I received an assessment from a woman named Allison last week who says she is struggling to see continued progress now that she’s lost a little weight. Allison is not overweight, in fact she is petite in the 120’s and lost 15 pounds over the last six months as she has gotten back on track with her workout routine, but now her progress has stalled. This is what I suggest she do next…
First and foremost I want to say that I am not poo-poo-ing cardio. Cardio is good for our heart, our lungs, our brains.. we should all do some cardio. But when cardio is the bulk of your daily workouts, your progress will eventually stall.
If you are overweight or have not been on a regular workout routine, cardio daily (or almost daily) will absolutely make a difference in how you look and feel. But when you aren’t overweight without a lot of fat to lose, your body will not show muscle tone unless you have muscle to show. So you have to lift weights to build muscle. But how is the best way to go about that?
Let’s say you go to group training classes where you are doing a 500m row, then 50 feet of walking lunges and 15 overhead presses for five rounds. You are not able to go as heavy as possible for the lunges or overhead presses as your body will be fatigued. So I recommend giving yourself dedicated times for lifting weights. My online personal training clients do legs/ abs, chest/ back, shoulders/ arms workout routines, and possibly even a second leg day.
This way let’s say you have 3 sets of 10 on bench press, you can rest between sets and go heavier. Or maybe on your first set you do 10 reps at 65 pounds, and you felt like that was fairly easy, you could rest 2 minutes and then try 75 pounds and if you only get 8 reps, it’s all good – you are getting stronger and the strong you are, the more weight you can move and the more muscle you can build!
Plus, this acts as a bonus. Our bodies seek homeostasis so we have to continue to up the ante by changing the stimulus which is easy to do when we lift weights – we can change the exercises, increase weight or resistance, time under tension, volume, etc.
So my suggestion is to cool it on the cardio and give yourself 3 – 4 dedicated lifting days and do some HIIT cardio (because you can truly maximize your time at 20 minutes max there) you will be better served than doing cardio everyday or nearly everyday and you will get better results.
But if you are nervous or feel like you don’t know what you are doing, you are in luck because in my 1:1 training program, #Commit2Fit I will help create a workout program for you to follow each week to maximize your time and equipment. So let’s say you have a week where you can get to the gym four days, I will give you the daily workouts you need to do for that schedule. But let’s say the next week you can only make it to the gym twice, but you can do home workouts twice.
You can also tone your body with coolsculpting and non-invasive body contouring treatments such as body sculpting in Dixon, IL or coolsculpting in Freehold, NJ and do surgery such as liposuction – Zormeier Cosmetic Surgery or liposuction in Chicago, IL if you really want to see faster results. A CoolSculpting treatment won’t help you lose weight, Coolsculpting instead can help tone your body more after workouts. You can consult experts such as Eternal Beauty Skin – body contouring for additional guidance about body contouring surgery.
Plus, there are daily workouts on my site with exactly what exercises to do and how to do them, and you can even post videos of yourself doing the exercises and I can watch them and help you with form.
Your Coach,
Kyra