Advanced Exercise
Fact: Beer tastes better when you’ve earned it. If you stink from the gym so badly that people are fleeing from adjacent tables, this is doubly true.
We have interrogated countless doctors, nurses, athletic trainers and exercise physiologists and they have assured us that you can stick to your Basic Drink Your Carbs workouts and still reap the full health benefits of exercise. There is no need to push yourself to the point that that you end a workout by throwing up. A successful workout is one in which you are within your target heart rate zone for at least 20 minutes. Do this three to four times a week, and you are good to go. When new studies emerge claiming exercise has the power to increase some wellness marker or prevent some hideous disease, you have earned the right to act smug and self-righteous.
That said, if your goal is to be fitter, burn even more calories and/or recapture the vigor of your youth, you’ll need to crank it up a notch.
That said, if your goal is to be fitter, burn even more calories and/or recapture the vigor of your youth, you’ll need to crank it up a notch.
Fair warning: Advanced Exercise requires far more time and effort. Exercise will become a huge part of your life. You will be hitting the pavement or the gym for 45 minutes to an hour, five to six days a week. You will also spend countless hours obsessing, planning, scheduling, agonizing, celebrating and even bragging; it comes with the territory. We all have friends with Facebook pages plastered by their constant athletic achievements. These displays are the adult equivalent of a high school letterman jacket studded with gold-plated pins. Embracing Advanced Exercise will set into motion a process that will very likely lead to you becoming that person. Ignore all of the criticism. As the kid’s say, “haters gonna hate.”
Advanced Exercise: The Perfect Solution for Your Active, Drinking Lifestyle.
Because you will be spending an inordinate amount of time not only exercising but thinking about exercise, it is easy to suffer from burn out. Fitness can begin to feel like work. There will be days when you desperately want to do the equivalent of calling human resources to tell them that you won’t be in the office because you’ve grown weary of your current projects and coworkers.
The problem is that, unlike work, exercise is easy to cancel; you simply don’t show up. No one calls. No one asks awkward questions. If you miss a workout, only you know. It happens millions of times a day. This explains how your local gym can have 5,000 members yet only one person will be in there working out on an average Thursday morning. To avoid burnout, we recommend focusing your efforts towards a specific sport or fitness goal.
The problem is that, unlike work, exercise is easy to cancel; you simply don’t show up. No one calls. No one asks awkward questions. If you miss a workout, only you know. It happens millions of times a day. This explains how your local gym can have 5,000 members yet only one person will be in there working out on an average Thursday morning. To avoid burnout, we recommend focusing your efforts towards a specific sport or fitness goal.
Set A Goal.
Your goal can be anything athletic that you find difficult to achieve. A good goal will take a long time and a lot of hard work to accomplish. It should involve gut-wrenching intensity, intimidating duration or, preferably, both. If your goal doesn’t fall into either category, you’re doing it wrong and you need to choose something more challenging. You will know that you have chosen the right goal when it scares you into showing up for all of your workouts.
Note: Your new, personal athletic goal does not replace your previous exercise program; it’s added to your current plan. That is why we call it Advanced.
Goals differ for each person. Common goals include running a marathon, cycling 100 miles or completing a triathlon. However, we know people who have chosen very different objectives.
Our friend David has been laboring for months to swim a full mile in less than 30 minutes. For the record, this is not exceptionally fast swimming. In a triathlon, this pace would place him squarely in the middle of the pack. Michael Phelps could probably swim a 30-minute mile with David chained to his back. But for David, achieving a 30-minute mile will be huge. Goals are intensely personal. What you find difficult someone else might find easy, and the reverse is also often true. For the record, David currently is less than 30 seconds from achieving his goal; by the time you read this, he likely will have succeeded.
A few years ago, Andrea set the goal of being able to do unassisted pull-ups. She set her initial target at five in a row. She could have chosen a running goal, but that would have been playing to her strengths. Andrea is a naturally strong runner. She ran cross-country in high school and college. She has finished marathons. She can run a half marathon at will; in fact, she could probably run a half marathon on no sleep, still drunk from the night before.
When she lacks time to work out, she goes for a quick run around the neighborhood. To Andrea, running is easy. Pull-ups, by contrast, exposed her every weakness. Without some kind of assistance, she couldn’t manage a single one.
