loracolson’s BodyBlog

A lot of people ask me, "How much cardio do you do?"  If they only knew… I really don’t do that much!  I do 10-20 minutes every other day…Sometimes every 2 days!  Quite a change from my old style of working out…

I have been an athlete my whole life–Ran track in high school and college, played field hockey in high school, played football for my sorority, etc.  (full story on my website www.loracolson.com) I have never been overweight, and have always looked "okay."  I worked out all the time–gym workouts with LOTS and LOTS of slow, boring cardio on the treadmill or…pounding pavement.  My diet was always mostly…horrible.  If I gained a few pounds and wanted to lose weight, I would add more running!  ARGH.  If I had only known!

You don’t have to run, run, run!!!  In fact, I am convinced now that I was short-circuiting any success by doing all the cardio!  I got to a point a  year ago, where I couldn’t lose weight, but I was seriously running my TAIL off–Logging 30 or so miles per week. I did *some* weight training, too.  I was so SO frustrated that for all the time and energy I was putting into losing weight, NOTHING was coming off.  Miraculous, I thought!  That’s when I researched and RESEARCHED to find out how in the world I could be hitting a wall with weight loss when I was eating next to nothing and doing so much cardio!  Well, that’s when I found this different style of working out–Turbulence Training.

The guy who put TT together kept saying, "Quit the slow, boring cardio…" I could NOT believe it.  I really thought that was the way you lose fat/ weight.  I was pretty skeptical.  I decided to try out the workouts and I entered a TT Transformation contest.  It was funny because in the beginning, I woud do the TT workouts…and then I would add a bunch of SLOW, BORING cardio!  Why is it so hard to quit?  No one likes to spend hours pounding on the treadmill!!!!!  AND I don’t have time! 

It took a long time, but now that I have seen how much I have changed my body, I am a recovered cardio addict!  Sheesh!  They need a 12 step for it! 

I have NEVER in my life had the cuts that I have now.  I never had visible abs, and I never had workouts this short with 10-20 minutes of cardio!  It’s pretty amazing to me that you can do this.  I used to workout much harder/ longer, and I looked WORSE!!!

Now when I see people running along the road…I think, OH if they only knew they don’t HAVE to do that!  Some people LIKE to run, and that’s great.  Some people (like me) don’t love it, but do it because they feel like they have to!  I would rather have short workouts and spend more time with my husband and my kids…my horses…I think I would rather do LAUNDRY than run…

I love to help people get out of the cardio mindset.  I even dragged my husband out of it!  He was swimming, and SWIMMING, and SWIMMING…not seeing the changes in his body.  I told him, "If you really want to see CHANGES in your body, try the Turbulence Training and do intervals with your swimming–Not steady-state."  He was reluctant to jump on board, but he’s onboard now, and he looks better than he has ever looked!!!  He is making big progress and I’m so proud of him! He’s swimming less, doing high-intensity intervals on the treadmill for 10 minutes after each TT workout, and he is making SMOKIN’ progress.  LOVE IT.  And, he is so motivated to keep going because of the changes he’s seeing.  Good stuff.

If I can help anyone get off the hamster wheel…I love to do it!  Just check out my "before" and "after" pics!  I was the Queen of Cardio!  There is a better way!  Work smart, not hard.  (Well…work hard, too!)  Work SHORT, not LONG!  You can get ripped with 10-20 minutes of cardio 3 x a week. 

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 17th, 2009 at 5:17 am 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.