Who hates cardio? Sample workouts inside!

I do. Out of all of the forms of exercise, cardiovascular training has to be my least favourite. It makes minutes feel like hours and repeating the same movement over and over for 30-60 minutes is extremely tedious. Give me a few sets of heavy deadlifts or squats over a 5 mile run or 10 mile cycle any day of the week.

Yet I still force myself into a few cardio sessions per week to supplement my training. Why? The answer is simple:. I.LOVE.FOOD. Unfortunately, this love for food means that I have to increase my training to achieve a satisfactory calorie deficit for weight loss. Weightlifting will always be my preferred form of training, after all - more muscle mass means that more calories are needed to maintain. However, its pretty inevitable that after a while of dieting, your weight loss will begin to plateau and maybe grind to a halt. At that point, you have a few options:

1. Decrease calories further. However maybe you've already done that, and you don't think its a good idea to drop any more.
2. Reverse diet/take a diet break - Just like it says on the tin, this either involves gradually increasing your calories over time until you're back at maintenance levels, or just taking a few weeks away from your diet. Obviously this would still involve trying to eat right and gauging how many calories you're eating a day. This option generally isn't a favourite for people unless they're already pretty lean.
3. ADD CARDIO - If you're already weight training (which in my opinion, you should be) then its probably not a good idea to keep piling on the volume as this could lead to injury. However adding cardio as a different form of burning calories will be lower impact and can be added comfortably to a weightlifting routine.

So now we've covered the 'why' of adding cardio to your routine (apart from the fact that some people love it), lets explore the 'how'. That might sound like an obvious thing to cover, but when most people think of cardio they think of endless running or rowing, countless hours on the exercise bike or cross trainer. It doesn't have to be like that.

To quote healthstatus.com:

"Cardio exercise is any exercise that raises your heart rate"

That can be achieved in a number of ways. A lot of pro bodybuilders will opt for LISS (Low intensity steady state) cardio when prepping for competitions as they believe it prevents muscle breakdown and is more suited to their goals. However you'll find that people like crossfitters will wholeheartedly embrace a HIIT (High intensity interval training) style approach.

Whether you want to opt for HIIT or LISS is up to you. Would you rather spend an hour on a treadmill or bike at a slow but steady pace, or spend 20 minutes on the same piece of equipment at varying speeds and intensities? I used the treadmill and bike as an example here, but there are countless ways in which you can perform HIIT or LISS cardio. Personally I'll opt for a HIIT approach 90% of the time, and add an LISS workout in very occasionally, because that's what works for me. I'll also try to keep traditional forms of cardio to a minimum, and I'm always looking for new ways to mix up what would otherwise be mind numbingly tedious workouts.

So as promised, here are a few of my favourite cardio workouts!

Workout 1 - High intensity

400m Run

Barbell thrusters (40kg RX) x 15 Reps

Burpees x 10

Pull ups x 5

5 rounds

The aim for this one is to have as little rest as possible!

Workout 2 - Tabata (High intensity)

4 minutes - 10 seconds off, 20 seconds on (Perform each exercise for 4 mins before moving on)

Double unders

Burpees

Kettlebell swings

Jump Squats

Press ups

Workout 3 - Metabolic conditioning

Run 400m

50 pull ups

Run 400m

50 push ups

Run 400m

50 sit ups

Run 400m

50 squats

Try and keep a decent pace, but don't go all out at the beginning and gas yourself out!

Workout 4 - High intensity

2K row (as fast as possible)

Workout 5 - High intensity

21-15-9 Reps

Burpees

Kettlebell Swing (24kg RX)

This should take 5 minutes or less if performed at the right pace, and will catch you by surprise!

