Tag Archives: Exercise

Commit to a Healthier You

HEALTH + FITNESS

In the hope that we won’t be having this conversation come this time next year, some easy-to-follow advice on how to make those New Year’s Resolutions stick.

By Todd Soura

With all due respect to your desire to improve yourself, a resolution’s only as good as your commitment to it. So my aim here is for us to avoid having this conversation come this time next year. I want to channel all of your enthusiasm toward making this not only a worthwhile experience, but an enjoyable one. After all, if leading a healthier, fitter life doesn’t hook you on some deep personal level, you’re just going through the motions, and we both know where that’ll lead.

Be the tortoise
Whether you’re coming off a long layoff or you’re starting from scratch, begin slowly and you’ll greatly enhance the likelihood that you’ll remain consistent. And consistency is the most important thing here. I know everything you’ve churned up online over the last couple of weeks has harped on intensity—and that is a close runner-up—but until you get your legs beneath you, it’s better to imagine yourself as the tortoise rather than the hare.

A big part of that is being realistic in your initial expectations. Don’t plan to workout six days a week when you hardly know what once or twice feels like. Two to three sessions a week is a safe place to start. And try to schedule them for a time you know you’ll always be available, even if it means getting up a half-hour earlier. When the enthusiasm starts to wane, and it will, the last thing you’ll want is built-in excuses, which is pretty much all of life.

Suffer with pride
Look, this is never going to be easy. And if it is, you’re not doing it right. If you’re expecting to reach a place a month from now where you’ll be able to run for miles and miles and do 100 burpees consecutively without breathing all that hard, you better check yourself before you wreck yourself.

Exercise is hard even for the fittest among us, and that would be pro athletes and Olympians. When it stops being hard, they set a new set of goals and adjust their training regimens accordingly. For the rest of us, exercise is the most unpleasant hour of our days. But, on the flipside, you’ll feel like you can get through anything else the day throws at you once you’re done. So put in the work, breathe hard, sweat profusely and suffer with pride, because you’re going to come out of that hole and meet a far sunnier day.

Subtract by addition
As far as your diet goes, I’m sure you’re already well aware of the ultimate goal: to delete as many of the bad foods on a daily basis as you can manage. Which is probably why you’ve avoided doing so until now. In drawing such a line in the sand, we tend to color our foods in extremes. What isn’t healthy is going to kill us. And that, of course, gives a really sour flavor to all the good stuff and a sweet one to everything we’re forsaking. In other words, we’re setting ourselves up to fail.

Instead, don’t be so intentional in revising your diet. Yes, of course, you’ll want to pass on that bagel smothered in half a pound of cream cheese at breakfast. But you’re only going to end up romanticizing it if you sit down tomorrow morning to a bowl of oatmeal. So try this instead: Make yourself the oatmeal, along with a hard-boiled egg and the bagel. Eat the oatmeal and the egg first and, if you still have room, eat the bagel, too. Give it some time. The better you feel and the more you see the connection between what you eat and how you move through your day, including your performance during your workouts, the less you’ll want the bagel. And when the day comes that you finally eliminate it altogether, you won’t even miss it.

The overriding theme here is patience. Be persistent in your workouts, your recovery and your nutrition, but give yourself a wide berth. Start slowly, accept the missteps with the progress and focus on what’s in front of you. That’s all you can control anyway.

Todd Soura is the owner of the Doylestown-based Action Personal Training.

Walk (Run, Preferably) This Way

A template for your first two months. —TS

Weeks 1 and 2
Workout: Monday, Wednesday, Friday
Exercise: 20 minutes of resistance (weight) training and 10 minutes of interval (cardio) training
Intensity: 2 out of 5 (1 = a casual, easy-to-maintain pace; 5 = an all-out effort that you can hold only for short bursts at a time.)

Weeks 3 and 4
Workout: Monday, Wednesday, Friday
Exercise: 30 minutes of resistance training and 15 minutes of intervals
Intensity: 3 out of 5

Weeks 5 and 6
Workout: Monday, Wednesday, Friday
Exercise: 30 minutes of resistance training and 20 minutes of intervals
Intensity: 4 out of 5

Weeks 7 and 8
Workout: Monday, Wednesday, Friday
Exercise: 30 to 40 minutes of resistance training and 10 minutes of intervals
Intensity: 5 out of 5

5 Habits of a Time-Crunched Personal Trainer

HEALTH + FITNESS

Motivation can wane even in the most die-hard among us. But some mild tweaking can refresh your focus and put you on personal-best pace.

By Todd Soura

I started following a workout regimen back in high school. I may not have had the sharpest sense of direction then, but I had plenty of time and energy to figure it out as I went. Twenty-five years later, neither is on my side. I’m a husband, a father of three and a business owner. If my resolve weakens, there are plenty of other priorities that’ll rush in to consume my attention. But a few simple practices prevent that from happening.

