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First of all, my apologies for our technical issues yesterday. We’ve since resolved them and are now back to our regular posting schedule.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a series of articles about the four day workout. In it, I described a relatively simple workout that was split up over four days with each day working a different part of the body. I also mentioned that the fifth day could be used for rest or for an additional workout. Yesterday, I got an email from a reader asking me which one I would recommend, rest or workout.

Why rest? 

The reason for rest is because our bodies need a period of no activity in order to recover.  Even if you’re not working out the same part of your body every day, you’re still straining it overall.  You’re still wearing out some areas every single day.  For example, our feet and legs are strained with almost any kind of workout.  Our hands are worn down by holding weights even if we’re working on our chest or back.  Our circulatory system is exhausted from keeping up with the demand for blood and oxygen during all of our cardio workouts.   So in order to let all of these systems recover, we need to spend a day resting.

Without proper rest, our muscles do not recover.  This means that your performance won’t improve and you’ll find yourself more and more tired.  It’s not the “I need sleep” kind of tired, it’s the “my body is worn out” feeling where you can barely move your legs and everything seems to ache just a little bit.  In other words, resting is actually a crucial part of any workout routine since it allows our bodies to reap the rewards of the workout.  Without the rest, all we’re doing is slowly wearing ourselves down.

Why another workout?

Why should you spend another day working out when you’ve spent four days covering all the major areas of your body?  Well, because this additional workout day can provide you with a chance to do all of the things you couldn’t during the week.  Now is the time to check out new types of exercises and see if you like them.  Now is the time to try out a higher weight or speed and see if you can maintain it.  You can even use this time to experiment with all new types of workouts.  Maybe you could go to the pool and try out water aerobics or finally attend that spinning class.  An extra day can also be a great time to work on a specific area that you’re having issues with.  You can spend it doing some extra leg exercises if you feel that’s your weak point or some more sets of back workouts if you’re having issues improving your performance in that area.

So which one should I pick, rest or extra workout?

The answer really depends on the rest of your week.   You need at least one rest day, and preferably two, during each week.  Are you going to get that?  For example, I work out during the week.  So when I consider what to do with my extra day, I’m going to take into account my plans for the weekend.  Do those plans involve a lot of physical activity?  If so, then I should use my extra weekday as a rest day.  If the weekend plans are relatively sedate, then I’ll have another workout.

This weekend I’m going to be volunteering at a horse show on Saturday which means a lot of time spent walking around, and carrying heavy loads.  On Sunday I’m going to be hiking.  Both of these activities are physically demanding and place quite a bit of strain on my body, especially my legs and feet.  So I didn’t work out yesterday because I wanted to give my body a day of rest.  Last weekend I spent most of my time at home working on various computer related issues.  That’s a low strain activity, so I actually worked out five days that week since I knew I would get my necessary rest on the weekend.

Summary

Always rest at least one day every week.  That means zero or minimal physical activity that day.  If you know you’re going to get that day, then by all means, add an extra day of workout to your routine.

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We’re having some technical issues today at 60 in 3.  We’re in the process of resolving them but may not be able to post today.  Please have patience and we’ll be back tomorrow.

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I was reviewing my workout routine last night, going over the various exercises I do and the weights / reps involved.  I noticed that there were a few areas where I had not been improving in a while.  Usually, I can see an improvement in an area at least once every two months or so.  It could be going up in weight or in number of reps, but there’s always something there that shows me I’m getting better.  These exercises though were stagnant.  The weight wasn’t going up, the reps were staying the same and I knew from the last time I performed them that they weren’t getting any easier.  In fact, I had reached a plateau and couldn’t find a way to break through.

What is a plateau?

A plateau is a term that describes a type of geographical feature.  It’s a large flat area on top of a hill or mountain range.  In terms of performance, a plateau is a period in which you are not improving.  It’s preceded by a period of constant improvement.  Just like the flat area on top of the mountain, a performance plateau is a flat area on top of your performance graph.  You had previously been improving, but now you’re just staying the same.

How do you spot a plateau?

It’s hard to tell when you’ve plateaued.  When you first start exercising, the improvement can be dramatic from week to week.  Later on though, the improvements are slower.  So it’s hard to say if you’re still slowly improving, or if you’re at a standstill.  For me, it’s part science and part gut feeling.  The science part comes from looking at my workout spreadsheet and seeing an area where I haven’t seen any improvements in over three months.  The gut feeling part is just knowing that things are not getting easier.  I’m not getting better at something, despite my attempts to increase my performance.

Is a plateau a bad thing?

