When we decide to exercise, three fundamental questions arise: which is the most appropriate, how many weekly sessions do we need and, above all, when will we see any effect. The best option are circuits in which four or five different types of activities alternate with rest periods between series and series . Coaches say that without killing yourself and choosing the activity chart well, the body will notice it in 66 days.
Plan the session; leaving exhausted is not a guarantee of good results
Which is better, training strength or endurance? We are faced with the eternal question when it comes to exercising. It arises because we have little time in our day to day life and we naturally want to get the most out of our activity. But choosing between the two is a wrong vision, since it leads us in most cases to the error of hitting ourselves an aerobic beat, thinking that with it we will burn more fat, or to routines with a lot of weight in order to gain more muscle.
The reality is that people who manage to train continuously do so on average twice a week and no more than forty minutes each time . With this media, if we want to generate significant changes in our body to improve health and aesthetics, we have to change our perspective. By focusing one day on muscle mass and another on aerobic exercises, the stimulus to which the body is subjected is negligible, even if we end up exhausted.
The reason is that the body does not know if it runs in front of a lion to survive – and is overexerting itself for it – or if it trains for a healthy goal. So if you sit for eight hours or stand for eight hours and are suddenly forced to do intense and unordered physical activity, your tendency will be to protect yourself. It will neither burn more fat nor build more muscle; on the contrary, it will try to reserve and spend as little as possible, in case the effort is prolonged in time. His reaction is biologically logical.
So what is the ideal dynamic? The answer is very simple: combine the two modalities in the same session or at different times but within the same day. Professionals call it concurrent training. However, after answering the first question, we have at least two more questions. The first: how long does it take to notice significant changes in the body? And the second: how to combine strength and resistance exercises in each session?
The magic number: nine and a half weeks
The University College of London sets 66 the days necessary to generate or change a habit or to achieve the goal that we set ourselves. You rarely get to ten weeks of training in a row. Most of us move through peaks of intensity. There are two periods that are key: the beginning of the year, when many people join a gym or start running; and towards the month of May, coinciding with the fact that the first hot days make us see summer just around the corner.
Many coaches propose that we divide our goals into blocks of 66 days. That will not only help us see results, but also motivate us with a goal that has a beginning and an end. Once you have made the decision, you have to plan the exercise realistically. How long do I train? The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) recommends at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity exercise each week spread over five days – one half hour daily – or three sessions of twenty minutes to one hour of vigorous activity .
This is the ideal, however, the perfect dose is one that is compatible with the activities of daily life and work in the medium and long term. To achieve the goal you have to be practical. Therefore, each session that we carry out, even if it is ten minutes, must be used to the maximum and have all the necessary components so that our health improves little by little.
A circuit that we could start with today would be this:
1) 200 meters running or walking; 2) Ten squats; 3) Eight push-ups. 4) Six vertical jumps and return to running or walking 200 meters. We should do it twice, with thirty seconds of rest between each exercise and two minutes of rest between circuits. The workout lasts between twenty-five and thirty minutes.