It took Andrea most of a year to achieve her five pull-ups. Her program involved all of the steps we recommend in Advanced Exercise: five to six days per week of exercise incorporating weightlifting, interval training and mixing up a diverse set of drills and exercises. Andrea did not simply hang from a pull-up bar for 20 minutes a day. That might have worked, but her goal was not to simply develop stronger lats. She wanted to get stronger overall. She wanted to stay physically in balance while progressing towards her objective.
It is possible to ride 100 miles on a bike, do 100 push-ups or a mile of walking lunges without working any muscles not specifically needed for those tasks. We recommend that you resist the urge to focus all of your training on your single-minded purpose. If all of your work is specific to the muscles you will need for a single undertaking, you can throw your body out of balance and make yourself more prone to injury.
Your aim should be to improve your overall fitness. Your goal serves to keep you motivated and allow you to measure your progress. It is a means to an end. The end is a fitter, healthier self.
Our friend David has been laboring for months to swim a full mile in less than 30 minutes. For the record, this is not exceptionally fast swimming. In a triathlon, this pace would place him squarely in the middle of the pack. Michael Phelps could probably swim a 30-minute mile with David chained to his back. But for David, achieving a 30-minute mile will be huge. Goals are intensely personal. What you find difficult someone else might find easy, and the reverse is also often true. For the record, David currently is less than 30 seconds from achieving his goal; by the time you read this, he likely will have succeeded.
A few years ago, Andrea set the goal of being able to do unassisted pull-ups. She set her initial target at five in a row. She could have chosen a running goal, but that would have been playing to her strengths. Andrea is a naturally strong runner. She ran cross-country in high school and college. She has finished marathons. She can run a half marathon at will; in fact, she could probably run a half marathon on no sleep, still drunk from the night before.
When she lacks time to work out, she goes for a quick run around the neighborhood. To Andrea, running is easy. Pull-ups, by contrast, exposed her every weakness. Without some kind of assistance, she couldn’t manage a single one.
It took Andrea most of a year to achieve her five pull-ups. Her program involved all of the steps we recommend in Advanced Exercise: five to six days per week of exercise incorporating weightlifting, interval training and mixing up a diverse set of drills and exercises. Andrea did not simply hang from a pull-up bar for 20 minutes a day. That might have worked, but her goal was not to simply develop stronger lats. She wanted to get stronger overall. She wanted to stay physically in balance while progressing towards her objective.
It is possible to ride 100 miles on a bike, do 100 push-ups or a mile of walking lunges without working any muscles not specifically needed for those tasks. We recommend that you resist the urge to focus all of your training on your single-minded purpose. If all of your work is specific to the muscles you will need for a single undertaking, you can throw your body out of balance and make yourself more prone to injury.
Your aim should be to improve your overall fitness. Your goal serves to keep you motivated and allow you to measure your progress. It is a means to an end. The end is a fitter, healthier self.
If you have not done so already, it is time to add weight training to your weekly regimen.
The standard refrain encouraging people to start a weight-training program is that muscle burns more calories than fat. The pitch is simple: If you put on muscle mass you will burn more calories throughout your day. That even includes sitting stock-still in front of the television. While the theory is correct, the numbers thrown around are frequently exaggerated. A quick Google search reveals countless fitness-related websites making the same absurd claim: muscle burns, pound for pound, 50 times more calories than fat.
We dearly wish that this were true. Steven converted about 10 pounds of fat to muscle mass over the past two years. He made an effort to lift more and heavier weights and his program worked. If the fitness websites were correct in their calculation, Steven would now be burning 500 additional calories every single day. We assure you this is not the case. Steven’s 10 pounds of new muscle mass earn him closer to 60 extra calories burned per day. Not bad, but nowhere the wild promises made on the Internet.
We dearly wish that this were true. Steven converted about 10 pounds of fat to muscle mass over the past two years. He made an effort to lift more and heavier weights and his program worked. If the fitness websites were correct in their calculation, Steven would now be burning 500 additional calories every single day. We assure you this is not the case. Steven’s 10 pounds of new muscle mass earn him closer to 60 extra calories burned per day. Not bad, but nowhere the wild promises made on the Internet.
