Additional Cardio

As of October 1^st I have been adding a morning cardio mix into my routine on top of all the other workouts I complete daily.

Now you are probably wondering- why?

Well I still have body fat to lose. There are really no other changes that I can make to my diet to make it any cleaner so upping the cardio is the next step; to get the last of it off.

Current Routine:

*Daily morning cardio (20-30 minutes) using HIIT for this to keep it quick but get my heart rate up

*Daily Evening cardio (40-50 minutes)

*Weights (varying muscle groups throughout the week) 1 hour- 6 days a week (legs, shoulders, chest & triceps, back & biceps, total body and legs again)

* HIIT (20 minutes) 2/ week

Anyone who knows me well knows that I am not a morning person and also knows what it takes for me to get up as early as I do for work, let alone extra early to fit in a workout.

But here I am getting up between 4am and 4:30am daily (I laughed at myself the first day) to do High Intensity Cardio. Who would have thought? Not me that’s for sure.

And not only do I do it every day but so far I have been feeling awesome and I have noticed a difference in my attitude throughout the day as well. It’s more positive and optimistic.

You may be also wondering why I don’t just do steady state cardio rather than going high intensity right away. A couple of reasons actually:

1)      Time restraints—I still have to make it to work regular time and high intensity allows me to train for 20-30 minutes, sweat my ass off and get an amazing workout.

2)      The claim in that high intensity is better at burning fat than regular cardio

So what happens is I plan a routine of maybe 6-9 exercises and do 3 sets of each either working in intervals of 30sec with 10 rest or 20sec with 10 rest and by the end of my workout I am pooped, my heart rate is up and I have worked up a sweat.

Sample Routine from this morning: 30sec work/ 10sec rest

Set 1: 3 x body weight squats/ lunges with weight overhead/ ab crunches

Set 2: 3 x push ups/ front kicks/ one arm push

Set 3: 3 x chest press on swiss ball/ jumping jacks/ sumo squats with knee to elbow