Marathon Running, Weight Loss and Fitness – How You Could Lose Up To Two Stone Per Marathon

Saturday, June 6th, 2009 at 9:44 pm  
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running weights Marathon Running, Weight Loss and Fitness How You Could Lose Up To Two Stone Per Marathon
On Sunday, I watched the Flora London Marathon 2008 on DVD. Thirty four thousand people crossed the finish line. Sadly I was not one of them, having failed to secure a place in the race. When I lived in London, I was able to cheer the runners on from my garden, and have dreamed of running the race ever since.

I had a friend who ran a gym and told me of the many people he knew who had permanently injured themselves as a result of running a marathon.

I also know many runners who have run marathons and done so without long term negative health effects.

So, on Sunday, I dusted off my trainers and went for a run, and as I ran, I wondered just how good is running a marathon for you?

Getting out a calculator, a pen, some paper, a sixteen week marathon training plan, and a calorie guide, I worked out the following.

• If you do a 16 week marathon training plan, you can expect to run about 600 miles over those 16 weeks.

• Running 600 miles is the equivalent of doing about 23 marathons.

• If you run at a four hour marathon pace (about 9 minutes a mile), 23 marathons will take you 93 hours

• That is about 5,600 minutes.

• 5,600 minutes of running at 9 minutes a mile will burn about 88,000 calories. • Burning 88,000 calories is the equivalent of losing 25lbs in weight.

• Training and running a marathon will help you lose between 1 ½ to 2 stone in weight!

The benefits to me of losing this sort of weight, is that it would take me down to my ideal weight. How would losing 1 ½ to 2 stone benefit you?

Are there any other benefits to running a marathon?

Yes there are. Here are just a few of them.

• Increased self esteem.

• Increased fitness.

• More social contacts.

• A lasting sense of achievement.

• Running is fun.

I really like the last benefit. I find running great fun, especially as I vary my running routes as much as possible. Varying your routes always gives you something new to see as you run.

What about injury?

I used to let the thought of injury hold me back. I have since learned that providing you are sensible, and don’t overdo it you should avoid injury. Many injuries result from overdoing the training. Another cause of injury is using poor or badly fitting equipment.

If you want to avoid injury, one of the key things to do when running is to listen to your body. Your body will know when it has almost had enough or when things are starting to go wrong, and it’ll warn you. If you feel pain, don’t ignore it – listen to it and figure out why.

Of course before starting any new system of exercise you should always consult your doctor before hand.

Running a marathon is not easy due to the time you need to commit to training. Powerfully Positive People know this, but have strategies to get past all the difficulties.

·         You need to have commitment, and want it badly enough.

·         You need to have a plan, breaking your big goals into smaller ones.

·         You need to have perseverance, pushing on to each successive goal, just like taking each step when your legs are tired and your feet are aching.

·         You need to reward yourself, patting yourself on the back each time you achieve a goal along the way.

I have shown the rewards in terms of your health, fitness, and mental health more than outweigh the effort you will have to put in to train for, and run a marathon.

Will you use a marathon to help you to achieve your health and fitness dreams?


Effective Cardio Workouts In Only 20 Minutes

Thursday, May 21st, 2009 at 10:58 pm  
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cardio slow run1 Effective Cardio Workouts In Only 20 Minutes
The perfect workout routine is one that combines strength training and some form of cardio. The problem is, most people hate doing cardio and will make up any excuse not to do it. A popular excuse is not having enough time. This article, however, will show you how you can spend only 20 minutes on a cardio workout and still reap the benefits.

So first of all, why is it necessary that you add cardio to your workouts? Most people understand the benefits of strength training because it adds muscle and muscle makes you healthier, more lean and stronger overall.

But what are the benefits of cardio? Here is a short list that names just a few:

- it helps reduce stress

- it burns calories which leads to weight loss

- it makes your heart and lungs stronger

- it reduces your risk of certain diseases

- it reduces depression and increases confidence

- it gives you more energy and helps you sleep better

To sum it up, adding cardio to your workout improves your health and well-being which leads to a better quality of life. Combine this with strength training and you’re on your way to feeling great, fast.