Fact: “[A] pound of muscle burns six calories a day at rest and a pound of fat burns about two calories a day.” [Source.] These numbers are obviously generalized. Everyone’s metabolism is a little different. Nonetheless, it is reasonable to assume that you need to put on roughly 35 pounds of muscle mass to offset one pint of Guinness per day.
To put this in perspective, 35 pounds of added muscle mass would increase Andrea’s body mass by over 25 percent. Such gains are possible, but not on the type of program we endorse. It takes a very specific training plan of low repetitions of ultra-high weights combined with dietary changes we would never recommend for non-Mr./Ms. Universe contenders.
If you follow our program you will strengthen and tone your muscles, but if you dream of becoming Lou Ferrigno you need to look elsewhere for guidance.
Muscle unquestionably burns more calories than fat, but we do not think that this should be the primary driver for starting a weight-training program. A far better reason is that weight training is essentially getting a vaccination against sports injuries. A study from the Department of Physical Therapy at Ohio University found that, “resistance training promotes growth and/or increases in the strength of ligaments, tendons, tendon to bone and ligament to bone junction strength, joint cartilage and the connective tissue sheaths within muscle.” In other words, weight training strengthens the parts of the body most likely to be injured by the repetitive stress of exercise.
Of course, the act of lifting weights itself carries a risk of injury. British researcher Brian Hamill set out to figure out exactly how big that risk is. He surveyed schools and athletic associations in the United States and Great Britain asking them to report sports injuries. His results were nothing short of astounding. According to Hamill’s research, weight training is safer than badminton or squash.
Of course, the act of lifting weights itself carries a risk of injury. British researcher Brian Hamill set out to figure out exactly how big that risk is. He surveyed schools and athletic associations in the United States and Great Britain asking them to report sports injuries. His results were nothing short of astounding. According to Hamill’s research, weight training is safer than badminton or squash.
Fact: The sport with the most injuries reported in Hamill’s survey was rugby. Steven, for one, was not surprised to learn this. Steven’s high school soccer coach - soccer is, according to Hamill, the second most likely sport to injure participants - played competitive rugby with the Denver Barbarians. Since the soccer season ended earlier than most other school sports, the coach thought it would be fun to quickly reorganize the players into a rugby team. He then took the liberty of setting up a few friendly games against other schools that had been playing rugby all season.
The carnage was indescribable. Steven’s team never scored a try, or any other points for that matter. It was less of a game than it was a beating. His most vivid memory is of begging to be let off the field.
It is worth noting that Hamill’s research was conducted on schools and organized sports clubs. In other words, the data for weight training came from subjects whose activities were supervised by coaches and trainers. Which bring us to the topic of the importance of recruiting an expert for fitness programs.
This is particularly true for weight lifting. Some lifts are highly technical. If you are doing them wrong you are, at best, not getting the full benefit. At worst, you are setting yourself up for a world of hurt. This does not mean that you have to shell out a ton of cash for a personal trainer. We define expert very broadly. The key is finding someone with extensive experience who is willing to show you the ropes.
This is particularly true for weight lifting. Some lifts are highly technical. If you are doing them wrong you are, at best, not getting the full benefit. At worst, you are setting yourself up for a world of hurt. This does not mean that you have to shell out a ton of cash for a personal trainer. We define expert very broadly. The key is finding someone with extensive experience who is willing to show you the ropes.
Bring In An Expert to Help Guide and Train You Toward Your Goal.
No matter how much exercise experience you have, a new physical challenge turns you into a novice. This is a problem that all of us face when setting goals. Figuring out where to start and measuring progress can be difficult.
Andrea worked with a personal trainer to conquer her goal of five consecutive pull-ups. It was expensive, but well worth it. The program completely remade Andrea’s body. She lost weight. She gained muscle. She achieved far more than the ability to do five pull-ups.
It’s not necessary to hire a personal trainer. Trainers can be outstanding, but there are lower-cost options. We know a guy from South Carolina who decided to run his first half marathon at age 56. He got through it with the help of a $15 book from former Olympian Jeff Galloway. Some people rely on friends who have already accomplished a similar goal to their own and are willing to share their experience. We have lost count of the number of people we know who have been coached through 100-mile bike rides, marathons and triathlons by charity groups like Team in Training and the American Cancer Society. These groups require that you hit up all of your friends and relatives to donate to the underlying charitable cause, but in exchange they will mentor you through the event with coaching, training guides and even group workouts.
