra days to recover from your workouts.
• Schedule gentler workouts. I find that yoga and Pilates are great for easing back into exercise.

It’s an age-old question, with no right answers. If you have to do both in the same day, does it matter whether you do strength training or cardio first?

I think that the ideal would be to do these two forms of exercise on different days (or one in the morning and one in the evening), so that you can devote maximum effort and get the maximum benefit from each. Any time you do one followed by the other, the second one will suffer at least a little (although you may gradually improve your overall endurance this way).

If that’s not possible, then it comes down to a question of priorities and goals–for that day, and overall. If you’re trying to build muscle mass, doing cardio right after strength training is not usually a good idea, because the more depleted your muscle fuel (glycogen) becomes, the more protein you’re body will use as fuel. After an hour of fairly intense exercise, protein may provide up to 10% of the fuel used, compared to the 1-2% it normally provides. That’s the opposite of what you want for muscle building. To increase strength, you want your body to shift into “repair and rebuild” (anabolic) mode as soon as possible after your strength workout, and the best way to make that happen is to eat instead of doing cardio. A light cardio workout before lifting would be better. But don’t try to do a strenuous strength workout after you’ve already tired yourself out with cardio–that’s not safe.

if you’re mainly trying to lose fat and maintain the muscle you’ve got, then doing cardio after strength training can be a good strategy. The percentage of energy contributed by fat goes up considerably after an hour of exercise, and since strength training uses mostly glucose for energy, doing that first will also increase the amount of fat your body uses for the cardio. However, it’s also true that as more fat is being used to fuel the exercise, the less work you’ll be able to put out, and the fewer total calories you’ll burn. Your cardio will probably be less intense and/or shorter than it would
otherwise be, and this may cancel out the amount of extra fat actually burned.

You’ll find a lot of different opinions when it comes to this question. I don’t know that there is a lot of reliable research to substantiate doing one or the other first, so I think it comes down to individual goals and preference. If your goal is to build muscle mass and strength, you’d probably want to do your weight training first. If your goal is to gain cardiovascular endurance, you’d want to do your cardio workout first. Here’s an example. When I train for a marathon, my primary focus is increasing my mileage. Weight training is going to help prevent injury and increase strength, but what matters most is the running and increasing my distance. So in that case, I always do cardio first.

When it comes to weight loss, I recommend doing cardio first. Cardio exercise is going to help you burn the most calories in the shortest period of time. Although weight training is also going to help with weight loss (and should be part of any workout routine), I would make cardio the activity you’re going to do while you have the most energy and your muscles are rested. No matter which order you choose, the second activity is going to suffer (to a certain extent) because you’ve already used up some of your energy. If you can do your cardio and strength training on different days, that would be the ideal situation. But no matter which order you use, you’ll want to do a good 5-10 minute warm up before each workout session.

this is just a test