Not necessarily.  There are some cases where the performance you’re at is fine either because further improvement is unnecessary or unreasonable.  You don’t have to always strive for improvement if you’ve reached a place where your performance is satisfactory for your goals.  For example, if you’re looking to tone up and be healthy, there’s probably no reason to bench press hundreds of lbs.  It may look impressive at the gym, but the increased health benefit is minimal and the increased injury risk is significant.   Another example might be cardio.  If you’re just looking to burn some calories and get your body moving, then why push yourself to near collapse on the treadmill?  There’s no point in it since you’re already achieving your goals with a milder workout.

Increased performance may also be unreasonable.  For example, I currently run at 6.5mph.  I would like to slowly improve that to 7.0mph.  However, I know that anything past 7.0mph is probably unreasonable.  It would place too much strain on my body and there’s just no way I could maintain that for a long period of time.

Breaking through

However, there will be other times when you want to break through the plateau, when you want to start improving again but are not sure how.  Here are some options for you to consider:

• Change things up - It’s quite possible that what you’re trying to do is just not right for you.  For example, I tried out a form of overhead triceps extension for a while and was not seeing any improvement.  It wasn’t strength that was lacking, it was more of a pain in the rear of my shoulder.  Rather than beat myself up over lack of improvement, I simply changed to another form of triceps exercise and began seeing steady improvement.  Remember, there are no “required” exercises.  Your goal is not to improve at a specific exercise, it is to work out a specific part of your body.  There are quite literally dozens of exercises for every possible part of your body.  So find the ones you enjoy and work at them and don’t be afraid to change things up.
• Overload - This is not recommended for beginners but I’ve found it to be effective.  When you’re unable to increase your performance by a little bit, try increasing it by a lot.  For example, I was stuck at 6.0mph for a long time.  I just couldn’t run any faster.  I tried increasing to 6.1mph and couldn’t keep up.  So one day I got on the treadmill, set it for 7.0mph and ran for as long as I could.  I lasted barely 10 minutes, but the next time I ran, I could easily do 6.1mph for the whole 30 minutes.  By comparison to that 7mph run, 6.1 seemed easy.  That can easily apply to weight training too.  If you can’t increase the weight you’re pushing by 10, then try 30.  It will make the 10lb improvement seem easy next time you try it.
• Two steps forward, one step back - This is another technique.  Every exercise involves multiple aspects.  So if you want to improve one aspect but keep failing, how about decreasing another aspect?  For example, let’s say I’m trying to increase the amount of weight I bench press.  I usually do 4 sets of 10 reps with around 140lbs but I’ve been stuck at that weight for a while now and am unable to improve.  Instead of trying to move up to 4 sets of 10 reps with 150lbs, how about I try 4 sets of 5 reps with 150lbs?  I raised the weight but I lowered the reps.  Now that I’m pressing 150lbs, I can slowly try to increase my number of reps back up to 10.

Summary

We all hit performance plateaus at some point.  The question is, what do we do about them?  Do we accept them or do we try to breakthrough?

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If you’re going to spend any amount of time with someone who’s training for an endurance event of some kind (Marathon, triathlon and so on) you’ll eventually hear the term interval training.  Actually, if you spend any amount of time around someone who does a lot of cardio workouts, you’ll probably hear that word even if they’re not training for an event.  Unfortunately, you might not understand what interval training is, what the benefits are, if you should do it and if so, how.  Have no fear, that’s what today’s post is here to help you with.

What is interval training?

Interval training is a type of cardio workout during which you go all out for a short period of time followed by a resting period.  Note that resting period does not mean standing still or sitting.  It means you’re still going but at a slow enough pace so you can recover.  Let’s take a look at an example.

I like jogging.  I usually jog at about 6.5 miles per hour for about 40 minutes.  When I do interval training, I’ll go all out for a minute which means running at 7.5 miles per hour.  Then I’ll rest, which means running at 5.5 miles per hour for two minutes.  I’ll keep alternating like this for 30 minutes.

That’s the basic set up of an interval training session, go all out for a short period of time and then go slowly for a slightly longer period.  Rinse and repeat until your time is up or you collapse in a sweaty heap.

Why do interval training?

There are two benefits of interval training.  The first is the theory that interval training elevates metabolism and calorie burning over simple cardio.  I’ve seen several studies that support this with figures around 10 to 20% greater calorie burn for interval training over normal cardio.  This is because your body ramps up its energy level to meet the highest requirement.  So when you keep going all out, you force your body to rev up its internal motor to meet that demand.  The rest periods are then kept short enough that your body never has a chance to rev down.

The second benefit of interval training is better performance.  Interval training helps you improve your performance by getting your body used to moving at a faster pace.  Your average pace during interval training is actually slower than your normal cardio session.  However, your body doesn’t notice that.  All your body knows is you’re going really fast.  Next time you’re doing a regular cardio session, your body will perform better since it’s expecting the peak requirement of interval training.  In other words, interval training helps you increase your speed during non interval sessions by getting your body used to running at a higher speed.

