Author: Katie Carone

Interval Training involves alternating bursts of high intensity exercises (1-4 minutes) with lower intensity activities (active recovery). For runners, speed training, is a form of interval training.

The benefits of interval training include:

• Increased calorie burn. The high-intensity intervals increase the heart rate and amount of calories burned. Even during active recovery, when you are performing lower intensity exercises, your heart rate remains higher overall and you burn more calories overall.
• Increased muscle fatigue and faster results. The high-intensity intervals fatigue your muscles more rapidly, meaning you have to work harder, even during lower intensity movements. This leads to more rapid results.
• Decreased time. Adding bursts of intensity decreases the amount of time you must work to equal the same results as a longer, moderate-intensity workout.

If weight loss is your goal, here are some tips to losing weight safely:

• 1-2 pounds per week is considered a safe weight loss goal
• Programs that promise rapid weight loss are often dehydrating and generally unhealthy
• A regular exercise program AND a healthy, moderate diet are both necessary for healthy weight loss
• Cardiovascular exercise is important for calorie burn and weight loss (it is also great for your heart!)
• Strength training increases your lean muscle mass, which increases your metabolism—causing you to burn more calories even while at rest!

Staying hydrated throughout the day is very important, particularly when exercising regularly. Dehydration can increase fatigue and soreness, among other things.

Here are some tips for staying hydrated:

• Avoid caffeinated sodas. Caffeine is a diuretic—meaning it actually dehydrates you more.
• If you drink juice, read the label–many juices are only 10-15% juice. Try to stick to the 100% juices.
• Gatorade and sport drinks can replenish lost electrolytes. However, this is really only needed when exercising vigorously for more than an hour.
• If you are thirsty, it means you are already slightly dehydrated.
• Keep a water bottle handy to sip on throughout the day.
• Try to drink at least 6-8 glasses of fluid per day.
• Two cups of water = one pound. Every pound lost during a workout session represents fluids lost. Be sure to replace lost fluids!

An often neglected, but very important part of a workout is the warm up. A warm up prepares your heart, lungs, muscles, bones, and joints for exercise. It also prepares you mentally for what you are about to do. Starting out with vigorous intensity exercise when your muscles are still cold can set you up for injury.

Tips for warming up:

• Low intensity cardio is a good way to increase the temperature of the body and the muscles
• Start slowly and progress to harder or faster exercise over a 5-8 minute period of time.
• During a warm up, your heart rate should be 40-60% of your max (max HR is about 220-age).
• Some light stretching can be done towards the END of your warm up. Save any deep stretching for the end of your workout

When beginning an exercise program, one mistake many people make is over doing it. You don’t want to do too much too fast. This can put extra stress on the muscular, skeletal, and cardiorespiratory systems. Soreness from an overly vigorous workout may actually deter you from exercising for a few days after.

Although you may be motivated to go full speed, it is important to start gradually and build up to higher intensity and longer periods of exercise over time.

If you have been previously inactive, you may want to start with just 15-30 minutes of light to moderate activity daily activity. Slowly increase your time and intensity until you can perform 30-60 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise.

Carone Fitness is a curriculum development company. We offer online health and PE courses for grades 6-12. “Online PE?” you might be thinking. Yes, it’s true! We realize that it may sound like an oxymoron, but it is not just a virtual workout!

Taking PE online is a good alternative for many students, and actually provides some great benefits. Students can view lessons that provide health and fitness information, participate in online class discussions about health & fitness topics, assess their own levels of fitness, design their own exercise programs, and keep strict logs of their workouts.

Here are some of the benefits:

• Students focus on their OWN level of fitness and try to improve themselves. They are not comparing themselves or being compared to others. It is truly personalized fitness!
• Students can choose physical activities they enjoy! By doing something they enjoy, they are more likely to stick with their exercise program long term.
• Students must create their own workout schedules–figuring when, where, and how they are going to exercise. This sets them up for the “real world” where they also have to figure out how to incorporate health and fitness around work, family, and other activities.
• Students are learning the principles and guidelines behind fitness, not just the rules of a game; thus empowering them with the knowledge they need to maintain a healthy lifestyle long after class is over!

For more information about Carone Fitness or online PE, visit our website at http://www.caronefitness.com/or contact us at information@caronefitness.com.