Wilderness Sports Conditioning
|
Wilderness Sports Conditioning |
|
|
|
More Training Info > Increasing Endurance Increasing Endurance on 30 Minutes a DayQ. I only have 30 minutes a day to spend on aerobic exercise the next few months. How can I plan my workouts so I can maintain or maybe even increase my endurance over that time period? A. By definition, "endurance" refers to "over a length of time". However, do not despair, there are some creative ways of increasing your cardiovascular fitness without spending hours at a time. Remember that exercise is cumulative, meaning that 3 15-minute walks throughout the course of a day will pretty much give you the same effect over the long term as one longer 45-minute walk. It's certainly better than bypassing exercise completely because you can't spare an hour! Try this. Next time you are pressed for time and only have 30 minutes for a cardiovascular workout, begin by warming up for 5 minutes at a little slower pace than you will be exercising. Then, do a minute at your "base rate" and make sure you are in your target heart rate zone (220-age = approximate maximum heart rate or MHR; your "zone" is .65 to .85 times that MHR. For example, for a 20-year-old, 75% of the MHR is 150 beats per minute; a good training range is 140-160 beats per minute.) Increase the intensity of your level (by stepping up and down more quickly, running more quickly, or elevating the hill level) by 2 and continue for a minute, before returning to base level, and repeat 10 times for 20 total minutes. This should feel like it's a pretty demanding workout. Make sure you cool down for the last 5 minutes, returning your heart rate to the lower end of your training heart rate zone, and then stretch for five minutes before going back to what you were doing. When you are able to resume your longer workouts, you may even find that you can sustain a higher level of exertion over a longer period of time. If so, that means you've successfully increased your endurance! However, one caveat: since interval training is a more intense form of exercise, it's best to start out doing this sort of workout one day a week until your body gets used to it. |
follow
|
|
