Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Cardio?

Hello! Hope everyone is well. I am doing great - am under flex points for the week and worked out six out of seven days this past week. I peeked at the scale yesterday and I was actually up a pound. WTF? I'm sure it's my muscles holding water and blah blah blah but I'm still motivated by numbers at this stage. We'll see what the official weigh in tomorrow says though, so who knows.

Anyway, I met with the trainer last night and he worked my ass hard! I am majorly sore tonight. And I'm sure I'll be worse tomorrow. We were talking about cardio though and I'm not sure what to think. I know there are sort of two schools of cardio - interval and steady state. Interval seems to be the new thinking lately from everything I've read, and he agrees with that as well, but he also wants me to do lots of steady state too in order to improve my baseline fitness level.

Even though I ran that half marathon in October, my fitness level when it comes to cardio could be a lot better. So he wants me to aim for 200 minutes of cardio a week, and that will include both interval and cardio work. 200 minutes is a lot though, especially when I'm also doing an hour of weight training 3x/week. Basically, that is 380 minutes of exercise a week.

So just over six hours of exercise a week. Writing it out doesn't seem like all that much, but actually making it happen seems like quite a lot. I mean I like it and I know I can do it, especially if weekend cardio is like snowshoeing or other fun stuff like that, but I'm sort of scared about my ability to commit to this.

So what do you guys think? How much do you exercise in any given week. Am I being a baby?

4 comments:

Fatinah said...

I do 6 hours of activity a week with the stuff I have scheduled (classes I'm signed up for), and I add in a walk here, swimming there. Having said that, I don't work. 6 hours of what you described is lots. I guess the upside is you'll have an ass to die for!

Unknown said...

i workout monday thru friday (3x cardio and 2x weights) and sometimes, i get a spin class in over the weekend... sometimes i workout less though, all depends on my schedule... i'm sure if i did cardio on my weight days too, i'd see more progress but i only have an hour during the day...

Kim said...

I do my best just to get in my workouts whenever I can. Most nights I have to wait until my husband is home from work before I can head down to the basement to run. I'm usually good about making sure I get exercise on the weekends - but I try to be more flexible about it since it is really the only time we have for the whole family.

I'd LOVE to work it so that I could be sure of getting in that much exercise in a given week. Guess I'm still making babysteps in that direction. :)

Jen C. said...

Gosh, I dunno...I do about 210 minutes of cardio a week (6 days at a minimum of 35 minutes a session).

I do 2 hours of weights a week (two 30 minute upper body sessions and two 30 minutes lower body sessions).

And I do a minimum of three 75 minute yoga classes a week.

So, all told, I guess I do closer to 9 hours of something every week. WOW! I had no idea I was putting that much time into things! Crazy.