How do you take your fitness to new levels

There is a great difference between being fit for everyday life and being fit for demanding sports.

Lots of people have the belief that if they perform steady paced running or other forms of cardio, that they are going to get fitter, but It’s not so.

“If you always do what you’ve always done, you will always get what you’ve always got”

You need to push yourself beyond your comfort zone, EVERY workout; THIS is how the body gets fitter, stronger and faster!

Pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone causes muscle fibres to tear, remembering that your lung and heart is also a muscle. When muscle fibres are torn, they need to rebuild themselves, stronger and bigger to cope with the next workout. This allows the body to push itself harder and faster each time, and also why you are sore after a workout!!!

There is also a thing called EPOC (excess post-oxygen consumption).

EPOC is the amount of oxygen your body consumes post workout to return to its resting state. When you have performed exercise that is beyond your natural comfort zone, the body needs to increase the oxygen intake to replace the bodies’ oxygen deficit.

This helps the body to,

• Restore the body to its resting state
• Helps the body adapt to the exercise been performed including, hormone balancing, replenishment of fuel stores, and cellular repair
• Used to oxidize lactic acid
• Used to fuel the bodies increased metabolism

EPOC is accompanied by an elevated consumption of fuel/food.

In response to the exercise performed, fat stores are broken down and free fatty acids are released into the blood stream, so we can use them as fuel.

So the greater the EPOC created the harder the body has to work to return the body to its normal state.

You create higher levels of EPOC by performing high intensity training or explosive anaerobic training etc.

There are many different training styles out there that can push your body to new limits, causing the effects described above. This will help you to get the most out of your exercise routines and create new thresholds of fitness to break through and jump over!

• HIIT, or high-intensity interval training

HIIT training involves you performing exercises with 100% intensity in a quick fashion and then taking a short rest or active rest before performing it all over again. Movements are usually explosive in nature, and involve compound movements (total body). To get the most out of this training style, perform it for no more than 30 minutes. If you perform it for longer you will find that you don’t give it 100%, but hold a bit back to get through a longer duration.

• Tabata

This is one of the most popular forms of HIIT training. You perform an exercise for 20 seconds then take 10 seconds rest, repeating the exercise for a total of 8 rounds (4 minutes). You can pick all kinds of exercise combinations, including explosive movements or more static exercises. After performing 1 Tabata round, take 1-2 minutes rest then perform another round with a different exercise.

• Fartlek

This was developed in Sweden in the 1930’s and means ‘speed play’. It is a form of continuous cardio that involves mixing steady paced running or cycling with sprints and fast jogs, slowing down after each burst of high intensity, but never stopping. It’s performed in a sporadic way as opposed to pre-planning when you will perform each sprint and run. This style of training can be performed for any length of duration.