Andrea worked with a personal trainer to conquer her goal of five consecutive pull-ups. It was expensive, but well worth it. The program completely remade Andrea’s body. She lost weight. She gained muscle. She achieved far more than the ability to do five pull-ups.
It’s not necessary to hire a personal trainer. Trainers can be outstanding, but there are lower-cost options. We know a guy from South Carolina who decided to run his first half marathon at age 56. He got through it with the help of a $15 book from former Olympian Jeff Galloway. Some people rely on friends who have already accomplished a similar goal to their own and are willing to share their experience. We have lost count of the number of people we know who have been coached through 100-mile bike rides, marathons and triathlons by charity groups like Team in Training and the American Cancer Society. These groups require that you hit up all of your friends and relatives to donate to the underlying charitable cause, but in exchange they will mentor you through the event with coaching, training guides and even group workouts.
Fact: Unless you are attempting to get into the Guinness Book of World Records by doing something no one has done before, it will not be hard to find a website, book, video, friend or professional to help you create your training plan.
Advanced Exercise also demands that you step up the intensity. Increasing the intensity of a Basic Exercise workout is simply a matter of running, biking or swimming a little faster. This is no longer good enough at the Advanced level. It is time to add more structure to your training.
Say Hello to Your New Best Friend: Intervals
For those unfamiliar with the concept, interval training is a methodology that breaks up cardio workouts into periods of near-maximum effort and periods of low effort or even pure recovery. In other words, you might run 400 meters as quickly as you can and then slowly walk the same distance to allow your breathing and heart rate to recover. A standard interval workout might consist of performing this run/walk routine four or five times in a row.
There are thousands of variations of the interval workout, but they all share short duration, high-effort work with defined periods of recovery. These workouts tend to be quicker than a traditional long, slow cardio sessions and they definitely offer outsized benefits for their length. A study from Colorado State University found that people who did interval training not only saw faster improvements in overall fitness, but they continued burning calories at a high rate long after each workout ended. According to the authors, “[study participants] burned an average of an extra 200 calories on the sprint interval workout day.”
There are thousands of variations of the interval workout, but they all share short duration, high-effort work with defined periods of recovery. These workouts tend to be quicker than a traditional long, slow cardio sessions and they definitely offer outsized benefits for their length. A study from Colorado State University found that people who did interval training not only saw faster improvements in overall fitness, but they continued burning calories at a high rate long after each workout ended. According to the authors, “[study participants] burned an average of an extra 200 calories on the sprint interval workout day.”
Fact: Most diet programs begin with the best of intentions. They are founded upon the lofty belief than an idea can make the world a better place. Given time and success, these high ideals are generally abandoned. Diets cease caring about health and fitness and instead concentrate on hawking merchandise. When our day comes, we plan to open a chain of combination interval training gyms and brewpubs with the slogan: “Earn more beer in less time.”
Intervals can be done on virtually any piece of cardio equipment. Biking, swimming and running can all allow for an interval workout. We have done interval workouts that involved lifting weights over and over as quickly as possible. Some of our most taxing intervals were performed on a rowing machine. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to design an effective interval workout around a Shake Weight or Thighmaster. Just about everything else is fair game.
Here are a few of our favorite interval workouts. They are short, but do not expect them to be easy. Interval training is hard work. Try mixing them into your program a couple of times a week. We assure you that the additional bump in fitness and calories burned will make the suffering worthwhile.
Here are a few of our favorite interval workouts. They are short, but do not expect them to be easy. Interval training is hard work. Try mixing them into your program a couple of times a week. We assure you that the additional bump in fitness and calories burned will make the suffering worthwhile.
Classic Intervals: 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5:
Some interval workouts require college-level math. Calculating the ratios of work to rest can be maddening. We tend to simplify our intervals because we prefer to focus on exercising rather than trying to calculate two-thirds of 47 seconds.
The goal of this workout is to choose a hard pace you can maintain for all five intervals. We will use running in our example, but feel free to mix it up.
The goal of this workout is to choose a hard pace you can maintain for all five intervals. We will use running in our example, but feel free to mix it up.
- Run hard for one minute
- Rest for one minute (The goal is to recover as much as possible between intervals. Walk, breathe, stretch, do whatever helps you bring your heart rate down. You may not feel like you need this rest yet. Trust us, you will.)
