12 Weeks - Conditioning Guidelines

Conditioning Guidelines

As you embark on your CV program over the next 12 weeks, I encourage you not to be over zealous and start out slowly so you don’t get injured. I also recommend getting a training partner as well. Having someone counting on you makes you more accountable and you will have a greater rate of success at adhering to your program. Over the course of several weeks, you will build up your cardiovascular system to withstand longer durations and more intense bouts of conditioning.

A note to those who’d like to use running as their means of conditioning: whenever possible, try to run on soft or forgiving surfaces – grass, treadmills or flat area beach sand are some better options. If you are going to run on the road, be sure to change your route often to save your shins, knees, hips and ankles from the repetitive stresses incurred and make sure you are wearing good running shoes appropriate for you. ROAD RUNNER SPORTS in Shrewsbury does a great job in matching your shoes to your running pattern and is a safe bet when selecting the right running shoe (they have a great return policy as well). Mention that you are a client of Premiere Personal Fitness.

Heart rate is an issue that is often misinterpreted in my humble opinion. I’m not entirely concerned at how high you get your HR but more importantly, how quickly you can bring your heart rate down. The standard method is to use 220 – your age and use 60 – 80% of that number so if you are 50 years old your max HR would be 170 and you would work within a heart rate of 102 beats per minute – 136 beats per minute. If you’ve been training with me for any time, your heart rate has surely exceeded those figures on any given day so as I stated, I don’t sweat those figures. If you want to monitor yourself, take your pulse immediately when you finish your training, 60 seconds from when you got done exercising I’d like to see a drop in HR of about 15% so if you elevated your heart rate to 150 then 60 seconds after you terminated your exercise your HR should be about 128 give or take a few beats. Another minute later it should have dropped another 15% roughly. Of course, it goes without saying that if you are having labored breathing or pains you should stop immediately.

The following is merely an example of what can be done. I understand time parameters are tough for some so if you cannot follow this protocol to the “T”, don’t sweat it (no pun intended), doing something is better than nothing, just try and understand the concepts and work within your limitations.

Coming up: "Phase 1"