FitSugar

6 Ways to Beat Boredom on the Track

Jenny Sugar — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 04:22:56 PDT

Now that school is officially out, the track at your local middle or high school is probably available for your running pleasure. Whether running around a track is new to you or a place you've always worked out, the monotony can be very calming and meditative, but it can also be extremely boring. I know it's not the most exciting place to get your run on, but since it's also not the most popular place, you can try these creative ways to beat boredom without worrying about other people giving you strange looks.

Do interval training without having to think by sprinting the straights and walking the curves.
Work on becoming a faster runner with speed training. Do this by timing yourself while running three laps. Each lap you run, try to beat your previous time.
Practice negative splits. Run a mile by running the first two laps at a slower than normal pace and then speed it up for the last two laps by running slightly faster than your normal pace.
Strength train on the move. Do walking forward lunges on the straights and walking side squats on the curves. Be sure to switch directions on the curves so you're leading with the left foot first and the right foot the second time around the curve.
Time your mile. See how fast you can run around the track four times and use this as a point of reference. Repeat every month or so, trying to shave off a few seconds every time.
Vary your steps. Since the terrain of a track is flat and predictable, you can safely practice varying your steps while running to prevent repetitive stress injuries. Here are some ideas: take baby steps, lengthen your stride and take giant steps, lift your knees high up to your chest with each step, zigzag, run sideways, or run backward.

7 Reasons to Try Interval Training

FitSugar — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 08:11:00 PDT

Interval training is the ultimate fitness mashup, blending the speeds of both the tortoise and the hare. The benefits of this workout - pushing your pace, then slowing down to recover just so you can push your pace again - will certainly motivate you to play with your speed. If you haven't already added them to your cardio workouts, here are seven benefits of interval training.

Whittle your middle
While cardio exercise is necessary to lose fat all over your body, according to research published in the International Journal of Obesity interval training targets your waistline. Adding bursts of speed can help you lose stubborn abdominal fat, which is a boon for bikini season and your overall health. Having a waist size over 35 inches if you're a woman puts you at a higher risk for heart disease and some cancers. Curious how your middle measures up? Check your waist-to-hip ratio here.

Got a need for speed?
The most obvious benefit, but still worth noting, is interval training will make you faster. Picking up your pace when training with intervals helps to increase your speed whether you run, bike, or swim. If you're working towards a personal record for an upcoming race, don't skip your speed work. Here are interval workouts for biking, swimming, and running. Triathlon anyone?

Keep reading to learn five more reasons to kick it up a notch.

Another Way to Work With Intervals: Tabata

Susi May — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 13:35:28 PST

Tabata. These three simple rhythmic syllables when uttered by a personal trainer can make a person sweat with nervous anticipation. And the nervous sweating will be followed by lots of actual sweating once the workout begins. After hearing rumors of this intense workout, yesterday my Equinox trainer Lauren decided it was time to introduce me to Tabata training; today my abs, glutes, and upper back feel quite well acquainted with the interval-style workout. Although originally created for sprint intervals with speed skating and cycling, you can Tabata anything (yep, I just turned it into a verb).

Tabata is a very concise way to organize intervals of work and rest. You perform your chosen exercise, jumping rope or doing burpees with a BOSU, for 20 seconds and rest for 10 seconds maintaining this on/off sequence for a total of eight cycles. Each full round is four minutes long, and you keep repeating the four-minute structure with different exercises. You want to work as hard and as fast as you can in those 20 seconds - no dilly dallying. I did a total of nine cycles after running for 10 minutes as warmup. To keep things exciting, Lauren organized my workout around three pieces of equipment (eight-pound medicine ball, BOSU, cable pulleys), using each piece for three exercises. The hour flew by, and I burned almost 500 calories. Look for Tabata classes at your gym - circuit Tabata classes usually have you go through 12 to 15 exercises in 60 minutes.

You don't need a trainer hovering over you or a class to keep track of your cycles; create a Tabata workout at home using this loud and colorful Tabata clock to track your time so you can get your sweat on without worrying about the numbers. If you are using weights in your workout, start out light. What feels right the first couple of cycles may be way too much when you hit the sixth one.

3 Reasons Why High-Intensity Workouts Are Essential

FitSugar — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 02:00:45 PST

If your goal is to get fit this year, hopefully, you've been reading our tips on how to motivate yourself to go to the gym, and being inspired by readers in our Fit Community. And now that you've gotten into a routine with your workouts, it's time to decide how you'll be switching it up to maximize your time in the gym or on the road.

Interval and high-intensity training are perfect ways to do just that, and are an important part of meeting your weight loss and fitness goals. Need more motivation for incorporating them into your weekly workout? Read on for three important reasons to add high-intensity training to your fitness sessions.

It helps you get out of a fitness rut. Adding some high-intensity muscle reps once a week or adding interval training to your cardio routine will help you get past boredom during your workouts.
It saves you time. You should be modifying your workout every two to three weeks, so upping the cardio intensity will mean you can fit in a fast, efficient workout into your busy schedule.
It targets belly fat. Faster-paced workouts help your body release fat-burning hormones, which burn fat both during your workouts as well as long after you've showered off the sweat. In addition, intense workouts target the fat we store around our midsections especially, which is important in lowering the risk of certain diseases.

Stay Cool With Wet and Wild Intervals

FitSugar — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 10:00:01 PDT

If you're too hot to run outside, and you refuse to exercise indoors on a treadmill, I don't blame you. That doesn't mean you need to give up on your workouts, though. Slip on your bathing suit, find the nearest pool, and start treading.

