Voidsinger
10-17-2009, 03:26 PM
I've found that having a gym at work and a fairly flexible job is doing wonders for being constant. However, it's fairly limited in terms of equipment. It does have a few benches, free weights, etc, but as far as cardio goes it has the following:
2 Ellipticals (one's broken and offers little resistance)
2 stationary bikes
2 "sitting/horizontal" stationary bikes (no idea what the proper name is)
1 stairmaster
2 treadmills with good incline range
My current routine needs to fit in an hour or so. I start off with 10 minutes of stairs (alternating resistance in 40 sec. intervals, trying to mimic the "sprint/rest" of interval training) and 10 minutes of elliptical (highest resistance possible, 1 minute sprint/1 minute slow). I then follow up with roughly 20 minutes of free weights, benchs, situps/crunches and squats in some sort of homemade circuit style (i.e. no rest between stations, 1 minute on a bike between circuits). Leaves me about 20 minutes to cool down and shower. I do this 4x a week.
I've lost a ton of weight (which was my initial goal about a year and a half ago) and my cardio is getting pretty damn decent. On a exertion scale of 1-10 I'd say I'm at 7-8 when I "sprint" during my cardio portion. That being said, I don't want to start plateauing. I feel like I still can lose quite a few pounds before I start looking seriously at my diet.
Questions:
1) Should I start with strenght training circuits first and then finish with cardio? Sandwich it between the two 10 minute segments? Should I simply do 1 day cardio/1 day strenght and not mix the two?
2) Out of the cardio machines I've listed, which ones would you go for?
3) Is Interval correct? I've started relatively recently (2-3 months) and I had been doing the same boring stable thing before that (i.e. no change in rhythm or exertion rate).
4) Is circuit-style the best for weight loss? I'm not looking to bulk up much, I'm already a pretty big guy muscle-wise (thank god for genetics), I'm looking for more muscle definition, etc.
Any other recommendations would be appreciated!
2 Ellipticals (one's broken and offers little resistance)
2 stationary bikes
2 "sitting/horizontal" stationary bikes (no idea what the proper name is)
1 stairmaster
2 treadmills with good incline range
My current routine needs to fit in an hour or so. I start off with 10 minutes of stairs (alternating resistance in 40 sec. intervals, trying to mimic the "sprint/rest" of interval training) and 10 minutes of elliptical (highest resistance possible, 1 minute sprint/1 minute slow). I then follow up with roughly 20 minutes of free weights, benchs, situps/crunches and squats in some sort of homemade circuit style (i.e. no rest between stations, 1 minute on a bike between circuits). Leaves me about 20 minutes to cool down and shower. I do this 4x a week.
I've lost a ton of weight (which was my initial goal about a year and a half ago) and my cardio is getting pretty damn decent. On a exertion scale of 1-10 I'd say I'm at 7-8 when I "sprint" during my cardio portion. That being said, I don't want to start plateauing. I feel like I still can lose quite a few pounds before I start looking seriously at my diet.
Questions:
1) Should I start with strenght training circuits first and then finish with cardio? Sandwich it between the two 10 minute segments? Should I simply do 1 day cardio/1 day strenght and not mix the two?
2) Out of the cardio machines I've listed, which ones would you go for?
3) Is Interval correct? I've started relatively recently (2-3 months) and I had been doing the same boring stable thing before that (i.e. no change in rhythm or exertion rate).
4) Is circuit-style the best for weight loss? I'm not looking to bulk up much, I'm already a pretty big guy muscle-wise (thank god for genetics), I'm looking for more muscle definition, etc.
Any other recommendations would be appreciated!