Sunday, March 23, 2008

Day 2, Cardio Plan

Yesterday I talked about my diet for the first week, today I'll share my exercise routine. I am a firm believer that to be healthy and in shape, all you need is yoga. But to reach Peak Condition, you need more than asana. For one, yoga isn't the best thing for cardiovascular strengthening. If you're doing yoga properly you should never be "winded."

Sometimes people come to the studio looking for weight loss and I'm honest with them, and tell them if you really want to lose weight, you need to run or use a gym machine in combination with diet. Yoga isn't the fastest way to lose weight. (However, yoga will make you happy, which is a much greater treasure than a small waistline)

So, to get my cardio, this week I'm doing 1000 jump-ropes every day. I have to do the jump-rope without fail, because that's the k-calorie usage that is going to put me over that edge where I'm using more energy than I'm consuming. So no matter what, no matter how busy, the jump-rope is the cornerstone of the Project.

After the rope, 3 times a week is resistance band work for biceps, triceps, and shoulders. I'll write more about the bands later this week. 5 sets each, 25 per set.

And then sit-ups and leg-ups the other days of the week, the same as arms, 5 sets each.

And that's it for week 1. Truthfully, I won't be doing so many sets at first, because I don't want to be sore as I teach yoga. I'll write more about muscle soreness and why it happens in a future post.

1 comment:

Kitty said...

I am taking a certain amount of perverse pleasure in reading this while lounging on the sofa after a big family brunch! :-)

Seriously though Patrick, good luck on this. I don't know if you saw on Twitter about my Century ride, but I totally am into the idea of setting a challenge to achieve like this! In fact, I could stand to drop the 15 I didn't during my training, so I may use your blog as a bit of a motivator myself!

Good luck and I'll keep checking in. I am sure you can do this my friend! :-)
Kerstin (Kittydew)