- Run hard for two minutes (Try to maintain the same pace as you did in your one-minute interval.)
- Rest for two minutes
- Run hard for three minutes (Again, try to keep the same pace.)
- Rest for three minutes
- Run hard for four minutes (Keeping that same pace.)
- Rest for four minutes
- Run hard for five minutes (If you are doing this right, this will be the longest five minutes of your life.)
- Allow your body to fully recover. You are done.
20 Seconds of Hell: Tabata
Professor Izumi Tabata, an early pioneer of high-intensity interval training, developed a system in the mid-1990s for training the Japanese speed-skating team. On paper it sounds easy: 20 seconds of all out effort followed by 10 seconds of rest. This sequence is repeated eight times. A full Tabata session is only four minutes long. When we were first introduced to Tabata we thought, “How bad can four minutes be?”
Fact: Victims in horror movies invariably fall down while being pursued by the film’s monster. Twenty seconds of Tabata will help you understand why. An all out effort is tough to sustain. We do Tabata all the time, yet we have both collapsed to the ground during a Tabata set long before the final eighth round.
The beautiful thing about Professor Tabata’s system is that it can be applied to nearly any exercise. Running, rowing, squats, sit-ups and pushups all work. Pretty much any exercise you do can be set to the Tabata tempo.
We often add Tabata sit-ups to the end of a cardio session. We also occasionally design full workouts using the system. We might pick three or four movements such as rowing, body-weight squats and push-ups. We then do each one as a Tabata set. If we are doing three Tabata sets or fewer, we keep moving from one exercise to the next. We sometimes lose a few seconds to the transition, but we like to keep moving when a workout is only eight to 12 minutes long. If we do more than three Tabata sets, we add recovery time in between the sets. We have found that without additional recovery time, our work intervals tend to slow down, defeating the entire purpose of Tabata.
The easiest way to time a Tabata workout is to download a Tabata timer to your smartphone. There are dozens of apps available on every major platform. The timer will chime to indicate that you are supposed to begin 20 seconds all out work. If you are running, you should be at a full sprint. If you are doing push-ups or sit-ups, do as many as possible as quickly as you can. Rest for exactly 10 seconds when the timer chimes again. Do your best to recover as much as possible before the next chime restarts the cycle.
If you follow Professor Tabata’s advice and go as fast and as hard as you can during all of the 20-second work intervals, eight rounds will be more than enough time to leave you panting on the floor vulnerable to even the slowest monsters Hollywood has cooked up.
Remember: the key to an effective Tabata workout is to push yourself to your absolute limit during the work intervals. For example, we occasionally do Tabata on a treadmill. We typically do three four-minute sets moving from one into the next without pause. The first set is done with the treadmill set to an incline of 10 or more; we set the speed such that we are barely able to stay on for the full 20 seconds. We then lower the treadmill to half the incline and increase the speed for second set. The final Tabata set is run with zero incline as fast as safely possible. The entire workout takes 12 minutes. Afterward, we feel more wrecked than if we had run five hard miles.
If you are doing a Tabata set of push-ups, squats or other exercises where it is easy to count repetitions, try to hit the same number in each 20-second interval. In the first set 15 to 20 repetitions may not feel particularly difficult. With each successive set, however, hitting that same number becomes seriously challenging. Do not be surprised if you fall short. In the case of Tabata, failure is a sign that you are doing it right.
We often add Tabata sit-ups to the end of a cardio session. We also occasionally design full workouts using the system. We might pick three or four movements such as rowing, body-weight squats and push-ups. We then do each one as a Tabata set. If we are doing three Tabata sets or fewer, we keep moving from one exercise to the next. We sometimes lose a few seconds to the transition, but we like to keep moving when a workout is only eight to 12 minutes long. If we do more than three Tabata sets, we add recovery time in between the sets. We have found that without additional recovery time, our work intervals tend to slow down, defeating the entire purpose of Tabata.
The easiest way to time a Tabata workout is to download a Tabata timer to your smartphone. There are dozens of apps available on every major platform. The timer will chime to indicate that you are supposed to begin 20 seconds all out work. If you are running, you should be at a full sprint. If you are doing push-ups or sit-ups, do as many as possible as quickly as you can. Rest for exactly 10 seconds when the timer chimes again. Do your best to recover as much as possible before the next chime restarts the cycle.
