Workout Pie

While many of us will eat a variety of sweets over the holidays, I will confess up front that this post is not about actual pie. Instead, it’s about the pie chart of time you could spend engaging in strength, cardio and flexibility training during your workout to burn off the calories of “pie” we’ve enjoyed over the holidays.  

Optimally, we’d be able to do all three in a workout, but sometimes we run out of time and most people I know don’t want to spend several hours a day exercising.  Assuming this is the case, how do we get all three components (strength, flexibility and cardio) into our workouts?

As we age, most of us need to spend a little bit more time warming up and stretching to protect our muscles.  I have a 73 year old client who is somewhat particular about what she wants to do when she comes into her session and that “what” changes almost every time she walks through my door.

Sometimes she wants to start by foam rolling and stretching, other times she wants to start by walking on the treadmill and still other times she wants to jump right into her weight work without a specific warmup.  

Each of these scenarios is fine as long as she begins with a “warm up” within her desired starting point and ends with some static (holding) stretches.

Many people go out for a walk and don’t think about warming up beforehand and this can be a completely safe way to exercise.  Walking a little bit slower than your full speed walking pace at the beginning is your warm up.  

While walking (or engaging in whatever activity you’ve chosen for your cardio) it’s great if you’re able to get your heart rate up a bit more than a simple conversational pace after you’ve warmed up.  What I mean by this is that you’re still able to talk to your co-walker but you’re a little bit out of breath.  You're not walking so slowly that you’re talking the same way you would be if you were just standing around by your car for example.  

Don’t misunderstand me here - any walk is always better than no walk - but you will receive additional health benefits from your walk if you’re able to bring your heart rate up a little bit higher using this variation of the “talk test”.  Your body will also be much happier if you take a couple of minutes to stretch once your walk is over.

When my client wants to jump right in with weight work, her warm up occurs by lifting lighter weights for each of her exercises for the first 8 - 10 reps and then moving onto her second set of exercises with her usual weight for 12 - 20 reps (depending on her goal).  

When we lift heavier weights, assuming we can do so with good form, we are able to build muscle faster and also increase our cardiovascular capacity.  We can also engage in cardio strength by combining two strength movements simultaneously, such as doing lunges with bicep curls or tricep skull crushers with ab work.  

In a perfect world, we warm up for 5 - 10 minutes, we engage in cardio strength training for 20 - 40 minutes and we end our workouts with some stretching and foam rolling for 10 - 20 minutes.  

If our “pie” has 6 “pieces” to represent 60 minutes, we have one piece to warm up, about 3 to do cardio strength training and 2 pieces to stretch and foam roll.  

We can warm up in whatever way works best for us.  This can include a dynamic warmup (you can access a 5-minute one here), easy cardio for 5 - 10 minutes, or simply using lighter weights while jumping right into your strength workout.  

In order to get the most out of our 30 minutes of cardio strength training, we first have to master the strength exercises so that we can combine them and make them harder, accessing the cardio component.  

We also can utilize HIIT (high intensity interval training) into the movements to make our workout both more interesting and more effective.  

An example might include alternating strength movement (e.g. bicep curls) with a cardio movement (e.g. low or high impact jumping jacks) and repeating the process with subsequent strength/cardio combinations.  You can count repetitions or use a timer to alternate between the two forms of movement.  

HIIT workouts are one of the most effective ways of increasing our metabolism (burning more calories while we’re not working out), improving our cardiovascular endurance (better heart health) and ensuring optimal health in each workout, meaning we have time for strength, cardio and flexibility in each workout.

Final Note:

Form is always more important than speed when working out so please master your form first.  

It’s important to know what muscles you are trying to work and actually feel them working- with support from your core in most cases.  If you are new to exercise, it’s always important to ask for help to ensure that you do not injure yourself.

Many of my aging clients move more slowly and our focus tends to be on flexibility and strength during the hour I have with them.  The expectation then is that they will engage in cardio (e.g. walking, swimming, biking, etc.) on their own outside of our training time.  

In a perfect world we get to a place where everything can be done within our hour workout and we can simply enjoy an additional walk with a friend if desired.  If you’re like most of us and not yet living in a “perfect world”, notice where you are doing well and where you could improve a little bit in each of the areas we talked about: strength, flexibility, cardio.