I recently posed this challenge to one of my clients, and for her, it worked like a charm. Hey, some of us are motivated by having the ante upped, including yours truly. Do more (exercise) this week than you did the week before.

So here is how it works:

For one week, tally the number of minutes you spend doing physical activity.

1. Record time spent doing cardiovascular activity, such as walking, jogging, swimming, aerobics, and so on.
2. Record the time spent doing other activity, such as gardening, housework, painting a room, or whatever.
3. Record time spent sitting.

Then, create a chart with a weekly goal. For instance, you might list physical activities separately, followed by “household chore” activity, job-related activity, and sedentary activity.

In the next column, record last week’s minutes spent doing those activities and non-activities, then up the ante for this week. A good rule of thumb is to add 2-5% more to each physical activity (if you want to be conservative), or up to 10% of you really want to challenge yourself.
In addition, make one goal to reduce time spent doing sedentary activity, like TV watching.

Create a column for each day of the week and at the end of each day, tally your minutes. On the last day of the week, do a quick tally to see if you will reach your goal. If you are at risk of falling short, see if you can squeeze in extra minutes of activity to help your reach your goal.

Refer to my simple chart here if you need a visual. You might have more activities on your own chart, and be sure to include all 7 days  (i.e, don’t think weekends don’t count, ’cause they do!)

Hopefully, if all goes well, you will see your hard work paying off. Each week, you can create a new goal. Obviously, you can’t add time to your minutes forever, but you could eventually create a goal for, say, adding a new activity, or maintaining max heart rate for a certain number of minutes, and so on. It is a little hard to see the numbers on this chart, but I basically added time to each physical activity, and reduced the time spent in sedentary activity. For example, if I ran 120 mins last week, this week I’d aim for 130 or 140. If I sat and watched TV 200 mins last week, I’d shoot for 180 or less this week. Hopefully this all makes sense.

If you try this, let me know how it goes…
And if you have your own chart that you’d like to share, fire it my way and I’ll post it here on the blog.

This is one of my favorite workouts…two, twenty minute runs with strength training sandwiched in the middle. I purposely selected strength exercises that don’t require equipment so that this workout can be done outdoors.  You could easily tie a resistance tube around your waist and use that during the strength training segment as well. For optimal effect (i.e., if you want to up the “challenge” a bit), use a hill for the strength training too (you’ll see what a I mean below).

Split Run workout

5-10 minute warm up of light jogging or fast-paced walking

20 min jog/run at a moderate pace (6-7 on RPE scale)

10 mins:  Strength Training using stairs/hill (there’s the hill part I was referring to

12-15 push-ups from knees on the hill (facing uphill)

12-15 tricep dips on the hill (feet pointing downhill)

10-12 side-squat steps up hill; walk down and perform10-12 with opposite leg leading

15 squats on the hill, with back toward top of the hill (when facing down hill, the squats are MUCH harder. You’ll see

Stairs: run up 1x, single steps

Run up 1x, two steps at a time

Walk up 1x, single steps

Run up 1x, two steps at a time

2 mins:  Active recovery, walking, allowing heart rate to nearly return to normal

10 mins: jog/ run at more intense pace (7-8 on RPE scale)

5 mins: cooldown

5-10 mins: stretching, focus on hamstrings and hip flexors

* Note: Blue Sky Gym and the author disclaim any liability for any injury, physical or emotional, suffered during or as a result of exercise or activities recommended. As always, you should use common sense and consult your health professional before beginning any exercise routine or program.

Dear Diane,

I’ve signed up for a 5k race in May and after 3 months of “training,” I still can’t go much further than a mile without stopping to walk. What am I doing wrong?

Colleen

This question is from last spring, but with racing season well under way, it seemed like a good time to post my answer on the blog, as I’m sure many of you have run into this dilemma, or know someone who has.

A typical fitness routine includes the same type of cardiovascular activity, performed for the same length of time, with little variation – and while there isn’t anything inherently wrong with this approach (it is exercise, after all), you probably won’t improve if you continue to do the same thing. To boost endurance (i.e, go longer, faster), something has to change. There are 3 easy ways to improve endurance:

1. Add time to at least one cardio session per week for several weeks, then taper for one week to allow the body to adapt to the increased load. Then start back up where you left off, again adding time to at least one session per week.

2. Make one session per week more intense (harder). Speed work (400×6 sprints, for example), hill-work, or interval training (combine speed and hills, alternating between the two).

3. Strength train. Even the best endurance plan will fall short of success if there are muscle weaknesses. To improve endurance, muscles must be strong, so include at least 2 days of strength training per week.