If you follow Professor Tabata’s advice and go as fast and as hard as you can during all of the 20-second work intervals, eight rounds will be more than enough time to leave you panting on the floor vulnerable to even the slowest monsters Hollywood has cooked up.
Remember: the key to an effective Tabata workout is to push yourself to your absolute limit during the work intervals. For example, we occasionally do Tabata on a treadmill. We typically do three four-minute sets moving from one into the next without pause. The first set is done with the treadmill set to an incline of 10 or more; we set the speed such that we are barely able to stay on for the full 20 seconds. We then lower the treadmill to half the incline and increase the speed for second set. The final Tabata set is run with zero incline as fast as safely possible. The entire workout takes 12 minutes. Afterward, we feel more wrecked than if we had run five hard miles.
If you are doing a Tabata set of push-ups, squats or other exercises where it is easy to count repetitions, try to hit the same number in each 20-second interval. In the first set 15 to 20 repetitions may not feel particularly difficult. With each successive set, however, hitting that same number becomes seriously challenging. Do not be surprised if you fall short. In the case of Tabata, failure is a sign that you are doing it right.
Adding Intervals To An Existing Workout: Fartlek
Fact: We can be shockingly immature. At times, our inner eighth grader simply gets the best of us and we giggle uncontrollably at things that adults should not find amusing. Fartlek (pronounced “fart-lick”) is a perfect example of something infantile that has the power to set us off.
“Fartlek” is Swedish for “Speed Play.” At its most basic, Fartlek involves throwing intervals into an otherwise ordinary cardio workout. For example, when heading out the door for a short run, instead of holding a steady pace, add occasional sprints.
Fartlek is as easy to do as it is fun to say. When jogging, warm up for three to four minutes at a steady pace and then choose an object a short distance ahead: a tree, a car, a dog tied up outside of a café, anything. Sprint hard to that object. Then allow yourself to recover for about the same distance keeping an easy pace. Don’t worry about perfectly matching the timing of the sprints to timing of the recovery. The point of Fartlek is that it does not have to be heavily structured.
After you have recovered, pick a new object and race toward it. Try to choose objects that will have you running hard for around one to three minutes. The key is to spike your heart rate and then allow it to come back down between intervals. This is easier than it sounds: simply run your sprints hard and then take enough time to recover before you begin again.
The first time you Fartlek, add in no more than a couple of sprints. Over time, work your way up to five or six. Once you have the system down, 25 to 30 total minutes of work is more than enough to earn you a full day of high-speed calorie burning.
Fartlek is as easy to do as it is fun to say. When jogging, warm up for three to four minutes at a steady pace and then choose an object a short distance ahead: a tree, a car, a dog tied up outside of a café, anything. Sprint hard to that object. Then allow yourself to recover for about the same distance keeping an easy pace. Don’t worry about perfectly matching the timing of the sprints to timing of the recovery. The point of Fartlek is that it does not have to be heavily structured.
After you have recovered, pick a new object and race toward it. Try to choose objects that will have you running hard for around one to three minutes. The key is to spike your heart rate and then allow it to come back down between intervals. This is easier than it sounds: simply run your sprints hard and then take enough time to recover before you begin again.
The first time you Fartlek, add in no more than a couple of sprints. Over time, work your way up to five or six. Once you have the system down, 25 to 30 total minutes of work is more than enough to earn you a full day of high-speed calorie burning.
One Word of Warning: When you begin your first interval workouts, start slowly. Your first intervals should done be at no more than 75 percent of your maximum effort. You should increase this over time, but it is best to allow your body to get used to the new routine. This will also give you time to learn your capabilities and limitations. For example, if Steven jumped onto a treadmill set to Andrea’s top speed he would immediately fly off the back. Starting slowly and learning your capabilities can prevent such misadventures.
Your New Advanced Exercise Plan (A Summary For Skimmers):
- Pick an extremely challenging and ambitious athletic goal.
- Find an expert to help you design your training plan. This can range from a high-priced trainer to a low-cost book.
- Spend five to six days per week training toward your goal.
- Add weights and other resistance training to your program. (At least twice a week.)
- Increase your overall intensity through intervals.