Target new goals
I like to do it every three months, but even once a year has a positive effect. Be creative. But, more importantly, be realistic. Run a 5K before you register for a half-marathon. Races are good options because you’re locked into them, but they’re hardly the only ones. Aim to improve your mile time or the weight you can bench press. If losing weight is your goal, focus on your hip or waist measurements, which will give you a more accurate read on your progress than your weight.

Change pace
The less of an opportunity you give your body to adapt, the more substantial your gains will be. If you can comfortably bang out a five-mile tempo run, where you average 65 to 70 percent of your maximum heart rate, try high-intensity intervals, which are designed to push you over 90 percent for very brief stretches. If you have access to a track, warm up then sprint 100 meters. Walk back to where you started and do it again. Aim for 10 sprints. Or, find a hill and run to the top at full-speed. Jog back down and do it again. Repeat five to 10 times, depending on the distance.

Every four to six weeks, change the pace of your weight training. Lift less weight and do more repetitions or lift more weight and do less reps. If your workouts are comprised of isolation exercises with long stretches of rest in between sets (60 seconds or more), replace them with combination moves and no rest.

Change the kind of exercise, too
There’s too much at our disposal to do the same things day in and day out. Plus, as proficient as you may be at cycling, it’s at the detriment to your upper body. Versatility bodes better for your health and fitness. Instead of riding for an hour, swing a 40-pound kettlebell as many times as you can in 20 minutes. Swap out a day of weights for a yoga class.

Eat consciously
I marvel at my wife. She can eat three M&M’s, fold up the bag and stuff it back in the drawer. If I have one, I’m going to devour the entire bag, so I avoid them altogether. Regardless of which of us you fall behind, learn to be aware of everything you eat. When you take a moment to think about it, you’ll start to detect whether you’re hungry or just bored. From there, you can seek out foods that nourish you and fill you up, rather than reaching for the shiniest wrapper.

Stare yourself down
If you find yourself routinely over-booking and, as a result, skimping on your workouts and eating poorly, something needs to change. You are not at the mercy of your iCal. There’s always a half-hour available for a quick workout, even if it means getting up earlier. And there are always healthier things to eat, even if it means packing a chopped salad for your son’s lacrosse game.

Todd Soura is the owner of the Doylestown-based Action Personal Training. 

Spring Starts Now

SOUL FOOD

Think of the person you want to be come Memorial Day weekend—healthy, energetic, happy. The gap’s not as wide as it may feel, but the hibernation needs to end today. A guide to how to go about just that.

By Rose Nyad Orrell

With spring on the horizon—we may touch 70 next week—you may be feeling the urge to hit refresh on yourself. It’s a natural instinct as the weather becomes more conducive to a healthy lifestyle. The first steps are usually the hardest. I know they’ve been mine since spending a dozen lovely winters in the southwest. This was my third winter back in the northeast, and it’s not getting any easier.

I’ve come to adopt a mantra to get me through winter’s homestretch: Fake it till you make it. There’s quite a gap between hibernation and the active lifestyle we’re striving for. Don’t be daunted by it. Aim to do something, anything, each day. And do it every day. Gradually, a walk will become a run. But if you start with the run, you set yourself up for disappointment.

For the next month, my exercise regimen will focus on developing my stamina. My first sessions will start at 15 minutes and gradually ramp up to a half-hour of some kind of movement, whether it be jogging, dancing, yoga, even gardening. And I’ll do it four to five days a week. Some days may feel better than others, but it’s critical to remember that keeping the pace slow and steady will lay the foundation for everything to come. Press too hard and you’ll make yourself vulnerable to injury, or even discourage yourself entirely.

Once I start feeling as though the exercise is becoming easier—my breathing isn’t too labored, my form is sound—I’ll begin either increasing the duration of the sessions by, say, a few minutes a week (10 percent is a good rule of thumb) or their intensity. That’s when I usually begin incorporating weight training, which will help develop lean muscle mass, a key component to boosting metabolism. It’s also the framework that’ll enable you to begin pushing yourself harder.

The most important muscle not to neglect in this process is the heart. More specifically, your resting heart rate. It’s a good indicator of where your endurance stands. The faster your heart rate returns to a calm level after a hard workout—55 to 65 beats per minute for men, low sixties for women—the better your conditioning.

With a solid base beneath you, begin incorporating a couple of high-intensity interval sessions into your weekly regimen. They’re meant to be short in duration—anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes—but they’ve proven to be far more effective at burning calories and boosting your aerobic capacity than drawn-out, low-intensity exercise. Because it’s so demanding, don’t jump in until you’re ready, and even then, space out the workouts. You’ll want to give to yourself at least a couple days between them. You can exercise during that period, but keep it relatively low in intensity.

The concept behind high-intensity training is pretty simple: Go all out for a brief burst, then give yourself enough time to catch your breath but not fully recover. Repeat. Try this one: Warm up with a five-minute jog. Then, sprint for 20 seconds, jog or walk for the next 40. Aim for five rounds to start. Work your way up to 10. Once you’ve got a high-intensity workout behind you, it’s safe to say you’re back in the game and well on your way to the best shape of your life.

Rose Nyad Orrell is a New Hope-based certified holistic health practitioner (rosenyad.com).