I’ve started a exercise program that consists of doing one hour of cardio every day of the week.
I just completed day 6, and am kicking myself for not doing this sooner.
My routine:
20 minutes on the bike
20 minutes on the rowing machine
20 minutes on the treadmill (3.7 Mph: quick walk)
Then I finished with some light stretching, followed by 4 laps in the pool, and finish it off with a 10 minute sauna.
I need to lose 100 pounds, and I find this cardio workout working but a few of my friends are telling me to take a day off and rest my body.
With the program that I’ve listed, is it possible I’m overdoing it?
Could I damage myself?
I don’t feel like it’s “too much”, as a matter of fact it makes me feel great.
I just want to make sure that there isn’t a point of diminishing returns, and by taking at least one day a week off wouldn’t be better.
I’d appreciate any input from any experts in this area.
I followed a similar daily one-hour regimen for several weeks. The only reason I stopped doing it every day was because my foot and knee joints were getting sore. They needed one or two days off per week to recuperate.
Meanwhile, my heart and lungs loved it! And I felt great.
I do at least an hour of cardio a day, though I think I started small and worked up to where I am now. I also do weight training three days a week to supplement it.
And I’m not an expert by any means, but I would think that if you feel good, then it isn’t a problem. I think it tends to be more of a problem when you feel really sore the next day and continues to feel like that.
If you’ve made it to day 6 and everything is going good with your regime, I’d say continue on, by all means.
The main risk with cardio is injuries to your joints and repetitive stress injuries from pounding type of activity. With the nature and type of your program, you don’t have much risk there. But as you get in better shape you’ll feel like pushing harder, and that’s when you’ll need to rethink your rest strategy. Listen to your body. Jeff Galloway, a famous runner and running coach, suggests to take your resting heart rate each day when you wake up and keep a journal of it. If your RHR goes up for apparently no reason, it suggests that your body needs rest.
OK, you’re on day 6. Good on you for starting out, but keep in mind this is still very new to you. You need to be aware of “gym burnout.” You have a nice charge of energy in the beginning when it’s all new, but that eventually diminishes. You can avoid burning yourself by mixing up your workout, and yes, resting a day or two per week.
Revisit your rest strategy if you start doing weights. Weightlifting definitely requires a rest strategy and greater caution against injury.
I’m a former rower, so I see your workout as a warmup on the bike, core on the rower, a gentle cool down on the treads. The pool will help ditch body heat (those are calories, too!) and the sauna probably feels great. You may be focusing elsewhere, but if you are, I suggest moving your “core” workout to that second position.
I suggest doing 3-1-2-1 (3 days on, 1 rest, 2 days off, 1 rest) and really pushing yourself the last day of each block – that is, twice a week, push for a new personal best. That way you can work up to doing 5,000 meters on the rowing machine with the resistance at max (yes, it can be done in 20 minutes!). Remember to drink lots of water during the day and after your workout, too – you’ll notice a big improvement in your times!
I started a similar cardio routine two years ago and ended up with tendonitis bad enough that I was barely able to walk around my house for a few weeks, much less go to work.
After getting the much needed medication to alleviate the tendonitis, I backed off and allowed myself to slowly work up to the same routine, and beyond.
These days, if life’s duties don’t interfere, I run 35-40 miles per week and love it.
In other words, let your joints, tendons, bones, and muscles slowly grow into your new lifestyle – once they do, you’ll never look back!
Oh… one other thing I wanted to mention. If you’re looking to lose weight, I disagree with including the swimming pool routine for the very reason that it saps body heat. When your body is warmer, not only is your metabolism faster but your appetite is suppressed. This is why some people feel like demolishing a snack machine after a few dozen laps in the pool. Just something to think about.
I am somewhat uncomfortable with seven days a week with all of your exercises.
A day off is important to give your body a chance to rebuild any structures that have been injured the other six days a week. That’s why most exercise programs will rotate more than having you do all your exercises everyday.
What I mean is on a non-running day you bicycle, on a non-bicycling day you swim, on a non-bicycling day you row, etc. In this way it will give your body a chance to rebuild any damage that was done by the exercising which will happen.
My experience is also that a day off a week (or at least a markedly lessened output day) will give you definite improvement both in your physical performance and mental outlook towards your performance.
I recently joined a Masters Swimming group and have found my experience to be just the opposite - I began to see a noticeable difference after just two weeks of swimming regularly. My muscles in my shoulders, arms, and sides are much tighter, and my body feels like it’s getting sleeker with each swim. And I’ve started losing weight fairly quickly.
In regards to cardio, I don’t think you’re doing to much, but you might consider the following questions:
Is this sustainable? As in, can you manage to exercise this much indefinitely without it interfering with your regular life? While one hour of exercise on most days is certainly recommended, I think it’s also important to consider your personal situation. Are you a very busy person throughout the day? Do you get to spend time with your family, or does your exercise routine prevent you from doing so? If you find that you rarely see family or friends because you’re exercising so much, you might want to either cut back a little maybe a day or two a week, or break up your exercise regimen into segments that you can do throughout the day - i.e., in the morning, bike for 20 minutes, then during lunch, take a walk near where you work for 20 minutes, then after work, complete your rowing, or get up a little earlier to row in the morning as well as bike. That way you’ll fit your exercise in in little “bites,” plus you’ll get to see your friends.
Another side benefit is that some studies have found that this is actually more effective for calorie burn because your body continues to burn calories at a heightened rate for a couple of hours after you exercise. So, it stands to reason that if you’re doing more exercise segments in the day, you keep your metabolism boosted much longer than you would if you were doing it all at once.
Most people don’t realize that the quantity of time spent on cardio is much less important than the quality of the time.
You can sit on a stationary bike all day or walk the treadmill and if you aren’t raising your heartrate and breaking a sweat, you aren’t doing yourself jack.
Ideally, if you can do an intense 25 minute cardio workout per day (one where your heartrate is in your cardio zone, where you have to concentrate on your breathing, where when your complete your drenched in sweat and huffing and puffing) then that is all you need.
It kills me to see people spend hours in the gym on a bike pedaling away chatting it up with the person next to them as if they were on a Sunday stroll.
Fiction: You burn the majority of your calories while doing cardio.
Fact: Most of your calories are burned throughout the day after doing an intense cardio workout.
The intensity and diet issues are very important here. Not all exercise is created equal, and no exercise will make up for a bad diet.
Overtraining is a real phenomenon. I remember reading somewhere that the first symptoms of overtraining are changes in mood–anxiety, depression, irritability. If you start to experience any of those, you may want to back off a little.
I really thin k the real problem with this workout every day is the burnout factor. After a while it might start to seem like work. Others may disagree, but I would include some days off, or at least change it up a bit…play some basketball, take a hike…something like that.
