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Old 10-06-2013, 02:26 PM
 
Location: Winter nightime low 60,summer daytime high 85, sunny 300 days/year, no hablamos ingles aquí
700 posts, read 1,493,905 times
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This thread is inspired by a recent post here The 7-minutes workout
Well, 7 minutes of jumping-jacks and push-ups per day won't make anyone fit and strong. Not even the "20 minutes per day, 3 times a week", as the government tells us is the minimum.
However, all of us would like the best return on our training-time investment. While you can become extremely fit if you spend a lot of time, effort (and sometimes money) in the gym or cranking-out miles, is there a "golden mean" when it comes to exercise?
That is, a program that can make you quite fit and strong, without taking a lot of time?
A program that won't take you to your athletic peak, but to, say, 90% of your potential, while allowing you "to have a life".
Here is my vision of such a program, along with a rationale for its parts. This program is not geared towards a runner training for a marathon, or a cyclist training for a century (though both can use it in off-season) Instead, it is geared towards a general "fitness enthusiast", a category where most exercising public fits to large extent.

1. 4 hours per week minimum, and 6 hours maximum.
2. 50\50 split between endurance and strength training.
3. Most sessions take 60 minutes, 45' being the shortest and 75' the longest
4. The key aspect of the program is the intensity. With one exception, the sessions are fairly short but hard.

A. Endurance.
- Any intense aerobic exercise: running, bicycling, swimming, gym machines that allow running-like intensity.
- At least one high-intensity workout per week: 45 to 60 minutes (15-20' warm-up, 30 to 40' of hard intervals, few minutes of cool-down)
- One long, steady-state workout per week: 75 minutes (90 would be even better) - best done on weekends.

B. Strength.
- At least 2, and at most 3 sessions per week.
- Intense workouts that never exceed 60 minutes: 10 to 20' warm-up, 35 to 45' workout. Longer strength workouts tend to lose intensity, and morph into "endurance" workouts instead - not the goal here.
- Compound exercises that engage major muscle groups in a dynamic way (cleans, squats, pull-ups, presses etc.) No bicep curls or lateral leg-raises - leave them to the bodybuilders training for competition.
- Weight and reps customized to person, and changing as the strength increases. However, since we are strength-training here, 12 to 15 reps per set should be max.
- General guidelines: Weight Training Guidelines

C. Stretching.
- Optional for the very young, highly recommended or outright mandatory for anybody 30+
- Best incorporated as part of the cool-down
- 5 minutes at the end of the workout appears to be most effective and time-efficient
- General guidelines: Stretching

Last edited by skiffrace; 10-06-2013 at 02:47 PM..
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