Are You Kidding Me?
Are You Kidding Me?
Nov 3rd, 2010 | By Coach Nancy | Category: Coach Nancy - The Way I See It...
OK I may upset a few of you with my post today but I need to get this off of my mind. In briefly looking at my Facebook news page this morning I came across a woman (a Beachbody coach no less) who posted what she was going to do today. It looked like this:
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Insanity plyo cardio circuit,
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P90x back & biceps
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Turbo Fire Core 20
And my reaction was, as my title suggests, “are you kidding me?” I mean why would anyone subject themselves to all that? Let’s start with the obvious objection – time. Adding it all up, the time required to do all that without any breaks between would be over hours. Now I don’t know about you but I’ve got work to do. And even if I didn’t, I would not want to spend 20% – 25% of my waking hours working out. [Update: my math was off here. What I meant to say was 15% - 18% of my waking hours.]
Secondly, but more importantly this is not good for your body. There is so much wrong here, it’s hard to know where to start. Doing more than an hour of intense exercise is just going to put your body in a highly stressed state. When it gets there, you can be assured it’s going to be churning out cortisol as fast at it can. While cortisol is necessary, we don’t want to produce too much of it or harmful things happen like losing muscle mass.
Then there is the sequencing of the workouts. You should do your resistance training first so you can summon all your energy to lift as heavy as you can with good form. Doing it second after a grueling Insanity workout is not going to provide you the fullest benefits. And again, if I’m going to workout, I want to get maximum benefits.
I’m not trying to pick on this Beachbody coach but this sends out a message that somehow more is better. It is not! A 45 minute workout is enough. Do it right and you get your body producing good hormones and limit the cortisol to it’s rightful place. I see too many women falling prey to the ‘more is better’ mode of thinking and then they write to me asking why they are not seeing progress. I try to tell them they’ve overloaded their systems and the cortisol is not just breaking down their muscle mass but it’s igniting a series of actions within their bodies that will cause them to hang onto fat. Sometimes they listen, sometimes they get so engrained in this wrong thinking they can’t break free. But if you are over 40, your body will not react well to this and even if you are under 40 years of age, this high volume training is just unnecessary.
Trust me. Do a focused, intense workout of 45 minutes of strength training and your body will respond. Don’t spend all day exercising – it’s not necessary or helpful.
Ive been doing Insanity in the morning and 20 minutes of Interval training on the treadmill at night. Is this ok?
Hi Monica,
Too much high intensity training! I’d prefer to see you exchange some of the Insanity for weight lifting and then reduce your evening HIIT to no more than 10 – 12 mins. If you don’t want to do that, then don’t do the HIIT at night if you are doing any of the high intensity Insanity workouts (like pure cardio or plyo circuit). If you want to lose fat faster, work on your diet.
Nancy
So Nancy, I get up in the morning about 4:15 everyday I do insanity . I am going into month two next week and want to add back P90x but only Monday, Wed, Sat this would be weights at night is that ok. I am thinking it is because I have done my cardio in the early morning and lifting weights after 6:00pm I read in a EAT Clean book you boost your metabolism .
Hi Marcia,
There is no conclusive evidence that working out in the evening will boost your metabolism. I’m guessing what your book is referencing is that there is some research supporting intense workouts in the early evening will boost your growth hormones which should, in turn, boost your metabolism. The study I’ve seen was done with weight lifting and men but a HIIT routine presumably could also provide the some increased HGH benefit.
However, there is also evidence that suggests that if you workout in the morning, more of your calories burned will be from fat provided you don’t eat first. In my book the best time to workout is when you can! I work out in the morning because that’s when I’m more motivated to get it done AND it works best with my schedule. So workout when convenient and don’t worry about the timing helping or harming your metabolism.
If you are relatively fit, doing an Insanity/P90X hybrid is an excellent idea. I like the P90X weight workouts and I like using Insanity in lieu of the P90X cardio workouts. But do one or the other (P90X or Insanity), not both in a day. Again working out more than 45 minutes (60 minutes top end) is not advancing your fat loss and is more likely to harm it.
Nancy
Ok Nancy
thank you
Great points Nancy !! If they want to do cardio and resistence training in the same day it could be split up. Doing one in the am and the other in the pm. Cardio before resistence training does not work to your benifit.