Making Cardio Less Boring

Hi Guys,

Chris here to talk about a few tips to make cardio at the gym less boring. Morning cardio at home is great but it can get pretty monotonous. And when you get down to the wire on shedding those last few pesky pounds, you will spend a lot of time on the treadmill, elliptical, or bike.

We are now a few weeks out from the photo shoot so Scott and I are both turning up the dial on the cardio. I put in between 45min to 1hour per day of cardio in addition to the 90minute weightlifting sessions 5 days per week.

Here's what keeps me from going insane on the treadmill

1. Crank up the music. I like to listen to all sorts of music but when I'm on the treadmill loud techno music provides the beat and motivation I need to keep going strong. If you are going long and slow, pod casts work well too.
2. Bring something to read. I try not to bring stuff from the office but I don't always succeed. By the way, this works better on the bike than the treadmill.
3. Position yourself in good viewing distance of the exercise / dance room. Need I say more?
4. Do interval training. I manually adjust the settings to incorporate sprints and rest periods so I don't go brain dead. This is also a good way to confuse the body and trim more fat. It is amazing how fast the body adapts to exercise and when it becomes too efficient, you don't get the same benefits.
5. Mix it up. Sometimes I will jump from StairMaster to treadmill to bike to elliptical to keep it interesting.

This works for me, have fun trying out some of these ideas or inventing some of your own.

http://ballisticbodyfitnessblog.com/ The Fastest Way to Lose Weight - Personal Trainer Burbank - Visit our site for expert training on how to lose 8-15 pounds in 10 days with a free working persons detox and weight loss jump start plan. 

FFT Ab and Cardio Workout

Hi Guys,

Chris here to talk about today's Feel it till Fricken Tuesday ab workout.

It looked like this:

Cardio

• We started on the treadmill for a 15 minutes to warm-up

Core

• Plank for 5 sets of 30 second hold
• Cobra for 5 sets of 30 second hold
• Supermans (starting on hands and knees extend alternate arm and leg) for 5 sets of 30 second hold on each side
• Side plank for 5 sets of 30 second hold on each side (raise outside leg on last set)

Abs

• Hanging leg raises - 3 sets of 12
• Superset the following 3 exercises for 3 rounds:

-Roman chair leg raises 10 reps full range of motion 10 reps upper-half range only
-Stability ball / medicine ball cross crunches 10 reps on each side (balance on stability ball with handled 12lb medicine ball overhead. Crunch down to each side for one rep bringing the medicine ball back above the head in the middle of each rep)
-Machine crunches 20 reps (last rep hold maximum contraction for three deep exhalations)

Cardio

• StairMaster for 30 minutes (periodically reduce the speed and take deep steps with a focus on contracting the abs and feeling the pull on the lower portion of the abs)
  
  http://ballisticbodyfitnessblog.com/ The Fastest Way to Lose Weight - Personal Trainer Burbank - Visit our site for expert training on how to lose 8-15 pounds in 10 days with a free working persons detox and weight loss jump start plan. 

Cardio for Lazy Bastards

Hi Guys,

Chris here to talk a little about cardio. To be honest I love cardio if I can do it on my own terms. I used to love waking up late on a Sunday morning and taking a leisurely 5 - 7 mile run in the Santa Monica mountains. After I hit a plateau in my loss of stubborn belly fat I realized that the only way I was going to break through was to add cardio to my daily morning routine.

Morning cardio fires up the metabolism first thing in the day and continues to burn body fat at a higher rate all day long. I have also noticed a nice personal side benefit, I don't get cold at the office anymore. My colleagues like to keep the AC at an arctic 68 degrees in the summer which left my hands freezing and my nose running. I would even have to go outside several times a day just to warm up. Now my metabolic furnace keeps me toasty all day long.

Scott swears by morning cardio but he is a morning person. If I get up any earlier than 6:45 AM, I am a complete zombie all day. I had to devise a strategy to cram in my cardio in the morning while waking up at a reasonable hour and getting to the office on time.

Here's what I did:

I have an old elliptical rider that was serving as a coat rack and dust gatherer in a corner of my condo. I pulled it out and set it up in a prominent place where it is ready to go at a moments notice.

It's amazing how long it takes me to do things like find shoes, get dressed, eat, etc. in the morning because I'm the worlds worst morning person. The next thing I did was put a pair of slippers on the pedals of the elliptical rider so all I have to do is step into them and start going. I also put my iPod and heart rate monitor (you don't need a heart rate monitor but for me it is critical. In the morning I am so groggy that if I don't use it I will unconsciously slog through the entire 30 minutes and never get my heart rate above 90 beats per minute) in the cup holders on the machine so I don't have to look for them when I'm pressed for time.

The whole process looks like this:

I wake up, put on shorts, walk to the kitchen and dump 3 scoops of protein powder in a glass of water and drink it, walk over to the elliptical rider, slip my feet in the slippers, put on the iPod, put on the heart rate monitor, warm-up for 5 min and then crank it up to my target heart rate zone for 20 min with a 5 min cool down, and stretch. I can get all this done in 35 minutes which is amazing for me since anything I do in the morning usually takes twice as long as if I do it later in the day.

http://ballisticbodyfitnessblog.com/ The Fastest Way to Lose Weight - Personal Trainer Burbank - Visit our site for expert training on how to lose 8-15 pounds in 10 days with a free working persons detox and weight loss jump start plan.