Results in 30 minutes?

[curvie_girl]

Hi Cathe,

I am a lurker on several boards and wanted to see if I could get a definitive answer for this question please. I know the guideline to maintain health is 30 minutes a day. 60 minutes for weight loss. But I have read on another board that if you are doing cardio 30 minutes a day 5-6 times a week and 2-3 days of weights you don't have to increase your cardio time beyond the 30 minutes as long as you are keeping a clean diet/sleep/water regiment. So which of these is the more correct ctatement? Longer bouts of cardio or shorter bouts of cardio + weights 5-6 days aweek?

Thank you for your time.

 

[slimbr]

I thing the longer you workout the more cal. you burn. 30 min. is the min. you should do. I hope its help.

Life is good. Praise God.

Sonia

199/151/125

 

[Rose11]

Hello. I'm not Cathe, but I'm going to give you my opinion on the subject. I have done both (longer cardio days with little weight training per week and short cardio days with 6 days of weight training) and I have found that I get far superior results in terms of the way I look with the second one. At the moment I am weight training 6 days per week (2 days for legs, chest, shoulders, triceps, and biceps, and 4 days for abs) and I do 4 short high intensity cardio workouts following the upper body training days. This is what works for me. Every body type responds differently. I would say every 3-4 months I hit plateaus in terms of results and then I train with longer cardio days (about 45-60 min of interval training and circuit training 2-3 days and full body weight training 2-3 days) for about 2 weeks. After that I go back to my usual routine. I use longer cardio days to break plateaus, but I normally train with short cardios and longer weight training periods. I would like to see Cathe's opinion on this subject.

 

[schrovet]

Rose,

You just gave me a great idea on how to use the gymstyle hardcore workouts.

I will follow your 6 day rotation and think it will work really well with the new workouts!

Lisa

 

[Rose11]

>Hello. I'm not Cathe, but I'm going to give you my opinion
>on the subject. I have done both (longer cardio days with
>little weight training per week and short cardio days with 6
>days of weight training) and I have found that I get far
>superior results in terms of the way I look with the second
>one. At the moment I am weight training 6 days per week (2
>days for legs, chest, shoulders, triceps, and biceps, and 4
>days for abs) and I do 4 short high intensity cardio workouts
>following the upper body training days. This is what works
>for me. Every body type responds differently. I would say
>every 3-4 months I hit plateaus in terms of results and then I
>train with longer cardio days (about 45-60 min of interval
>training and circuit training 2-3 days and full body weight
>training 2-3 days) for about 2 weeks. After that I go back to
>my usual routine. I use longer cardio days to break plateaus,
>but I normally train with short cardios and longer weight
>training periods. I would like to see Cathe's opinion on this
>subject.

I waited too long to edit this but I just wanted to say that I do 4 days of short high intensity cardios not 4 short high intensity cardios. And the other thing is that I do these cardio workouts following my upper body training the same day I train my upper body not the following day. Hopefully nobody got confused.

 

[Rose11]

Hey Lisa! I'm glad I gave you an idea. I wrote a rotation for gymstyle but I don't know if I'll end up using it. The hardcore workouts are a little bit longer than usual to plan a rotation that involves training my body parts twice per week and I also prefer 60-75 min workouts (I can go up to 90 if it's necessary but it's not something I can do every day). I still have to wait and preview the DVDs to see if I'm going to use the rotation I designed.

 

[icklemoley]

I think it is really poor advice to say that 30 min is the "minimal" you should do. Over doing cardio will only break you down. Why do that??? As we age we breakdown much quicker... why speed that up? I'm confussed? Shouldn't we be building ourselves up?

I think 30 minutes of exercise is plenty (especially if were talking cardio) and weight training is possible with great results in that about of time.

Don't believe that huge amounts (3,4,5,6 plus) days of cardio a week, at 1 hour plus each is the way to lose weight. Losing weight is easy. Losing fat, while building the body up is different. It takes time and a sensible weight training/ stretching, cardio program. Overdoing is not the way.

 

[momto2bratz]

Losing
>weight is easy. Losing fat, while building the body up is
>different. It takes time and a sensible weight training/
>stretching, cardio program. Overdoing is not the way.
>
>


I agree with that statement 100%!

Aila

 

[Rose11]

Like I said every body type is different. Some people get amazing results doing pilates for 20 minutes 3 times a week. I'm not one of them. Although I've done 30 mins of exercise a day I don't think in the long run I would keep getting great results if I only exercise 30 minutes a day. In fact I tried it in the past and I gained weight. I agree with your statement about the cardio. Long cardios just kill my energy level. But I use them to break plateaus because that's what I did when I ran track in college.

I was in the doctor's office the other day (getting a regular check up) and I was reading one of those journals they have at the office and I was reading an article about losing weight and I was expecting they were going to mention you have to do some type of exercise at least 30 minutes 3 times per week but that's not what it said it said 5 days a week for a minimum of 45 minutes. Of course cardio doesn't have to be Cathe only. And as we get older our joints are more fragile. Walking and swimming for example can be used intead of high impact. I wish I could do 30 minutes a day and some people can get away doing that, but I'm not like that. I say that people have to experiment to see what works for them.