I know, everyone and their dog are probably trying to get in shape due to a desire to fit in with everyone else who is setting a New Year’s Resolution to get into the best shape and smallest jeans ever. Cool. Now what? Just show up and hope for the best? Probably going to be as effective as Snooki showing up to a MENSA meeting and wanting to fit in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Seriously, there was a Jersey Shore marathon on tv this weekend, and I actually watched a couple of episodes to see what the deal was. I never wanted to rage at the fact that I lost 2 hours of my life more than I did in that instance.

Okay, back on point. Let’s say you have a decent level of fitness, meaning you can walk up a flight of stairs and not clutch your chest wheezing and looking nervously for an AED. You work out on occasion and can actually run for a few minutes at a shot when needed. But Christmas was a little too “festive” for you, and you found that you gained the equivalent of a baked ham in that two-week window of gluttony. I’m not here to judge, whatever.

Just coming into the gym to do steady state cardio while you’re riding the elliptical and watching the newest episodes of Jersey Shore will take you forever to lose that weight, and may actually cause you to gain more weight due to the alterations in cortisol and inflammation of repetitive strain on your tissues. This is why people can ride the same cardio machines every day for ears and not see any visible change in their physique, or get any performance improvements.

So what do you do? Simply put, follow a structured program that can help you train to see change, not simply go through the motions. I’m going to outline an easy treadmill protocol that can help to burn calories, make you stronger through anaerobic energy systems, and help you fit into your jeans again. I’ll be your hook-up, so gimme a high-five for being awesome like that.

Let’s say you can comfortably run on a treadmill for about 20 minutes at a set speed.I’m not too concerned about what your speed is for this program, but more so that you have the capacity to run, and to train through the predominantly anaerobic energy systems that we’ll be using. For more of a review of the different energy systems, check out THIS ARTICLE on how I lost 10 pounds in 6 hours.

What we need to do first is determine a little something called your anaerobic threshold. For convenience sake, I’m going to assume you may not have access to a metabolic cart that can measure your oxygen intake and CO2 output, so measuring it precisely will be nothing short of impossible. We can determine it indirectly, though. Simply start running on a treadmill, and every three minutes run a little faster until you get to a point where you feel you have to really put out effort and can’t continue at that speed for very long. For instance, run at 6.0 mph, and increase speed by 0.3 mph every three minutes. If you get to a real effort level at around 6.6 or 6.9 mph, we’ll use that as your anaerobic threshold. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just a close approximation.

Next, you’ll need to do a little bit of math. I know, simple arithmetic in fitness is like having a good bedside manner in medicine: you know you need it, but it doesn’t mean a lot of people do anything about it. Trust me, this will be easy math.

We’re going to use the anaerobic threshold (AT) speed as the basis for the rest of your cardio. There’s essentially three main energy systems we’re going to be training with this program:

Anaerobic alactic capacity (An Ala) –> 20-30 seconds, 200% AT, 1:4 work to rest ratio

Anaerobic Lactic Power (An LaP) –> 45-60 seconds, 150% AT, 2:3 work to rest ratio

Anaerobic Lactic Capacity (An LaC) –>1-2 minutes, 135% AT, 2:1 work to rest ratio

A key to think about is the shorter the work interval, the longer the recovery interval and the higher the intensity of the working set.

Let’s use an example of 6.0 mph as the AT speed. That means that the anaerobic alactic session will use work interval speeds of 12.0 mph, anaerobic lactic power will use 9.0 mph, and anaerobic lactic capacity will use speeds of 8.0 mph. Sure, these numbers are high, but remember you’re not running for prolonged periods of time here, just short bursts with a recovery interval to follow. Let’s break down the specific workouts further.

Workout 1: Anaerobic Alactic Power Training

foam roll legs and hips

5 min warmup run, close to AT speed

30 seconds An Ala speed, 1 minute passive recovery, 1 minute slow walk

Repeat intervals 10 times

slow walk cooldown 5 minutes          TOTAL TIME: 35 MINUTES

Workout 2: Anaerobic Lactic Capacity Training

Foam roll legs and hips

5 min warmup run, close to AT

1 minute An La speed, 1 minute passive recovery

Repeat 10 times

5 minutes cooldown slow walking.          TOTAL TIME: 30 MINUTES

Workout 3: Anaerobic Lactic Capacity Training

foam roll legs and hips

5 min warmup run, close to AT speed

2 minutes An LaC speed, 60 seconds slow walk recovery

Repeat interval 7 times

Slow walk cooldown 5 minutes          TOTAL TIME: 30 MINUTES

Use these workouts in a Monday, Wednesday, Friday rotation, mixing in 2 days of strength work on Tuesday and Thursday for the month of January. Strength work should focus on compound movements, such as those found in Show and Go Training. This 4 week cardio blitz will help increase your run economy, max speed, VO2, and help you burn a whole whack of calories. The whack is a technical term, which means it’s specific and awesome.

Coaching points

Keep yourself on point with the rest intervals, try to avoid going over at all costs. Since the workouts are pretty short, you can push through the discomfort and make some real headway in your caloric burning potential by simply buckling down and pushing through. Work on keeping a long fast stride while hitting the treadmill with your foot closer to the ball of your foot than on your heels so you don’t wind up creating a massive shockwave from the impact that will wind up breaking down your knees, hips and back. Also, landing closer to your heels will cause you to actually decelerate, which means you’ll be working harder than necessary to do the same thing.

This is pretty much the fastest way to burn calories known to mankind, and now that you’re not having all the Christmas baking, big meals and egg noggy goodness poured over the holidays, a good cleansing diet of meat, veggies and water for a few weeks will help bring your insulin and leptin levels back in line to help burn off all the stuffing. Who knows, you may even wind up weighing less than before December on this program, which would be new types of awesomeness not even discovered yet!!