After reading my usual 5k runs weren’t doing much for me anymore, I looked into interval training –which a LOT of fitness experts like Workout Anywhere swear by- that spoke to my short attention span. There’s a load of convoluted articles on the subject out there, trust me. But I found one that’s easy to implement – plus it had a picture of a running dog.
It’s posted by Nerd Fitness which appears to be a pretty sweet site run by a guy named Steve. He recommends the workout below under the title, Interval training: Kick your ass and kickstart your metabolism in 20 minutes:
- 5 minutes of warmup...light walking, bump the speed up a little bit to get your legs warmed up…then stretch. Don’t stretch until you’ve warmed up. Think of your muscles like rubber bands…you quickly pull a rubber band that hasn’t been used yet and it’ll snap. Warm it up, get it used to activity, then stretch it, and you’re golden.
- 30 seconds of increased pace (70% of maximum effort)… 2 minutes of decreased pace.
- 30 seconds of increased pace (75% of maximum effort)… 2 minutes of decreased pace.
- 30 seconds of increased pace (80% of maximum effort)… 2 minutes of decreased pace.
- 30 seconds of increased pace (85% of maximum effort)… 2 minutes of decreased pace.
- 30 seconds of increased pace (90% of maximum effort)… 2 minutes of decreased pace.
- 30 seconds of increased pace (100% of maximum effort)..2 minutes of decreased pace.
- 5 minutes of light jogging and stretching. When you stretch afterwards, your muscles expand, allowing the nutrients you’re about to eat to fill in the gaps that are now empty from exercise. Also, it keeps your muscles loose, so there’s a far less chance for injury.
He has quite a few additional thoughts on the subject so check out the entire post HERE.
~Paul