So how can you reap the benefits of cardio in only 20 minutes per workout? It’s called Interval Training and it can be applied to many different forms of cardio including boxing, running and biking.

The concept in a nutshell is shorter workouts, but higher intensity. This is accomplished by pushing hard for say two minutes and then slowing down for two minutes. If you repeat this cycle four more times then you have your 20 minutes. You could also do one minute hard, one minute easy and then repeat this nine more times.

Here is an example:

Interval training is perfect for running. If you’re working out on a treadmill or running outdoors, it’s the same routine. Start out with a warm up jog followed by two minutes of a challenging pace. This won’t be your all out because you have to maintain it for two minutes, but a pace that will be very hard for you. You then follow this with two minutes of either a walk or a very slow jog. Repeat four more times and you’ve got yourself an effective cardio workout in only 20 minutes.

This concept can be applied to many different forms of cardio: two minutes hard, two minutes easy, repeat four more times. Or one minute hard, one minute easy, repeat nine more times.

You’ll get your blood flowing, your heart pumping and reap all the benefits cardio has to offer…all in only 20 minutes.


Why You Should Try High Intensity Cardio Exercise

Thursday, March 19th, 2009 at 8:17 pm  
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Everyone has wondered at some point in time which cardio exercise is better. To put it in simple terms, both low and high intensity exercises will help you to burn off body fat. The question here is which is the most effective to burn off more body fat.

When scientists first discovered that during intensive exercises, your body burns glycogen, which is a form of stored carbohydrates that are stored in your liver and muscles for energy. During low intensity exercises, your body will burn a lot of fat.

If your wondering whether or not it works, the answer is no because there are so many obese people still around. Even though they are working out with low intensity routines, it still makes you wonder how it can be.

The scientists were right when they said the human body burns more body fat during low intensity exercises like walking or swimming. During a high intensity exercise such as running, the body will burn a lot more calories. Even if some of the calories burnt are from glycogen, there are still many fat calories burned as well.

To put the icing on the cake, when your store of glycogen gets low, the carbohydrates from your food you eat will later get converted into glycogen to fill up the store and won’t be converted to body fat when they are left unused for energy.

High intensity cardio exercise will juice up your metabolism even after you have completed your workout. What this means, is that your body will continue to burn body fat hours after you have left the gym. This effect is nearly non existent in low intensity cardio or aerobic workout.

Accumulatively, your body will burn up more and more calories during and after you have finished a high intensity cardio exercise that it will with low intensity.

You can inject high intensity exercises into your cardio workout by introducing some interval training. You can walk for 5 minutes or so, then break into some jogging for another 5 minutes or so. Then, walk briskly again until you have caught your breath and then sprint for a minute before you walk again. From this point, simply alternate your running and walking for the next 15 minutes until you are finished.

One of the best things about cardio is the more you do it, the more energy you’ll have. Cardio will help you to burn calories, although its more useful for keeping your energy levels high.

If you’ve never tried cardio before, you should give it a shot. If you like to exercise, you’ll find cardio the best way to boost your energy and keep in top shape. If you are just starting out, you’ll want to go slow and keep your cardio exercise in track – as it is very easy to over exert yourself.

Running for Weight Loss

Saturday, February 28th, 2009 at 4:32 pm  
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Lots of people, including myslef, start running because they want to loose weight. Becuase running is probably one of the hardest cariovascular exercises you can do, for most people it is an very good way to burn calories and start shedding the weight.

You need to remember that healthy eating should be part of your weight loss program because you will only loose weight if you burn more calories than you consume. So, for example if you loose a pound in wieght then you have to burn around 3500 calories, which means you should think about running AND healthy eating to loose wieght efficiently.

If your running, like mine, turns into a more serious sport for you, then you could consider racing in 5K or 10K races, or even look into training for a half marathon or even full marathon distance, which is 26.2 miles. I’d recommend that you first start building up you weekly training program and see if you can run up to around 10 miles. Of course the longer distance you run, the slower your pace should be.

Anyway back to healthy eating! Runners sometimes start to eat more food and load up with too many calories, putting on weight even though they’re training! If you think you might be falling into this trap then have you ever though of keeping a food diary? The best thing you can do is look at how much you’re eating, when and where.

