Yes. It is. I?m sorry. If your workouts consist simply of walking into the gym, going on the treadmill for 45 minutes, then doing abs for 15 or so minutes, odds are you won?t get the results you are looking for.
Why? Well, it?s a concept I?ve touched upon before, so I wanted to bring it up. Heck, someone at Evolve told me it was ?the best article I?ve written.? So, I must?ve done something right with the concept.
Jumping on the treadmill and doing that workout I discussed before is sort of like the Atkins Diet. You?ll probably drop weight at the beginning, but you?ll hit a hard plateau and probably begin to lose the results and go back to where you were. (In case you couldn?t tell, I am severely against the Atkins diet and any other low carbohydrate diet that deprives your body of the energy and brain fuel of carbs). Back to the point at hand!
I?ve talked about it before of the SAID Principle, which is personal trainer mumbo jumbo. What it really means is that your body adjusts to the stresses put on it. (I discussed in my article on the myth of the calorie counter). So you are no longer burning 300 calories on the treadmill. You?re no longer burning 600 calories on the Elliptical. Cut those numbers in half, and that?s probably more like it.
So you probably spent 45-60 minutes on any of the various cardio machines burning about 200-300 calories. OK, so you wasted your time on the cardio machines is more like it. I am still a huge fan of these machines. They do work out your heart and lungs, which are extremely important in your quality of life, so by no means am I saying never do cardio.
Clients come up to me all the time with the same story. They joined the gym X months or years ago to lose weight, lost a big chunk of it, then their results either plateau?ed or they gained back the weight. Then I ask what their workouts consisted of, and they give me the usual cardio/abs routine. Not only is that probably extremely boring, but it isn?t effective.
However, I throw them on my mini-circuit workout (view these workouts at www.elderspersonaltraining.com/stabilityball.htm) and their results are almost immediate. Clients who have plateau?ed burst through it. Why? Because they?re now burning more calories much more effectively with these workouts.
Your body would probably respond much better to workouts involving free weights and machines. You have literally thousands of exercises at your disposal with free weights and machines. Can you do the Elliptical a thousand different ways? So, do you think your body benefits more from the elliptical or weights and machines?
Matt Elder is a certified personal trainer in the Boston area who specializes in faster, more effective workouts from your home. His new free e-book ?The End All Killer Ab Workout? which shows eight as exercises with the stability ball guaranteed to leave your core screaming for days, can be downloaded at www.elderspersonaltraining.com/stabilityball.htm . | |
