How Do You Keep It Fresh?

Written by Amy

February 2nd, 2010

By Amy Kasden

I was just talking to a friend about how I’ve gotten into a cardio rut.  I have been “plugging and chugging”, choosing a machine (because it is the dead of winter and I can’t get outside) and just going.  Ever part of me knows that making every cardio workout steady state cardio is pointless.  But I have been in a cardio rut. 

 Thankfully, I took a spinning class the other day and that snapped me out of it.  It was not that the class was amazing, the class was actually quite horrible, it was knowing how great that class could have been.  I knew what I would have done if I was doing my own workout.  Fifty minutes of thinking how much I wanted to make that class better was just what I needed to snap out of my rut.  I went home, pulled out my old journals and found some of my favorite and most grueling cardio workouts.  In fact, I just left the gym after a session on the spinner bike and my face is still beet red! 

 What exactly did I do?  Well for this session went for regular intervals, however, I switched between between 30 second sprints with 60 seconds rest and 60 second sprints with 120 seconds rest.  If you cannot get outside to sprint on a track, the next best thing is the spinner bike.  (Now this is just my opinion, but the only thing that winds me like sprints is the bike).  Thankfully I had my iPod blasting music and a stop watch to keep time.   

 It feels great to be excited for cardio.  After 10+ years of doing cardio on a regular basis, it gets old.  Years of any type of working out gets old.  Yet we still do it.  Why?  I train because I love it, because it has become second nature and because I want to be healthy.  But there is nothing worse than dreading your workout.  Every one of my friends, who works out on a regular basis, has said at one time or another, “I am bored with my workouts.”  Or “I need something different to make it exciting.”  This boredom often happens to me when I do not have a specific event that I am training for. 

 Recently I decided to switch up my lifting.  For the past 12 weeks I was doing a typical 4 days/week lift.  There was a rhyme and a reason behind the lift and specific sets/reps/rest intervals chosen for a desired training effect; but it was a 4 day/week lift with sets and reps.  When I started the 12 weeks I was psyched to get back to a 4 day split, spend more time lifting, and throw some weight around.  Then around 10 weeks in, I was over it.  BUT I saw the program through.  By no means do I advocate not seeing a program to the end (well, a good program that is).  I don’t go switching things up every time I get bored.  But once I’ve completed a program, if I am ready for something new, you better believe I switch it up.

 I had been reading a lot on density-type workouts.  My short hand explanation of density training is choosing a load and moving it for a pre-determined amount of time.  Compare that to a typical lifting program where you chose sets/reps and then the weight to fit the sets/reps and you have a very different program.  Charles Staley is well known for his Escalating Density Training (see http://www.staleytraining.com/if you want to check it out) and his style really caught my eye.  While I am fully capable of writing my own program (that is what we, at MP4, do) there are times when I want to try someone else’s theory. 

 I am not doing a pure EDT workout, but one day/week I designate to EDT and on another day I do timed sets.  With timed sets, I lift for a predetermined amount of time, then rest for a predetermined amount of time, and continue this way for say 20 minutes.  I love how this style is both different and difficult.  During the first 5 minutes I always think to myself “this is not that bad, maybe I should be stepping it up a notch” and then I remind myself to wait for it to hit.  After those initial 5 minutes, I am panting, heart racing, muscles are burning and I am begging for the time to move faster. 

 I track every workout and love seeing my progress week to week.  It is easy to track, if I am doing a 30:30 workout, I try to get more reps out in that 30 seconds than I did the week before, plain and simple. 

 I plan to stick to this style of training for 4 weeks and then reassess.  I may add on another 4 weeks or I may not.  That was the beauty in choosing this style, I felt comfortable giving it only 4 weeks, but can easily continue.  I am excited to see how it will translate into other aspects of my training such as plyos, sprints, and strength.  But, the best part is that I am looking forward to both my lifts and cardio again.

 What do you do to get out of that fitness rut?  I know some people are rocking Kettlebells right now to liven it up, some people are incorporated Complexes while others are going back to a traditional lift.  Or are you new to fitness and simply enjoying how new and fun everything is?

Tags: athlete, motivation, variety