Week 9 of our fitness and fat loss programme
Friday: Interval day. Choose a flat terrain walk. Complete a five-minute warm-up at 5/10. Walk for a minute at your maximum pace at 10/10 effort level (by the end of this minute you should not be able to hold a conversation as you will not have the breath).
Now reduce down to 4/10 walking pace for two minutes. Complete this process for 46 minutes.
Saturday: Body weight. Let's take the family to the beach and do this:
1. Lunge at beach. Stationary lunges: complete 20-30 repetitions and then change legs. Complete four sets of this (20-30 repetitions four times). Rest 30 seconds between each set.
2. Walking lunges at beach. Complete 20-26 walking lunges. Rest 30 seconds and repeat this another four times. Have a go at doing these in the soft sand.
3. Press ups on hard sand. Complete four sets of 18-30 repetitions with 20 seconds rest between each set. Look at week 5 programme for technique.
4. Now complete zig-zags (walk on an angle from the hard sand up to the soft sand and recover as you then start walking back down on an angle to the hard sand again) for 20 minutes.
Sunday: Rest day. The body needs time to recover after doing resistance exercises and harder interval training sessions. However, we can still do lower effort activities eg: mowing the lawns, playing at the park with the family.
Monday: Time to go back to the staircase. Complete a five-minute warm up walk first. Start to think about how fast you are going to climb this staircase while doing your warm-up.
Remember how powerful the mind is. Climb the staircase (100-200 stairs) as fast as you can - make sure you step on every step. However long it took you to get to the top, take the same amount of time to recover on the way back down. Complete seven to nine repeats of these climbs
today.
Tuesday: Legs need a rest: so today we complete a slow, long walk on flat terrain at an effort level of 5/10. Cruise pace all the way.
Wednesday: Back to resistance. Remember the lean, toned muscle we are developing. Walk to park: 15 minutes at a moderate pace.
1. Lunge at park. Stationary lunges. Complete 12-20 repetitions and then change legs. Complete three sets of this (12-20 repetitions three times).
2. Press ups on grass. Complete three sets of 18-30 repetitions with 20 seconds rest between each set. Look at week 5 programme for technique (if these are becoming too easy on your knees then try doing a portion of them as full press-ups).
3. Squats. Complete three sets of 20-30 with 30 seconds rest between each set. See week 5 programme for technique.
4. Dips on bench. Complete four sets of 12-18 dips. To make these progressively harder simply straighten your legs out so they are further away from your upper body and bench.
5. Cruise pace walk back home or back to the car.
Thursday: Interval day. Same flat terrain walk as Friday. Complete five minutes warm up at 5/10.
Now complete a minute of walking at your maximum pace at 10/10 effort level (by the end of this minute you should not be able to hold a conversation as you will not have the breath)
now reduce down to 4/10 walking pace for two minutes. Complete this process for 46 minutes today.
Optional: If you are feeling particularly fresh on one of the exercise days then complete a 30- to 60-minute walk at 6/10 effort level. You are now at the stage where your body will cope with the extra volume.
- Gary Dawkins is the owner of Creative Conditioning a results-guaranteed personal training studio in Dunedin. Resultsguaranteed@creativeconditioning.co.nz