The Walk of Shame

Now at a gym waiting to meet and greet clients, time can go very slow. I've learned to try and keep myself occupied and the easiest way to do that is to people watch. One always interesting thing is watching men and women on cardio and how often people waste their time on it. It would almost seem like common sense yet I'd bet you a million dollars we could go to any gym right now and find at least 5 people with this issue. NOT PUSHING THEMSELVES..

Now I don't expected everyone to be Michael Johnson (not to be confused with magic johnson women) but walking for a hour barely does anything to your body. But why, you ask? The machine says your burning 300 calories in that hour??? Well the issue is, that when you walk at a easy pace for that long, you never really have to force your body to work past the level of condition its already at. Now again, I wouldn't expect you to run for a hour straight either unless your kenyan or something but like with most training, the ultiate goal is to make your body push to that next level. So what is the solution? Is it to do more cardio? Of course not! Doing extra cardio will not help you. You will be surprised to know that 6-7 hours will NOT help increase your metabolism. In fact, it can actually slow down your metabolism.
Lucky for those of you out there who don't like to or can't run for that long, the secret is simple...INTERVAL TRAINING

Interval training is far more superior to boosting your metabolism than it is to do steady state aerobic training. Steady state aerobic does not increase your metabolism at all. It is true that you are burning calories while you are actually performing the aerobics. However, once you are done with your session, your metabolism returns to normal.

However, interval training (consisting of moderate to high intensity cardio) will burn more calories per minute, and will elevate your metabolism for hours and hours. The right amount of resistance training combined with an intense interval training session can keep your metabolism up for at least 24 hours and in some cases, up to 42 hours. Imagine what that can do to your body if you are burning high amounts of fat all day and all night long (even when you are sleeping).

A lot of people focus too much about ?he workout when in fact, they should focus more on the whole picture. It is not the 1 hour of workout that counts but it is the 23 hours remaining in the day.


If you take a second to think about it, its actually pretty simple. Consider a man or women who do a steady cardio pace for a hour a marathon runner. Now picture someone who does interval training as a sprinter. How many out of shape sprinters do you see in olympics?NONE. Yet, how many people do you see that actually finish marathons year after year, just with slow times? ALOT, Heck Oprah ran the new york marathon. So heres how we do interval training.

The Rule to Interval Training

Always warm up for 4-6 minutes

Average intensity: Slow down to a moderate pace for one minute(think a fast walking pace)
(Level 6-7 intensity).

High intensity: Perform 30 seconds as fast as you can.
(Level 9 or 10 intensity on a scale of 1-10)

Therefore, one round will last about a minute and 1/2. Do this for a total of 15 minutes

Always cool down for 5 minutes

Warning: Do not perform interval training before resistance training. It can actually cause a negative effect on your routine.

So about 25 minutes and bam, your done with your cardio for the day and buring calories all night. Much easier than jumping from the treadmill, to the stair stepper, to eliptical right? And I PROMISE you that you will look AND feel much better too. So take the magazine off your eliptical and get to burning.