This second benefit really worked for me when I plateaued in my running performance.  I got to a point where I was running at about 6 miles per hour and I just couldn’t figure out a way to improve.  I tried running faster but couldn’t.  Then a friend told me about interval training and suggested I try it.  It really helped and, within weeks, I had broken through my plateau and started improving again.  These days I do interval training once a week and normal cardio three times a week.

Who should try interval training?

Personally, I think everyone should do interval training once they’re in relatively good shape.  If you’re doing cardio more than once a week then you can fit one interval training session into your schedule.  I’d also recommend it for people trying to improve speed and performance.  I will mention that interval training is really challenging.  So if you’re just starting out and you’re barely doing normal cardio, stay away from intervals.  The peak period will place a strain on your body that’s more than you need right now.

How do I do interval training? 

It’s simple.  Go all out, as hard as you can, for a short period of time.  For example, 1 minute.  Now rest by going slower than your usual pace for about twice or three times that period.  Remember that this is different than sprinting.  You do actually need to maintain your all out pace for a minute or so and you will need to do it again and again.  So don’t set a pace that you can’t maintain.  However, you should challenge yourself during that 1 minute all out period with a hard pace you can barely keep up.  At the same time, don’t slow down too much on the rest period.  It should be slow enough for you to catch your breath but it shouldn’t be slow to the point of standing still.

By the way, I keep using a running example here, but there’s no reason that interval training can’t be used with biking, elliptical or any other form of cardio.  Just use the basic pattern of an all out period followed by a longer rest period and you’re fine.

Summary

Interval training isn’t for beginners, but for people who are relatively comfortable with cardio training it can be a great tool to improve performance.

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This is a message that came in from one of my readers:

I’m trying to follow your suggestion of eating a good breakfast everyday but I just can’t find anything I like. I don’t have time to make something like a salad and I’m not the biggest fan of eggs. Most cereal is either too sugary or too bland. Any suggestions?

First, thank you for sending in this question. If anyone else has a question to ask or a tip to share, please feel free to send them in. Now, on to the answer.

What is breakfast?

For some odd reason, we’ve gotten stuck on the idea that only some foods qualify as breakfast. For most people, those foods are eggs, cereals, bagels, donuts and/or coffee. Anything else just isn’t breakfast. We actually look a bit oddly at people who eat anything else at the start of their day. However, there’s really nothing special about these foods. They don’t come with a sign that says “eat me for breakfast and nothing else” and there’s nothing about them that makes them specifically good as a way to start your day.

In fact, if we look at these foods we see that they are in fact very different. Eggs are high in protein and fat and contain little carbs. Cereals are typically high in carbs and have some fiber (depending on the cereal). Bagels are almost all carbs with added fat and protein in the form of cheese. Donuts are all sugar and fat. There’s nothing here that says “this is what makes a good breakfast food.” The only reason we think of these as breakfast is because our culture tells us this is what we eat in the morning.

Breaking with tradition

So let’s figure out what makes a good breakfast. To be honest, it’s no different from any other meal. You want a good mix of protein, some fat, a few carbs and fiber. You’ll want to stick to healthy, non processed options and try to limit your intake of junk calories that come from processed sugars, fats and carbs. Most importantly, you will want to stick to your calorie goals and not overeat. For example, for me, I try to not go over 400 calories in the morning. However, you’re otherwise free to eat whatever you want. With that in mind, what are some good options?

• Salad - Make it in advance the night before and avoid the traditional green salad, it’s bland and tasteless. Go for something with flavor, lots of chopped up vegetables with a bit of blue cheese.
• Sandwich - I had an avocado wrap this morning. How about trying out something similar? Stick with whole wheat breads or wraps and try to avoid the less healthy sandwich fillers like high fat cheeses or meats.
• Piece of chicken breast - Doesn’t quite work for vegetarians like me but it might for you. Cook up a batch of lean chicken or turkey breasts the night before and just pop one in the microwave. Eat it with some fresh vegetables and you have yourself a very healthy breakfast that combines protein with fiber.

Do you see a pattern here? You can have anything you want for breakfast as long as you keep it healthy. There is no rule or law that says “only these foods are breakfast foods”. Heck, if you want to go wild with your breakfast, feel free. I get these premade Indian meals from Trader Joe’s and occasionally pop them in the microwave and eat them for breakfast. So what if I had a curry or a dal for breakfast? It was tasty and healthy and fit in perfectly with the amount of calories I want to consume.

Summary

Stop thinking of breakfast in terms of breakfast food. Breakfast is like any other meal and you can eat any food you want as long as you keep it healthy.

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It’s cold and foggy here in the SF bay area. Which is unfortunate since we’re about to head out to an outdoor festival and then a picnic. However, it should be nice and sunny by noon.

It was a slow week this time, not too many interesting articles, but I did find a few I thought you would enjoy.

