If you’ve been long time subscriber to my emails, you’d already know I’m not a my thoughts and feelings about
doing low intensity levels on treadmill and under the false pretense that it’s your cure to lose lbs, be heart healthy,
increase lung capacity and so forth.
Just like my blog when the great Isaac Hayes died on the treadmill it seems like two other American lives have come
to an end when the slipped in this “cardio coma”. Both Tim Russert and Randy Smith both die on the treadmill yesterday. Tim Russert
the guy who hosted Meet the Press, was diagnosed coronary heart disease sometime ago and had a heart attack on the treadmill.
The cause of death was ventricular arrhythmia. Tom Brokaw was quoted as saying “Russert after being made aware of his enlarged
heart Russert was trying to manage his weight and had lost 10lbs over the last several months.” If you have seen or look at pictures
of Russert, you may not even think seriously overweight/obese or that his health complications are deadly. But the truth is he died at
the young age of 58.
Well, if I do go before the age of 58, so be it, but I definitely don’t plan on leaving this earth in 21 yrs. And I’m going to see to it that
I can do everything in my ability’s to not let that happen (Lord willing). Perhaps he was like most people, under the false pretense the
treadmill would help lose weight? Perhaps he never once thought to clean up his eating habits first? Perhaps he never imagined he was
in enough shape to begin an interval training program. Or maybe he was under the impression that he was “just a little bit out of shape”
or “just a little bit overweight” and never understood fully that his life could be in danger.
Ironically, another unexplained death on the treadmill happen to a former NBA star Robert Smith on the same day. Smith like Russert was only 60 yrs old. Again not the age I plan on leaving this earth and especially not on the treadmill. It’s not reported just yet if he had weight management issues, but here’s 3 nutritional and exercise tips I want to share with you if you’re looking to manage your weight and or improve your cardiovascular system.
If you want are looking to lose lbs,
1.) Check and access your food intake first!
Even before you begin to think about an exercise program, you should always assess what you’re nutritional intake is. If you’re serious and looking to lose weight, 80 if not 90% of the results are going to come through your nutritional program. Here’s some tips you can begin implementing right now to help you see fast results in regards to your weight.
2.) Read the first 5 ingredients on the labels- One of the biggest problems people have is they don’t take the time look and read exactly what it is they’re putting in their bodies. By reading the first 5 ingredients, this will give you a general a good idea if it’s ok or not. There are some ingredients you want to steer away from. Enriched, bleached, high fructose corn syrup. If you’re not careful and not reading the labels on the back you may be tricked into believing something that says “no sugar added” is ok but they’ve actually exchanged the the sugar for a different name.
3.) Eliminate Sugar from your diet- Don’t kid yourself, we who live in the western hemisphere and in particular Americans consume way too much sugar. Sugar comes in many forms. Avoid sugars or drastically reduce the foods you’re consuming that end with “ose” That’s dextrose, maltose, sucralose, fructose, glucose…and get rid of it. You don’t need it! The Over-consumption of sugar is leading lead to your increased waistline, double chin, and you can pretty much kiss your weight loss dreams good bye if you don’t get rid of them. When the sugar rises in your blood, it causes insulin to be released. The insulin makes the sugar go into both fat cells and muscle cells. The sugar is used in the fat cells to make even more fat. In the U.S. Americans on average are consuming 2-3lbs of sugar per week and more than 20 teaspoons pr day. It’s so easy to consume too much sugar. Just take bowl of sweet cereal, 8oz of a fruit yogurt (33g of sugar) and only one scoop of ice cream and you will skyrocket well over 20 teaspoons of sugar. Sugar also comes in many different forms. Sugars are found in a plethora of foods and condiments like cereals, breads, soups, microwavable meals, processed (canned) spaghetti sauce, peanut butter ketchup and mayonnaise etc. Remember this, added sugars equals adding empty calories without any nutrients, minerals or vitamins. You seriously must break the habit and get off the sugar if you want to see your weight drop.
1.) Get out of the mindset you’re helping your heart or losing weight by doing long duration cardio.
Back in the 80’s we were under the belief system that you needed to spend 45min-hr doing a slower steady rate to lose weight and improve lung power. But the truth is you do enough aerobics and it will make you sick, tired and old way before your time. That’s why I’m always confused when Atlanta Personal Trainers and Boot Camp Instructors force their clients to run for these long periods. I’m really confused because there’s too much research that says if you only exercise in your current aerobic limits, you’ll never improve your aerobic capacity. And if you don’t improve your aerobic capacity the end result is smaller lungs, smaller reserve capacity, and smaller muscles. When your reserve capacity begins to shrink you place a great deal of stress on the body. Thus, making it harder to deal with stressful situations like physical trauma, an injury, an emotional shock, even a very intense bedroom moment. When you don’t have a strong reserve capacity there’s no way for the heart to pump blood during these stressful periods. When you don’t have reserve capacity, you’re more likely to die from a fatal heart attack or bronchitis or pneumonia when the body is faced with stress.
2.) The Power is in circuit training in intervals
Today’s athletes already know the secret. And many fitness professional are implementing them too. However, when I look around at the Atlanta Boot Camps and Atlanta Personal Trainers, it seems as if they’ve missed it. The true power of increasing your chance for fat loss and your reserve capacity is in brief bouts of exertion, followed by a brief rest periods. This is the exact opposite of the long duration of exercise. Instead of your lungs shrinking and becoming nonexistent you actually make it stronger, more fit and this is the only way to fight heart attacks and living life disease free. In our Atlanta fitness boot camps we run a variety of intervals. We use circuit training as this is the supreme lean muscle builing form of exercise for fat loss. We also perform Total Body movements, working multiple muscles at once to create the fat burning effect for our clients. Inside our circuit training workouts we used timed based intervals like 20 seconds of work followed by 10 seconds of rest, 30 seconds of work followed by 30 seconds of rest, 40 seconds of work followed by 20 seconds rest and my all time favorite 50 seconds all out work, with only 10 seconds rest.
As you can see, this fat burning technique never exceeds more than a minute worth of work. The reason is yes, long duration exercise may burn during the workout, but it will not burn fat post exercise.
3.) We use interval training for cardio too
We prescribe our clients to perform their cardio in the forms of interval trianing on their non resistance training days. We also ask them to stay with the time frame of 20-30 minutes. The intervals may be a 30 second all out sprint, followed by 90 second active recovery stage (slower stage), or a 45 second all out sprint, followed by a 60 second recover, or 60 second all out effort, with 60 second recovery. We also don’t recommend people to use the treadmill as much. I’ve notice myself and clients can get some serious work and results following the same principles explained on an exercise bike, using the stairs, at home doing body weight and agility exercise, hill sprints. There’s endless variations but you most certainly don’t have to hop on the treadmill, turn it up to 3.5mph an hang out there for an hour. If you aren’t feeling wiped out after your workouts, you may want to reassess your program and or start a new one. Don’t fall into that “cardio coma” and miss out on the secret that others are doing!
If you have any comments feel free to post them below.
Tim Russert, Dies on Treadmill, 58 yrs old
Randy Smith Dies on Treadmill, 60 yrs old
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