Something Better Than Chronic Cardio

Is there something better than chronic cardio? Why yes there is! We have tackled HIIT training and the benefits of training this way. But lets talk about about sprint training, the benefits and why we want to sprint.

Chronic cardio is long and boring, in my opinion, and does not get you the results you are looking for. The reason for this is because you keep your heart rate in one range. Yes, it takes work to get it up to the range of a jogging speed, but once it is there, it stays in the same range. You will stop burning as many calories. For woman especially, your body will adjust to this type of  training. What these means is, your body will stop burning calories when you perform long cardio, like jogging. Our bodies, our muscles, have this great way of realizing chronic actions, which in the long run is good for us. It works against us though when we are trying to lose weight. Guys tend to not have as many problems with this. This is due to our different types of muscle. This is why you see woman who run miles and miles, spend hours doing chronic cardio and their bodies do not change. It makes you wonder why they continue on the same path when they have not seen changes in their bodies for months, even years. If you do not change the way your work out, your body is not going to change.

The reason sprint training is so wonderful, is we bypass all of these issues. When sprinting, you will increase your heart rate to its upper max and then when you are recovering, it will come back down. This processes is repeated over and over, yielding a higher calorie burn and our bodies do not plateau. You also build muscle while sprinting. It takes more muscle to sprint than distance running. Have you seen a sprinter with little to no muscle? No, we see them as very stronger, ripped built bodies. It is the distance runners who have no muscles and look frail. It takes a decent amount of muscle to sprint across a field or to get a way from a hungry bear!

To have a higher metabolism, we need more muscle. Muscles have to eat and be feed, this is done by food. The more you want to eat, the more muscle you need to have. Sprinting is a great way to build muscle and burn mass amounts of calories, in the end, to get into shape. By sprinting you can build a long lean ripped body. A body which will turn heads and everyone will be wondering what you do. When everyone else is out there wasting hours doing long cardio, you can smile when you are finished with a workout in less than a half hour and your body actually has something to prove for all of your hard work. The fat whittling away!

Sprinting has the similar effects as HIIT training does. It is done in an interval style of training. Here is what you do:
Sprint has hard as you can for about 30 seconds. It does not sound long, but believe me, it is harder than it sounds.
Nicely walk back to the starting position, take about a minute and half to two minutes.
Repeat process as many times as you can. When first beginning you will not be able to do very many, maybe three to five if you are in decent shape. You want to push your body, but to the point of killing yourself. Listen to your body. Work up to dong 15 sprints. You really do not need any more than this. If 15 intervals is too easy, sprint harder, do winds sprints or up hill sprints. For frequency, you really only need to sprint once a week. Make sure when you do sprint, you have a lot of energy. If you do not have the energy to go all out, then do not sprint that day. Sprinting will take everything you got and then some. Listening to your body is very important. Also, you do not have to do this with running. You can sprint on a bike, or swimming, with kettlebells, really anything you would like. Just perform the exercise in the same fashion. Sprinting will be the hardest.

My favorite place to do my sprint training is in a grassy field. There is one not to far from my house that I take my two dogs too. They love to run and play at the field. In fact, right now they are not very happy with their Mommy because it has been raining here in Utah and is cold, we have not gone to the park in two days. They are sulking and letting Mom know. When the Boys are running and playing, I do my sprint training. I do it barefoot. This is one of the reasons I like sprinting in the grass, I can do it barefoot. It is also softer on the body than the pavement.

Get out there and start sprinting! See amazing fast changes in your body.
Until next time, in the love of Christ,
Jenn