Partner Up For Results

In my newsletter last week, I talked about partnering up for exercise.

Few things can make you work as hard as having someone to work with.

But there is a flip side to this.  A lot of people who think they have a "workout buddy" actually have a "conversation buddy."

If you want to workout with a partner so you have someone to talk to, then you're doing it for the wrong reason.  Be honest with yourself, are you working hard if you can carry on a conversation?  I sincerely doubt it.  And if you're not getting after it, you're going to have to workout a lot longer than you want to in order to get results out of it.

Workout with a partner so you have someone to push you.

Grab a friend and try this four-minute workout.  I recommend that your entire workout last longer than four minutes (I would use these four minutes as just one element of a full workout), but if you are really in a time crunch, four minutes can get you a really tough workout, especially when working with a partner.

One partner will be at Station A, setting the pace.  Station A is 15 pushups.  The other partner will be at Station B, which will involve running between two cones (or shoes, or sweatshirts - something to mark out the distance) spaced ten yards apart.  Both partners will be working for the entire four minutes.  While one partner is doing 15 pushups, the other will be touching as many cones as possible on the run.  Once the 15 pushups are complete, you switch places.  Keep switching stations as many times as possible (read: get after it on the run and the pushups).  Once four minutes are up, you're done - and believe me, you'll be done!

How Our Government Let Me Down

Well, if I'm being completely honest, our government has let me down in many ways.  But the latest actually directly involves my line of work.

This is how the government let me down - a new fitness recommendation.

That recommendation?  Adults should get 2.5 hours of moderate exercise per week.

Now, what makes the government think it has any clue whatsoever about fitness is beyond me.  A full two-thirds of the country is overweight - more than a third of the country is obese - and they still recommend moderate activity.

The government needs to keep it's garbage away from our fitness.  It crams food groups and food pyramids down our throats.  It makes ever-changing exercise recommendations, none of which ever mention anything about intense or vigorous exercise.  It clearly lacks an understanding of how great our country's weight loss problem is, and is even more lacking in solutions.  Why it thinks it has solutions is an absolute mystery.  The Secretary of the Health and Human Services, Michael Leavitt, has a degree in economics and business.  And he oversees a department that pretends to know what's best for our health?

Any exercise recommendation that involves raking leaves, as this one does, doesn't get it.  There aren't enough trees in North America to keep Americans fit by raking up after them.

And go on as many brisk walks as you want, but don't call it exercise.

We try to coddle the same lifestyles that got us fat in the first place.  If you want to change your body, it's time to change the way you view exercise.  And if you think yard work is the same thing as getting exercise, then you haven't exercised (and yes, in case you're wondering, I have done yard work).

I spend a lot of time telling people that the whole low to moderate intensity school of thought has caused more harm than health.  I just believe it's a poor model of fitness.  A lot of people are fairly resistant to the notion that what they've always been told about fitness is wrong.

How about you?  What do you think about intense versus moderate exercise?

Do you agree with my approach?

Let me know what you think.

What Exactly Is Intense Exercise?

I talk a lot about short, high-intensity workouts, but I don't think I talk enough about what "intense exercise" really means.

I'll use a sport that I draw upon a lot as my example. Watch a track & field meet, particularly the sprinters compared to distance runners - I'll use the 100 meter dash and the marathon as my examples.

Both groups are essentially doing the same activity - they're running. Both groups finish their races completely exhausted. Yet one group finishes in 10 seconds and the other finishes in two hours.

How are they both finishing so exhausted? Shouldn't the marathoners be way more tired than the sprinters?

This, as well as any example I can give, demonstrates what intensity has to do with exercise. The sprinters are working SO much harder than the marathoners at any given point that it only takes them a matter of seconds to be spent.

The point of exercise is to sweat. It's to get your heart pumping and your muscles burning. You can do this in two hours or you can do this in 10 seconds. The point is that you have to match your intensity to the duration of the exercise. The longer you work out, the less intense you'll be able to work and still finish. The shorter you work out, the harder you must work.

If you tried to run a marathon at the pace a 100 meter sprinter runs his race, you wouldn't make it more than a couple hundred meters before slowing greatly, and then maybe another couple hundred before you'd have to stop all together - if you even made it that far. And you'd probably be screaming for mercy for a couple days after the fact because you'd be so sore!

By the same token, if you ran 100 meters at a marathon pace, you couldn't even call it exercise.

In my 30 minute women's fitcamps, I typically only have them actually exercising for 12 minutes. The rest of the time is warm up, cool down and exercise demonstration.

I've had people ask me why I don't have them exercise for longer. My answer is simply that they don't need to.

You see, a lot of people think that 12 minutes isn't enough exercise because it's too easy to keep going for 12 minutes. This is because most people have learned to "guard" themselves from working too hard. It's easy to give into the voice that says something is too hard, and it's easy to pace yourself, but exercise should be hard, and you've got other stuff to do in your life besides exercise.

Just keep in mind that how hard something is has nothing to do with how long you're doing it.

I guess my point is this - if you can end up completely spent after 10 seconds, why would you want to take an hour to achieve the same effect?