Workout 6 - High Intensity

10 Power snatches

10 OH Squats

10 Deficit push ups

100m sprint

5 rounds

Workout 7- High intensity

10 burpees

10 box jumps

10 kettlebell swings

200m run

5 rounds

Workout 8 - Steady state

Skipping - 10 minutes

Spinning - 10 minutes

Rowing - 10 minutes

So there you have it, a few of my favourite cardio workouts, or as I like to refer to them - the lesser evils. Try them out and tweet me/hit me up on Instagram to let me know how you get on! 

  

Stop Taking Pictures of Your Damn Smoothies

Just stop it. Stop pretending you are actually ‘Totally loving this new kale, wheatgrass and Syrian refugee tears smoothie!’ You’re not. You hate it and you hate yourself. You hate everyone else who’s posting this stuff too. It tastes like arse. It looks like a 70 year old vegan named Cyril threw up in a glass and farted on it for good measure.
Stop taking pictures of yourself at the gym and stop the candid shots of your Sunday morning runs as well. This is painful. You don’t live in California no matter how much you wish you did.
I don’t know how you’ve all done this but you’ve managed to take the noble and pure pursuit of health and fitness and turn it into your own personal vanity kick. It’s become an echo chamber of people with poor self esteem looking for self approval from people they hate or don’t care about. The only reason your doing this is because it’s currently popular with the social media generation and will get likes. The worst part is that whenever you see other people sharing these photos, even though you ‘like’ them the only thing going through your head is how much of a tool you think they are. Everyone who sees your photos is thinking the exact same thing as you do when you see their photos.
But deep down you know this. You know how everyone, even people involved in this, hate it. You know that social media is a festering pit of vanity, narcissism, petty jealousy and low cunning. It’s a clique of American High School girls from all those rubbish films and shows who all hate each other and are in a never ending competition with one and other. You are part of that clique. You are actively participating. But you ignore it. You pretend you’re not a hypocrite. You tell yourself that you really are in this for the health and fitness benefits and it’s everyone else who is being shallow. Of course it’s all a lie, because every time you share a picture and it doesn’t get the requisite number of likes a pit opens in your stomach and you feel like it was all for nothing. And then you see that your friend, who you hate as well, called Olivia shared a picture of her organic, free range, vintage Herbalife InstaFitShake and got 37 likes on it. You look at the picture. How was it different to mine? Maybe it was the caption? Maybe it was the filter? What time did she upload it? Is that a rustic oak table that glass is on? Maybe she’s just prettier than me. You base your next picture around the one she did in the hope your likes will go up.
See as much as you won’t admit it this all has nothing to do with you suddenly developing a deep interest in your own health and fitness. Frankly if it was you’d be going about the whole thing completely different. This is a modern fad and one that’s very popular. It’s the one the ‘in’ people are doing and you always wanted to be one of them. You’re in your 20’s now and you still have the mentality of a high schooler. This has less to do with you wanting to feel better and more to do with you wanting to look better.
You see it’s completely empty. If this was only about fitness why would you post the whole thing onto facebook and instagram? Why did you feel the need to let everyone know you had poached eggs and avocado for breakfast? You people think you invented avocados. The avocado will be outlive all of us.
The fact is if you wanted to just be healthy and fit you wouldn’t try and take any shortcuts. These supplements, detox pills and 4 week fitness plans? 95% malarkey designed to take your money. You know it too, just like you know those pop up ads telling you that you can make $2437 a day is bull. You know you can’t trick the body into good health. You know the only real long term solution is a balanced, healthy diet and frequent exercise. But this isn’t about genuine results. It’s about looking the part. It’s about your self esteem, which has already been hollowed out by your unhealthy obsession with social media. And now of course you’re trying to claw it all back from the very same thing.
This is the biggest irony, because this behaviour isn’t healthy at all. Your pursuit of health of the body has led to a deterioration of the health of the mind and the health of your own self perception. Your building the new foundations for your self esteem on quick sand and as the weight piles on you will inevitably only sink deeper.
By all means, try and become healthier and fitter, but please – for the love of god – stop posting pictures of your damn smoothies.

