Liza Laura’s BodyBlog

A few of you wonderful fellow LMS peeps have emailed me asking how in the world I get through so much cardio without losing my mind so I thought I’d share a couple tips that have worked for me. 

1) Set goals for yourself.  I like goals, it makes me feel good when I have accomplished or exceeded them so I play games with myself.  (I know it’s kinda sad but it works!LOL)  For example, say I did my AM cardio yesterday and burned 300 calories in 40 minutes, well then my challenge to myself this morning was to see if I could burn 325 in 40 mins!!  I know it is retarded but it keeps my short attention span engaged!!

Also say I am doing intervals of 20 second sprints and at the end of the 20 secs I have burned 19 calories, well then I push myself to extend the sprint until I have burned 20!  Doesnt seem like a lot but all those little calories add up!

 2) Judge your cardio by how many calories you burn not by the time it takes.  I learned this from a pro figure gal who told me told always aim to burn at least 600 calories per day.  Obviously if you are genetically blessed like one of my heros Fern,  and have low bodyfat to begin with this is not necessary!  But for most of us mere mortals we need all the help we can get to convince those stubborn fat cells to shrink!  So pick a number of calories you want to burn and make that your daily goal - then it becomes a challenge and encourages you to push yourself rather than just stare at the clock while you are doing the dreaded cardio. 

3) Throw in at least a few days of higher intensity interval cardio - it will rev up your metabolism - burns more fat and calories in less time and suppossedly keeps you burning calories for a longer period of time than steady state cardio.  Plus it will keep you and your body from getting bored and adapting.  Our bodies are amazingly efficient and if you always do the same thing you will stop seeing results which leads me to my final tip…..

4) MIx it up!  Sometimes I will do 20 minutes of 3 different machines, stepper, treadmill, arctrainer etc - again it is good because you’ll work your legs from different angles and slightly different muscles,  you’ll keep you body guessing and keep yourself from going stark raving cardio crazy!    Also little changes like going forwards, going backwards, sideways, on your toes, fast slow - all good things to throw into the mix!

Ok gals hope you found some of those helpful and have a great healthy weekend, stay strong on ON DIEt !

P.S. Just found out I made bodybuilding.com female transformation of the week so I am pretty psyched.  If you’ve made a great transformation you should enter as you get $50 credit towards bbding.com supplements!  Here is the link with info…..
http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/trans.htm

This entry was posted on Friday, August 1st, 2008 at 7:50 pm and is filed under Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.