Getting fit

[Eduku]

I'm not sure how many of you actively exercise or are indeed athletes of some sort, but I was hoping for some advice on my routine for getting into shape.

So I finished the academic year for university a few weeks ago, and now I have a full 3 months of nothing to do over the summer, apart from the odd work placement in August. So I thought, I might as well be productive somewhat and start getting myself into shape, since I've kinda let myself go over the past year at uni (and, if I'm honest, a few years before that as well). I'm not fully sure why I suddenly became really interested in getting into shape, but I suspect that going to a sports university might have something to do with it (where you are pretty much surrounded by athletes). For reference, I'm 19 and although I'm not particularly obese, there is a bit of excess fat, especially around my gut (35 inches around).

Anyway, my current routine everyday is to do around an hour of running around the park in the morning, a few hours of weights in the afternoon and an hour/45 minutes of boxing in the evening after dinner. I'm pretty terrible at the running at the moment, I do about a minute of running hard followed by a recovery interval of a minute, then another minute of hard running and so on. I wear a tracksuit, thermal sweater and a hoodie with the hood up so I sweat as much as possible. For the weights, I usually make sure that I balance out each of the muscles, about 6kg for the outer arm muscles (triceps) and shoulders, and 8.5kg for the biceps. I plan to start doing crunches when I can get rid of the excess fat around my torso. As for the boxing, I punch the heavy bag for rounds of 2 minutes, followed by breaks of 1 minute. I do either 15 rounds or 20 rounds, depending on how tired I feel at the time. For this I wear the same gear as I do for running, as well as the necessary wraps and gloves. I don't necessarily do boxing and running in the same day, but I make sure I do at least one of the two.

As for my diet, I've learnt to enjoy salad with boiled eggs and salmon for lunch (sometimes for dinner as well) and rice with fish for dinner. I usually have a few fruits throughout the day.

Anyway, any advice on my current routine, or anything that's wrong with it that needs changing would be appreciated.

 

[aba1]

its better to go for long peroids without rest than to go hard and rest constantly when running try to just jog for a long distance and when it gets to hard to keep going just walk for a while and continue when you get your breath back that way you don't stop. Same goes for wieghts lots of reps with less wieght but don't underestemate good old fashon situps and pushups. Pushups are great as they work your arms chest and stomache if done properly. I somtimes do say 30 pushups then flip and do 30 situps then go back 20 pushups flip back 20 situps and well you get the idea.

 

[Cptntequila]

If you read nothing else in my post take my advice and stop sweating yourself in all of those clothes. Yes I know fighters/wrestlers do it but that is because they are extreme athletes who are trying to lose a few kilos of water weight in order to box in a certain weight class. They do not do it for fitness. Making yourself overheat and sweat that much on a regular basis is dangerous. All you are doing is overheating and dehydrating your body. Please stop, it is NOT helping you burn fat by being sweaty.

I have worked as a NASM certified personal trainer for the past 4 years and I have competed twice in amateur body building competitions. I compete at 92kg and used to be just over 133kg at my heaviest. And no it wasn't a pretty 133kg I also let myself go when I went away to school.

If you are in fact doing an hour of cardio in the morning followed by several hours of weights in the afternoon followed by 45-60 mins of additional cardio (boxing) in the evening you are exceeding what I have ever done to prepare for a show which requires me to be at least under 7% body fat. The maximum I have ever done is an hour of light cardio early morning (walking on a treadmill with a 6.5 degree incline), an hour of weight training at lunch time and an additional 30 minutes of light cardio at night. Now the longest I have ever had to keep this lifestyle up is for 6 weeks straight and my body was absolutely destroyed because of it and I spent the prior 6 weeks dieting and working my body in a way to prepare for the abuse of shredding fat as fast as possible. I needed to take a nap everyday and could only maintain 6 or 7 days on with one day of rest.

You have the right idea of mixing cardio and weights in order to maximize your weight loss, but in my opinion if you really are doing the above routine you are going to burn out your body incredibly fast and won't be able to maintain this lifestyle unless you have a serious recovery and diet plan. When you push your body to that level of exhaustion it is much easier for you to get sick and a cold can quickly evolve into something nasty since your body's natural defenses are weakened.

A more realistic plan would be working out 3 days straight take a day off and then do another 2 or 3. 1 day of rest a week is the bare minimum for your body, I usually recommend my clients take 2 days a week - especially if they are new to the gym. Keep it up with early morning cardio as I feel I am more alert all day if I wake up with an endorphin rush.

Try and hit your entire body throughout the week with the weights. And don't worry too much about how heavy they are, stick with what feels best. You don't have to be the strongest guy in order to have a great beach body. I think for weight loss a rep range of 15-20 works best. There are a lot of different theories and there is truth in all of them but the best thing I have found is 4-6 reps for strength and 20+ for endurance 4-5 sets. You need to fully challenge your muscles in order to get them to respond and if you do 8-12 reps as most people do you may not be giving them an intense enough load by using a medium weight or by not doing enough reps.

Long story not so short keep a balanced life style so you don't go crazy or get sick of it. Workout 5 days a week minimum and keep working your cardio.

If you have any more specific questions or want some more specific advice feel free to PM me.

 

[aba1]

Guy above is right I used to fight in Judo tora's all the time and honestly just a really nice and hard cardio work out 4 times a week for 2 hours will get you in pritty good shape better than most would let on you don't need weights really unless your looking to bulk up for the most part your own body wieight can be all the wieght you need. If you work out to much you will burn out cause when you muscles are sore that means you tore them and they grow back stronger thats how you build muscle but if you never give them a chance to heal you will ruin yourself. The clothing comment at the start is also true people only do that to cut wieght of a tornament where your weight determines who you fight or compete against.

 

[100tacks]

Try p90x. It's a DVD workout series that mixes weightlifting with cardio and core strengthening. It's difficult, but you sound like you are already pushing yourself. You do for 90 days, and each workout is about an hour long. The order from day to day changes so you get the maximum benefit. I've known quite a few people to use it successfully.