Shane Lees

https://shanelees94.wordpress.com  

Finding Information in the Fitness Industry

The fitness industry is a large and at many times, confusing place. Finding information on the industry is actually pretty easy, but finding well researched, well backed and reputable information can be a very tricky task. So many people are quick to buy into wonder supplements, diet schemes, and other fads. This is because they're simply being told what they want to hear, and what they wish would be true. The reality of the matter is that none of it is actually true. People will buy in to these 'wonder' schemes and supplements, give it their all for a few weeks, see no results and then give up. Alternatively, they'll try the aforementioned schemes and supplements, throw themselves into a huge caloric deficit, see results up to a point and then give up because they think that they're done. Once they do that, the weight piles back on and they're back to square one, or even worse.

The sad truth is that there's a lot of bad information in the industry, mostly created to make money for people. However, there are a lot of amazing sources of information out there, you just have to know where to look.

How do I find these sources?

I'll be honest - a lot of it is down to trial and error. You'll find some people who you believe to be reputable but somewhere along the line you'll realise that what they're saying doesn't work for you. However it just takes one really reputable source for you to get the ball rolling. Once you find them then they will point you to other great sources. Before you know it, you'll be surrounding yourself with people that are aligned with yourself, and that help you to reach your goals.

I went down the route of social media. I checked out trends and really looked in to the people that were being recommended - the majority of which were personal trainers, and had been reviewed by clients. I also looked at people that had been recommended by brands/companies that sponsored them. Now I'm definitely not saying that just because someone has been recommended and sponsored by a brand you should immediately listen to everything that they say without question. Some professionals will recommend that you eat a completely 'clean' diet (make of that what you will). Some will recommend that you control portions, some will recommend flexible dieting. If they have had proven success with their methods and rave reviews, then there would be no reason for you to question it. However reputation and knowledge are only half the battle when it comes to obtaining the right information for you. 

Once you've found a collection of sources that are tried, tested and trusted then its time to find the right source for you to focus on. This part isn't a question of who has the most qualifications or the biggest success rate. This is simply a question of who seems the best aligned with your views, who's style you most relate to. Who has the most personable and engaging approach in your opinion. At the end of the day, you could follow the advice of someone with multiple PHDs, hundreds of success stories and a killer physique. However, if their approach doesn't appeal to you, or you don't find them to be engaging or easy to relate to then it just won't motivate you and you probably won't see the success that their clients do. 

I'll use myself as an example to explain a little better. I'm not the kind of person that finds it easy to cut out my favourite foods, to eat huge amounts of chicken, broccoli, brown rice, mackerel etc, or to eat plain and frankly boring meals. I tried following the advice of a lot of fit pros and self proclaimed 'experts'. I threw myself into 'clean eating', restricted the foods that I loved, lost a little weight, became miserable and put it back on again. I went through various periods of eating whatever I wanted as long as the fit pros proclaimed it as 'healthy food'. This didn't work for me. I had no motivation and I wasn't making great progress. 

I decided to look elsewhere and when browsing Instagram, I came across Nick Cheadle. For anyone not familiar with him, there's a link to his page at the bottom. Nick is in phenomenal shape, has great reviews from clients and best of all - he's an advocate of flexible dieting. His approach to dieting involves an open approach - no need to restrict certain foods as long as they're eaten in the right quantities to satisfy your individual needs. This was the perfect approach for me and after some trial and error, I found it to be the optimum approach  - not only in terms of reaching my goals, but in terms of the best plan for my personality and preferences. 

Through Nick I've found some great sources regarding both information and motivation and I'll drop a few names at the end. They may not necessarily work for you - but you never know until you take a look at their pages and understand their approaches. Find the sources that are reputable and that work for you as an individual - that's the key to success. 

If you've got any questions about this piece, or you're interested in writing for Muscle & Macros, then contact me through the social media links below.

  

Nick Cheadle - http://nickcheadlefitness.com/

Mike Samuels - www.healthylivingheavylifting.com