The other main point with running to loose weight is that you really need to run on a regular basis. By regular basis I mean every day if you can! If this isn’t possible, certainly to begin with you will need to ensure you rest adequately between training runs, then I suggest 3 times a week or more.

Finally, after your body becomes used to your training program and you’re finding that running 5 miles or so, 3 times a weeek is fairly comfortable for you, you need to start mixing up your training. A good way to do this is to introduce speed training to your routine – this sounds like more pain!? Speed training is essentially running very fast for short period of time, having a similar short resting period where you jog or walk, and the run very fast again for the same period of time. You should repeat this process so you are running fast for 4 or 5 times, resting inbetween each fast run. This is called interval training, and it will help you burn more calories, plue increase your slower, long distance running pace, over time.

How To Get Your Body Ready For The Extreme Winter Sports

Monday, February 16th, 2009 at 7:17 am  
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winter running4 How To Get Your Body Ready For The Extreme Winter Sports
In the winter there so many things that you can do instead of just sitting around at home doing nothing. You can go snowboarding go skiing and do many other winter sports .

As you are getting your body ready for winter sports you will want to take an honest test to yourself and ask yourself how good of shape are you really in. then you just need to start running and getting ready for the winter sports because in the end when time comes for you to start your winter sport you may not even be in good enough shape to compete.

Before your winter sport even starts you will want to be able to at least walk or run for 30 minutes out in the cold winter. If you cannot do just that then you will never be ready for your winter sport. Many people can go sit in their houses all winter without doing one exercise and still be able to go do their winter sport and that is just because they are used to that routine. They probably do some type of exercise in the house where its warm instead of getting out in the cold and working out.

After you have gotten yourself into some what of good shape for your winter sports you will need to start getting your heart rate up so you can burn fat and gain muscle. You will want to be able to do at least 15 minutes of some aerobic before you start your winter sports.

You do want to take the time to congratulate yourself but you do not want to overdue it by going out drinking and getting those calories back in your body. You want to just have a nice good dinner and get good nights sleep so that you can start your routine over again the following day. If you don’t do this then you will be stuck in the body your in now and you won’t do so good in your winter sport.

You might have a specific winter sport that you compete in every winter. If you don’t have the body for it then you’re not going to be competing in anything but competing against yourself to get off the couch.

Basically for all winter sports you are going to need to get up and do something to get your heart rate up so that you can get your legs ready for the sport you are doing since in winter sports you use your legs a lot. If your legs are not in the shape in which they should be then you shouldn’t even be thinking about competing until next year when you are in good shape and so you can compete. If you think and feel that you are good shape then that is good and you should be able to compete but many people feel the same way and often struggle so be sure to get out and exercise before your sports starts.


Dieting Vs. Running to Lose Weight

Friday, February 13th, 2009 at 12:28 pm  
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Long ago in my high school days, I was a distance runner. Running’s still one of my favorite sports today, but when people ask me if they should try running to lose weight, I usually advise them to try other things first.

Running can be an incredibly rewarding activity, and it certainly does burn a lot of calories once you’re in good enough shape to do it regularly. What most non-runners don’t realize, however, is that running is one of the most demanding sports. It might seem easy to just get outside and start running around, but in reality, you’re requiring your entire body to remain in motion for long periods of time with no breaks. When you first start out, this is a major challenge for your muscles, spine and cardiovascular system, and it’s often difficult to run for periods of time that will burn a significant number of calories.

New runners are also prone to foot and leg problems unless they are very careful, especially if they have a few extra pounds. To avoid shin splints, collapsed arches, and other problems, a prospective runner need to start slow-only jogging for small periods of time and taking days off in between. The net result is that while you toughen up your body over time in a lot of ways, you really don’t burn a lot of calories in the beginning.

A better approach than just hitting the track every day is to start with very small amounts of jogging, and change your metabolism in other ways. By restructuring your diet, you can change your metabolism in a matter of days without risk of injury or fatigue. A dieting technique called calorie cycling enables you to increase your metabolism while still consuming the same number of calories every week. The net result is that you burn fat quickly while still eating the foods you like.
  
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