Flab-to-Fit: Week 6 of the Transformation Workout Program

You know about the benefits of exercise which include improving overall health and fitness while reducing excess body fat and reshaping your body. You've established a exercise routine to enhance your endurance and strength. Now it's time to take your training up a notch.

During the first month of the Flab-to-Fit program we've been working at fifteen percent of what you'll be able to do in month twelve. Being that progression is a key principle in the program's design, it's time to progress. During month two, let's add five percent intensity taking the workload to about twenty percent of the program's maximums.

Progression is the gradual increase of exercise duration and intensity over a period of time in order to maximize fitness gains while minimizing the risk of injury. Duration is the time or distance of and exercise or workout. Intensity is how hard one works while conducting an exercise or workout.

Overload is the basis for all physical adaptations which result from fitness training. In order to improve, the level of exercise must exceed what the body is accustomed to, the body's norm. Therefore, improvement will only come if you train harder or longer; going beyond your comfort zone. In order to enhance physical conditioning, you'll need to gradually overload your body. No overload, no improvement!

Conditioning hikes are cardiovascular endurance activities which includes walking while carrying additional weight. For this hike, carrying a backpack weighing approximately ten pounds. The three-quarters of a mile should take about fifteen minutes to complete.

While loading and wearing the pack, ensure that the weight rests mid-back or higher. Weight placed low on the back will cause a backward flex in your back; causing undue fatigue while increasing the risk of back pain and injury.

Physical activity should be kept to a minimum in order to allow your body as much recovery as possible.

A day to get explosive and fast with speed work. Wind sprints helps muscle toning particularly in the glutes and legs as well as adding a key athletic skill to the exercise plan.

As an injury preventing measure, sprint at no more than eighty percent of your top speed. Additionally, ensure that you complete the general and specific warm-ups before sprinting and that you cool down and stretch afterwards.

Get set to do some push-ups, quite a few of them. Wednesday's cross-training session is divided into four parts; warm-up, calisthenics, running and cool down.

The calisthenics portion includes five separate supersets, each including push-ups plus one other exercise. Complete each superset three times before moving on to the next superset. There is no rest between exercises and thirty seconds rest between sets.

The running portion includes four sets of fifteen meter strides with sixty seconds rest between each. Strides are run which are slower than sprints but faster than jogging, somewhere about fifty percent of maximum speed.

In order to progress, sometimes we have to take a step back. This weight training session will reduce the number of sets to one while increasing the number of repetitions to six. The training load will remain the same as when doing sets of four repetitions.

The overload will come in the form of the increased number of repetitions. Have no fear, in the upcoming weight training sessions we will again be increasing the sets and training load.

Flexibility is an extremely important part of any comprehensive physical fitness program. Flexibility, a health-related component of fitness, helps prevent potential of injury and increases performance levels.

Flexibility is trained during every Flab-to-Fit training session. It is the primary objective of Friday's workout; a significant amount of stretching will be accomplished following an extended warm-up period. Flexibility is best achieved by coupling range of motion activities (mobility exercises) with stretching.

Rest is important! Physical gains from training are achieved when the body is at rest. Too many consecutive days of training can lead to injury. Recovery allows the body to rebuild and become stronger from training completed and be fresh for the workouts to come.

There you have it. Week 6 of the Flab-to-Fit exercise plan. This plan will continue to build on workouts previously completed in a methodical fashion. Training arbitrarily is not a program fundamental. Balance, overload and progression provide the greatest formula for long-term success.

Keep checking back as I will continue writing a weekly Flab-to-Fit exercise plan and give you more advice and workouts that you can do nearly anywhere.

Please don’t hesitate to leave a comment with concerns, feedback, your progress or questions.

Until next time, be healthy and get fit!