Work hard or smart or both?

Daphnemomof9

I have been working out for a few weeks now. I've spent the last couple of weeks working out about two to three hours a day as much as I can. I push myself to work as hard as I can to follow along with dvd instructors and have gotten above 160 bpm. I'm 49 and believe my target rate to be about 125 to 145. Am I better off staying in the range for fat loss or should I work as hard as I feel comfortable. I would like to work out smart, if that's hard so be it, but if I should be trying to stay in my target range, I'd rather do that then. Anyone know which way I should be working out?

Hoppymom

Thanks for asking that. I have been pushing to 159 and at my age of 54 I think that's pretty high. For me that's actually about 3.8 MPH or a good workout with 30 Day Shred. I stop and slow down if it gets that high but I don't know how long it's safe to stay at that rate or if I should be anywhere nearthat high. Lots of questions concerning it.

Daphnemomof9

Obviously I didn't get any answers to that question. I did a slower three mile walk this morning and kept my heart rate lower than 140, pretty much. I found that it really didn't satisfy me. So I decided to go ahead and do my five mile walk this afternoon and really appreciated how my muscles felt and the burn I got, I got in the 160s a little bit with that. I guess I'll just keep doing different workouts and appreciate what I get from each of them. I'm going to try really hard not to focus on the scale, but on how I look and feel. It'll be a tough one though.

Jo2926

Hi

Sorry I don't know the answers to your specific questions on the best way to train, but hopefully you will get some more responses!

What DVDs are you doing? I do a few different ones, but at the moment I am concentrating on Chalean Extreme, which is a weights based DVD and I am really enjoying it. Because its weights my heart rate stays quite low, but then I do cardio several times a week with is interval based, so I increase my heart rate to about 170 (I'm 32) for about 60 seconds and then recover for a couple of minutes until it gets back to about 135 - then repeat!

BrandyontheRun

Is that your heart rate limit for fat burn? Because you could always go with the high intensity workouts!! Nothing at all wrong with that. It's a great challenge and a great way to transform your health and body

erickirb

Fat burning zone is a crock of s$%t. the harder you work the more cals you burn, the more fat you lose.

fitaliciag

I suggest HIIT. (high intensity interval training).....burns 9 times more fat

shivaslives

Work out at a range that feels comfortable for you. At 47, I routinely push my HR into the 145 - 160 bpm and have lost the lbs and fat along the way. I just can't do the 125 - 135 range; it feels way too low intensity. I've had no injuries and no problems in the past 8 months with this regimen. Good luck.


Advice is worth exactly what you pay for it.

BerryH

In short the "fat burning zone" burns a higher percentage of calories from fat, but higher intensities burn more fat and indeed calories overall in the same time period.

If your goal is to get fit, devise a weekly routine incorporating a long, slow session at an effort you can maintain for an hour, hard intervals alternating with slow recovery, and a 20-30 minute session at a pace you can only just maintain.

Not only will this combination torch calories, but you'll find you can maintain your steady pace a a much lower heart-rate or go faster at the same heart-rate.

Azdak

I have been working out for a few weeks now. I've spent the last couple of weeks working out about two to three hours a day as much as I can. I push myself to work as hard as I can to follow along with dvd instructors and have gotten above 160 bpm. I'm 49 and believe my target rate to be about 125 to 145. Am I better off staying in the range for fat loss or should I work as hard as I feel comfortable. I would like to work out smart, if that's hard so be it, but if I should be trying to stay in my target range, I'd rather do that then. Anyone know which way I should be working out?

I am not sure you need to be doing 2-3 hours a day, but that's another discussion.

Don't get too hung up on heart rate. There is a wide variability of "normal" maximum heart rates, so any "heart rate table" that lists a given heart rate for your age has about a 1 in 3 chance of being significantly wrong. Since you are still in the beginning stages, it is best to just observe your heart rate under different exercise conditions and learn to associate different heart rate numbers with different levels of perceived exertion. That way you will learn your own "zones".

Any workout program needs balance. That means you should be doing cardio at a variety of intensities and durations, as well as stretching and resistance training. Doing all low-level steady-state cardio is not productive in the long run, nor is beating yourself up with HIT workouts every day.

You will benefit from doing 1-2 longer endurance workouts, 1-2 medium/challenging intensity workouts and 1-2 higher-intensity cardio interval workouts per week, along with 2 days of resistance training.

Try to have a focus and a goal for every workout (even if the "goal" is just to take it easy that day). If you do that, you can probably get by with less exercise time and see better results. That's working smart.

Azdak

In short the "fat burning zone" burns a higher percentage of calories from fat, but higher intensities burn more fat and indeed calories overall in the same time period.

If your goal is to get fit, devise a weekly routine incorporating a long, slow session at an effort you can maintain for an hour, hard intervals alternating with slow recovery, and a 20-30 minute session at a pace you can only just maintain.

Not only will this combination torch calories, but you'll find you can maintain your steady pace a a much lower heart-rate or go faster at the same heart-rate.

I hate the term "torch calories", but the overall proportions of your plan are just right.

Daphnemomof9

Thanks for all the info. I just love working on my workout and am coming to really looking forward to it. I don't really look forward to working out at a lesser capacity. I think this might have been the biggest goal I had in all this, enjoying working my muscles. I'm loving it!