Increase your Speed

If you have ever trained for awhile and found yourself in a rut, where no matter how hard you train it just seemed that you could not go any faster. What is the problem?

The problem may be you are training like a tortoise and wanting to run like the hare. Here are some tips for increasing your speed.

Run Intervals
Warm-up by jogging for 5 minutes slowly, then sprint for 30 seconds, jog 1 minute, sprint for 30 seconds, and jog another minute. The intensity and length of the intervals will depend on how fit you are. For starters try just a few repetitions, increasing them as you get fitter and stronger.

Run Hills
Warm-up for 5 minutes, find a small hill, run hard up the hill, and jog down. Repeat this until your heart rate is above 120 beats per minute, then jog back home slowly.

Run Strides
Warm-up for 5 minutes, find a smooth and flat piece of road, bike path, country road or grass field that is approximately 100 meters in length. Run the 100 meters fast, but in control. Think of yourself as an Olympic sprinter, smooth, strong and powerful.

Make sure that you are well rested to perform these “sprint” drills, incorporate some slow, long distance running, walking or jogging between these workouts to ensure adequate recovery.

by SpeedySneakers.com a Walking and Running Club for women.
Dedicated to promoting health and fitness through walking and running programs.

Three Times for 20-Minutes

If you are trying to get started in a fitness routine a good starting point may be to start out by walking, jogging or running for 20-minutes three times a week. If you are like me, I have often sat around and watched as 20-minutes just flew by and thought to myself, wow, I could have finished a quick workout. It is absolutely amazing how fast 20-minutes can just melt away when you are doing nothing. Not to mention if it is 5:30 a.m. and you are trying to squeeze every last minute out of your sleep.

So what to do to get those 20-minutes out of the day. First, make a contract with yourself. Write it down if need be. Get a friend to workout with you. If you have kids that are old enough to exercise, get them to go with you. If you have a husband who does not want to exercise, but will ride his bike alongside, get him to do it.

Decide whether you are a morning or an evening person. If you prefer getting up early, then get started on your workout. If you an evening person, delay that workout until the evening. Make it easier on yourself. Workout when your body and mind are ready.

Lastly, keep a dairy or a logbook of your workouts. This will help keep you motivated and on track.

Calorie Burning

Have you ever wondered which forms of exercise or work burn the most calories? I have heard from hundreds of people who thought that substituting housework for exercise and then believed that they were burning enough calories to warrant not exercising. So what do you think? Is housework enough to offset the need to exercise?

To keep everything even, we took a few exercises, housework and other more fun activities and compared them using a person who is 130 pounds, performing the activity for 30 minutes at a moderate pace.

Here are the results

Jogging – 292 calories
Swimming – 261
Walking – 171

Vacuuming - 73
Dusting – 69
Laundry and Folding Clothes – 62
Washing Dishes – 66

Playing Cards - 50
Watching Television – 31
Kissing – 31

There it is where you correct in your how you thought about calories burning. Clearly, the best activities to burn calories are those where you get out to do some exercise. In addition, work is stressful, exercise actually should not be stressful, and it should be relaxing. That may sound crazy, but it is true.

If you do plan on jogging, walking or swimming, and want to burn more calories just go longer, extend the workout at for by 5 minutes then 10 and so on.

Merry Christmas

By Speedy Sneakers Walking and Running Clubs

Credit: Calories Control Council