StartBeingFit » HIIT

HIT Progress Pictures – May 2011

Tyson — Fri, 06 May 2011 16:27:10 +0000

I took some progress photo’s yesterday. Nothing special but I can see an increase in size in both my arms and shoulders. My waist still appears to be the same size. I have not measured it but my clothes are still fitting good (if not a little loose). My weight has stayed the same from last week but I attribute that to the intense workout I put in yesterday.

Today I am going low-carb and low calorie. The weekend is coming up and we are traveling. I hope that I can maintain some sort of dignity in eating.

Cardio Here I Come

Tyson — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 19:37:11 +0000

Last year I did a lot of HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training). It was a combination of Plyo, swimming, sprints, jump roping, etc. I then read that just 45 minutes of walking while in a fasted state could do the same thing as 20 inutes of HIIT. So I stopped the HIIT and began doing the walk instead. As evidence of my increasing waist line, it didn’t work. I attribute some of that to bad diet and some to lack of cardio.

What’s Next?
I have been slowly been putting cardio back into my weekly routine. After the 1st week back, I realized that I really missed it. I really do enjoy working up a great sweat and being fatigued at the end. It makes me feel like I really accomplished something. Afterwards I feel fulfilled (and skinner). Could be all in my head but I really don’t care. I feel good and that is all that really matters.

My first week back to HIIT I did some hill sprints down the street from my office. I followed that up with a nice run over the weekend and another run on Tuesday. Tomorrow I hope to get in 30 minutes of intense jump roping.We shall see in a few week if putting the HIIT back into my routines has any effect on my weight and muscle tone.

Journey to Abs

Tyson — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 21:44:03 +0000

I struggled with the name of this post for some time. I thought about calling it the Ripped Challenge but that just didn’t have the right feel. Plus I used the word challenge in my last long term posts. No, this time its all about getting abs. Something that has eluded me forever!

The other day my oldest daughter asked me if I had a six thing under my shirt. I asked her if she meant six pack and she said yes. I told her unfortunately I do not but that I was working on it. She then asked me how many more years it was going to take. I laughed it off but deep down I knew she was right. I am 32 years old and have never had anything that could be considered even close to a six pack. If I haven’t had one yet, what makes me think I can do it now?

Truth is… I don’t know. I really don’t. But that has never stopped me from trying. I never thought I would be at 10 percent body fat but here I am. Now I just need to figure out a way to get down a few more percentage points and I will be set (I hope).
I have done P90x more times than I care to remember. It has been good to me but never great. This time around I am sticking to basic weight training combined with HIIT. For nutrition I am going to be doing some intermittent fasting. The program I am going to try is based on Martin Berkhan’s refeed approach from leangains.com. It’s basically a 16 hour fast followed by a 8 hour feed. Not being a stranger to IF, I don’t see this as being too hard for me to follow. Martin goes into further details on his website so I won’t bore you with the details here but if you are interested I suggest checking out leangains.com for yourself. It’s pretty impressive stuff.

So here is the challenge for myself. I am giving myself 6 weeks to do the leangains challenge. I will have weekly updates and progress photos as I see fit. At the end of the 6 weeks I will post my thoughts on the program. I think it’s going to be a great challenge and I hope to debunk some of the common misconceptions about frequency and number of meals required to not only lose fat but to gain lean muscle.

Today’s HIIT – Tabata

Tyson — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 01:54:06 +0000

So today I was running short on time and patience for the gym. So I decided to try a workout that I saw posted on another blog yesterday. The workout called Tabata is a high-intensity training cycle of 20 seconds of maximum intensity exercise, followed by 10 seconds of rest, repeated without pause 8 times for a total of four minutes. I performed my workout on the Spin bike in the cardio room. Was it intense? Well I was able to get my heart rate up to 180pbm and my legs are still feeling the effects of it. So I would have to say it was pretty intense.

Its nice to know that I can get a great workout in when time is hard to come by.

Today’s Cardio

Tyson — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 18:56:00 +0000

I thought today’s workout might get pushed as I am working from home and taking care of my sick daughter. But luckily, my wife came home after school and was willing to watch her for a bit so I could get out and do some cardio.

I went down the street where we have a dead-end road and did 5×30 second sprints followed by 2 minutes of light jogging back. I was able to peak my heart rate at around 190 with it dipping to around 150 on the light jog.

When I got back to the house, I completed the workout with a great healthy lunch

1 can of tuna
1 cup of cabbage and carrots
1/4 cup of cheese
1/2 cup of grapes
2tbsp of dressing

I feel great and it only took 25 minutes start to finish!