From Back in Skinny Jeans we have a list of seven tips on how to eat better at the mall. This is exactly the kind of practical advice I like. Makes me wish I had written this
@Back In Skinny Jeans

From The Simple Dollar we have Trent’s review of the book Volumetrics. Volumetrics is a new book designed to teach us what and how to eat. I just finished reading it and I intent to post up a review of my own, but Trent’s post has a lot of good information I thought you might benefit from.
@The Simple Dollar

And I just couldn’t pass up this post. It’s from iVillage and discusses diet friendly chocolate. Anyone who knows me knows that my secret weakness is chocolate, so it’s nice to see brands of chocolate that are a bit healthier than the junk they sell at the supermarket. Still, even this type should be eaten in moderation since it packs in quite a few calories.
@iVillage

And finally, I wanted to add this piece from the Seattle Times. It’s short, but I liked it because it’s all about the difference in how men and women view weightloss and fitness. Keep this in mind if you’re putting together a health plan with a member of the opposite sex. For example, I know a lot of couples who get into trouble because they assume their notions of health and fitness are shared by their partner. Remember, communication is key!
@The Seattle Times

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What do you imagine when you think of healthy eating and weightloss? What’s the one food that comes to mind when you’re asked about low calorie, healthy eating? For most people, it’s the traditional green salad. In fact, one of the most frequent complaints I get when I talk to people about being healthy is “Yah, I would eat better, but I can’t stand salads” or “I just can’t take all that rabbit food.” And you know what? These people are right. The traditional green salad is absolutely awful!

Two Reason To Eliminate Green Salads From Your Diet

First, the traditional green salad has horrible texture and flavor. It’s usually 90% lettuce, with a bit of shredded carrot, one or two slices of cucumber and a cherry tomato. Just about every restaurant has this salad on the menu and it always looks the same. Sometimes, if they want to get fancy, they’ll toss a couple of pieces of hardboiled egg in there, or perhaps a stale piece of bread, but it still comes down to 90% lettuce. No offense to lettuce, but it’s not the tastiest of food. It’s essentially water in plant form and it tastes like it too. It’s not that lettuce tastes bad, it’s just that it has virtually no flavor of its own. So what do people do when they’re faced with a heaping pile of bland lettuce garnished with a few other items on their plate? Ahh, the answer to this brings us to our second reason to can the traditional green salad.

What do you do when you’re faced with an unappetizing meal? Drown it in sauce of course! And that’s what most people do with their salad. They drown it in creamy dressing until it has some kind of interesting flavor. Of course, they just added hundreds of calories of fat but hey, they’re still being healthy right? I mean, they’re eating a green salad! That must be healthy.

Unfortunately, the traditional green salad is the exact opposite of healthy. Devoid of most vegetables other than lettuce, it offers us very few nutrients. And smothered in creamy dressing, it contains a lot of fat you don’t need. In other words, the food most people think of when they think of eating healthy is actually not the healthiest of alternatives.

Fixing The Green Salad

So how do we fix this? Vegetables are a core part of every healthy diet and we do want to consume more of them. Yet the traditional source of them, the salad, seems bad. Well, the answer is to fix up your salad and the way in which you eat it. The first problem with the green salad is what it contains. Simply put, it has too much lettuce in it, which really has very little in the way of nutritional value. Instead, let’s do the following:

Take two tomatoes, a cucumber, some green onions, mushrooms, spinach and half an avocado. Chop them all up into little pieces. Mix them all up and season lightly with pepper, salt or some other of your favorite spices. Right there you have a green salad with some kick. It has flavor and it has far more nutritional value than the traditional lettuce centric version. By the way, my basic recipe here can be modified to your heart’s content. How about adding some zucchini? Eggplant? Maybe a bit of chopped up hard boiled egg? A bit of blue cheese? All of these things can be used in moderation to give a green salad some great texture and flavor. No dressing by the way. If you make your salad right, you won’t need dressing.

Eating Green

And now for our second part of fixing the salad, how to eat one. Why think of the salad as an appetizer? Most restaurants seem to consider it an item to serve before the main dish arrives, something to keep us busy while they cook our food. Maybe this makes sense for the horrible green salads they offer, but a good salad can be eaten with your meal, as an integral part of it. In fact, you can use your salad as a side dish to make your meal healthier. For example, when I was growing up, a dinner might be chicken and a green salad. The green salad was eaten with the chicken as a side dish in much the same way many Americans consume mashed potatoes with their dinner. The dinner was much healthier this way because it combined healthy vegetables while reducing the overall calories. So stop thinking of your salad as something to order before the food to make yourself feel less guilty. A good salad should be eaten as part of the meal as a substitute for less healthy dishes.

Summary

Dump the traditional green salad. It tastes bad, looks bad and is actually bad for you because of all the dressing it usually comes with. Replace it with a salad you can actually enjoy as a main part of your meal.

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