It's essentially like running, but you're floating in water. You'll feel resistance from all angles, so it's an amazing thigh-, butt-, and core-toning workout. If you use both your legs and arms to stay afloat you'll also tone your upper body. Complete an interval workout while staying cool by alternating between treading water for two minutes, and resting for one minute. While you rest, you can float on your back or stomach, or stretch on the side of the pool. Repeat for a total of 10 times and you'll have completed a 30-minute cardio workout without even breaking a sweat.

Kerri Walsh Shares Her Couples Beach Workout

Guest Writer — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 03:47:23 PDT

The following post was written by Olympic athlete and mom Kerri Walsh, two-time gold medalist in pairs beach volleyball.

Every now and then, my husband, Casey, and I work out together. When we do, we usually do intervals. We'll warm up with a nice jog on the beach. Then we'll do beach sprints. We sprint from one lifeguard station to the next, then we jog to the next lifeguard station, and then run to the lifeguard station after that. Changing up the speed helps burn more calories.

Next, we do lunges, push-ups, and a few footwork drills. It's fun to do sit-ups together, because we can toss around a medicine ball. We usually take the medicine ball and toss it back and forth between us as the other one does a sit-up. If we aren't jogging, we will work out at home with the exercise ball that we have.

Be sure to catch up and read all of Kerri’s great posts on FitSugar!

Another Reason to Cross-Train: Make That Connecting Flight!

FitSugar — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 05:50:00 PDT

Though I prefer direct flights, it's impossible to get to my hometown flying direct - there are no flights offered. Even though I've instituted a mandatory two-hour layover policy, somehow delays always leave me cutting it close. This past weekend was no exception; after an initial flight delay, I found myself racing through Washington DC's Dulles airport, which consists of three separate buildings connected by trains and shuttle buses. Transferring between gates and terminals presents many obstacles, and as I raced between terminals to make my connection, I couldn't help but laugh at all of the different workouts I managed to squeeze in before I (thankfully) made it to the second plane with 60 seconds to spare.

You Asked: Hard Time Catching Breath Between Intervals

FitSugar — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 10:00:56 PDT

Dear Fit,
I'm trying to get rid of belly fat and I've read that the best way to do that is by doing intervals. I've been jogging slowly for two minutes, and then I sprint for a minute, but by the next time the next sprinting interval comes around, I'm still huffing and puffing. Sometimes, I even have to stop running altogether. How can I recover faster between intervals?
-Catching My Breath

Interval training is a great way to get rid of overall body fat, especially the tire around your belly. But it's not going to work very well if you can't keep up. I have some suggestions, so

read more. Sounds to me like you're doing too much too soon and overdoing it with your sprint intervals. Intervals are tough, and you need to give your body time to adjust to the new challenges you're placing on it. Make sure you have a solid cardio/running base before doing interval work. Keep in mind that when doing your sprint intervals, you should be moving at a moderate pace, but it shouldn't be so vigorous that you feel like you need to stop running. So change how you're doing your fast intervals by either slowing down the pace of your sprints or by sprinting for less time, like 30 seconds instead of one minute. You may also need more time to recover, so lengthen your slower-paced recovery intervals to three minutes instead of two. Once you've built up your endurance and your body can recover quickly with this routine, gradually increase the intensity by either running your sprint intervals at a faster pace, lengthening the time of each sprint interval, or shortening your recovery intervals. And remember, not all your runs should be interval workouts. It may take some time to work out a way of interval training that best suits you. Be patient and remember the number one rule to follow: never begin the next sprint interval until you've stopped huffing and puffing, and feel strong enough to increase the intensity. Good luck!

Weight Loss Exercise Strategy: Go Intense

FitSugar — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 10:00:27 PDT

You've been eating healthy and sticking to a regular exercise plan for months now, but you're just not seeing the results you want on the scale or in the mirror. It's a myth that working out at a lower intensity (aka, your fat-burning zone) burns fat. The truth is, burning calories is what counts, and the best way to do that is by getting intense with your workouts. Work to 85 percent of your maximum heart rate, and if you're not sure what that means to you, it might be a good time to invest in a heart rate monitor.

I don't recommend pumping up the intensity for your entire workout as that will be impossible to maintain, and because it's proven that interval training is the best way to get the most caloric burn. Not only will you burn calories during your workout, but you'll also continue burning calories for hours after you're done. That's because this type of intense exercise really pushes your body so much that after you sweat it out, it has to go through a recovery period. This takes energy, meaning it burns calories, so you end up getting more bang for your buck as compared to a workout at a consistent and low intensity.

I know it can be frustrating to hit the gym regularly and not get any closer to your weight loss goals, so give this tip a try. Kick it up a notch by adding intervals to your cardio workouts such as sprints, mountain climbers, jumping rope, or plank V jumps.

Run Your Route Backwards! And Other Ways to Vary Training

FitSugar — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 09:00:37 PDT

Whether you're training for a race, upping your mileage, or just staying in shape with long runs in the park or around the neighborhood, it's easy to get stuck in a route rut. I find it hard to switch up my route, especially if I'm doing an early morning run. It's simple, mostly flat, and I know exactly how far I'm running every time. After a few weeks of five-mile morning runs around the park near my apartment, I started experiencing some serious pain in my right knee. I've been through the ringer with IT band issues in the past, and the recent flare-up did nothing for my training or my positive attitude. It wasn't until after my orthopedist asked about my daily runs around the park that I realized running the same route every day was actually hurting me. The tiny, almost-imperceptible downgrade of the road toward the curb meant that I was constantly running on an uneven surface without realizing it. The doctor suggested I switch up my park run by running the opposite way every other time, and in about a week, I was pain free! And as it turns out, switching directions of a run isn't the only thing you should be changing up each time you hit the road. To find out how a little variation can go a long way,