Bounce yourself back to fitness

Feb 13 2010 by David Fairlamb

FITNESS expert DAVID FAIRLAMB brings more tips on keeping fit.

KEEPING your short and long term goals at the forefront of your mind will help you stay focused and keep you striving towards success.

If it’s weight loss imagine how you will feel when you hit that ideal weight. If you have been that weight before place a picture, where you can see it every day, of what you looked like and how you want to look again.

Of course attaining any fitness or well-being goal brings far more than simply what you see on the outside. The overall feel-good factor, boost in confidence and self esteem can be priceless let alone the inevitable health benefits.

Here are this week’s training options. Remember they are a guideline and can be adapted to go within your own training programme or you can simply pick certain sessions or exercises to do. Always make sure you warm up before each workout and cool down and stretch after.

Longer workout, 40-45 minutes
After 10 minutes’ constant exercise start your first of up to 10 one-minute quick, one-minute slow intervals. Adapt your pace accordingly. Make sure you keep slow on your recovery which will allow you to put all your effort in to the quicker efforts. Finish with at least 10 minutes’ constant pace. Remember this type of workout can be done inside, as well as outside, on any cardiovascular machine.

Interval workout, 25-35 minutes
Hills – find a hill which is about 50-70 metres long with a fairly steep incline. After a good warm up try to work to complete 8-16 hills. Your recovery is a walk back to the bottom. Once again remember to pace yourself, a quick walk is fine.

If you are in the gym use the incline on the treadmill with a gradient of 6-10.

Workout in the home – body sculpting – 30 minutes
This week I’m adding the option of aerobic exercise in the form of a small trampoline. They are a fantastic cheap, joint-friendly piece of equipment, ideal to raise your heart rate and burn those calories. Quick low knees, high knees, twists and simple jogging keeps the variation going and best of all the bounce takes pressure off your joints.

Quick short bursts of 20-40 seconds with a short rest between, repeated up to six times would be a good way to train. Once completed stand off and work the leg exercises from previous weeks before repeating the circuit. See how many circuits you can do.