The Rookie Diaries: Burn More Calories during Your Workouts
Posted by Tula Karras on Wed, Jul 21, 2010
When you finally manage to take the time out of your crazy schedule to get to the gym, don't you want to make the most of those precious minutes? I thought I was doing just that with my three-mile, 40-minute run on the treadmill three times a week. And then I took ShedTread, a fitness class offered at The Sports Club/LA at Rockefeller Center in New York City with Julie Bobek (pictured at right). Julie, a private trainer/fitness instructor at the club, runs the popular class designed to help you crank up your burn on the most basic of gym cardio machines: the treadmill.
Julie's class revolves around interval training, so you are moving in ways that get your heart in and out of different cardio zones. "You want a workout that pushes your heart and other muscles in a way they don't expect. You harness and use more energy when you're mixing it up and forcing your body to adapt to different speeds, resistance and endurance." Here are the valuable lessons I learned from the hour-long class, and how you, too, can maximize the time you clock on that moving belt. If you can, take a similar class at your gym—it's harder to crack the whip for yourself, and having other members who are sweating and heaving along with you is the perfect combo of camaraderie and motivation.
1. Start slowly. Julie didn't have us running fast right out of the gate. Instead, we jogged slowly for a couple of minutes so that we could get our "tread-legs" and gradually bring up our heart rate. Kind of like having your morning coffee before you start sprinting out the door in the morning. My slow jog was a 4.3. (The girl next to me was slow jogging at 5, but as competitive as I am, I had to listen to my body and get through the class, so I stayed put.)
2. Find your comfortable jog. After 5 minutes or so, Julie told us to find our "comfortable jog." Don't be fooled by the word "comfortable"—this is not a synonym for "effortless." Julie says this pace should be faster and harder than your slow jog, but not so fast or hard that you're huffing and puffing and counting the seconds until you can get off the treadmill. For me, this was about 5 mph. I was pushing myself, but I was still able to have a conversation. (I know this, because Julie was asking us questions during this segment: "Tula, have you seen the movie Inception?" Me, in a nearly breathless response: "No."). Again, I peeked at the girls to my right and left, just to torture myself. Their "comfortable jogs" were well over a 6. I toggled my speed up to 5.3 in an effort to not be the tortoise to their hares. We ran at our comfortable jog pace for about 5 minutes.
3. Find your "recovery jog." Ah, yes! Recovery! (Little did I know this was the calm before the storm.) This is the pace where you're still jogging but you're doing it slowly enough that you bring your heart rate down and allow your body to "recover." Recover from what? I wondered, as I toggled my speed down to 4.4, where we stayed for a few minutes. Then I got the answer to my recovery question…
4. Perform sprint intervals. I knew it was coming. There was no way that a class called ShedTread wouldn't include sprint intervals. I wasn't wrong. "OK, we're going to do five sprint intervals starting now! Everybody toggle your speed up to where you're pushing yourself, and we'll stay there for a minute, then toggle back to your recovery!" Julie announced in an encouraging but firm tone. I toggled up to a 6.3 (which, I should note, was the comfortable jog for the girl to my right, who was now at a 7.5) and ran hard. Julie gave us a 10-second countdown just before the minute was up and had us go back to our recovery jog. Whew, I survived sprint number one. Julie had us do four more sprints in this fashion, which was really. Really. Hard. The kind of hard I hadn't felt since I ran track in junior high or was racing to Macy's last fall for their one-day mega sale. It was becoming evident to me why my current treadmill routine was not helping me lose weight; I wasn't really pushing myself! [Note: If you're a treadmill beginner, Julie recommends not doing more than two or three sprints at once (each followed by a minute of recovery).]
5. Play with incline. Once sprints were over, and we were back to a recovery jog, Julie gave us a few minutes to chill before she chirped "OK, everyone meet me at an incline of 5 at a brisk walk!" OK, I can do this, I thought. Walking briskly (I was at a 4) at an incline is hard, but I much prefer it to sprinting at an incline of 0. After a few minutes, Julie upped the ante. "Meet me at an incline of 7! Same pace!" I reluctantly followed orders. After another couple of minutes, I heard the words I prayed and hoped weren't going to come out of her mouth. "10! Meet me at an incline of 10! Keep your pace!" Reader, I cannot tell a lie, I cheated—I went up to an incline of 10, but I brought the pace down a bit to a 3.5. I was, thankfully, encouraged to do this by Julie, who pays close attention to everyone in class and could probably see I'd hit a wall. She told me to stay at that pace for the remainder of the incline portion, which lasted a few more minutes before she gradually brought us back down to a flat incline. (I was a little embarrassed, but I was more exhausted than embarrassed. Plus, because it was my first class, I was OK with going slower.)
6. Go "off ramp." Next, Julie had us pause our machines, wait until the belt stopped moving completely, then hop off to do…squats! Oh no! We did 10 squats with our feet apart, 10 together, and repeated the whole cycle again. Then back onto the treadmill at a steep incline and a brisk walk for another minute. Then off again for another series of squats, then back on. There was a method to her madness: Squats—along with all that incline work we were doing—builds your hamstrings and your glutes and balances the strong quads that running naturally works.
7. Go to the mat. After 45 minutes of serious treadmill work, Julie released us to the mat and had us do planks, crunches and bridges to work our core and, again, to focus on the hamstrings and glutes to ensure that those muscles were getting just as good a workout as the quads.
Class was over and I was exhausted, but also elated. I had that feeling you get of accomplishing something you didn't think you could, and I had a wonderful model from which to fashion my own, successive treadmill sessions. No more relaxing on the treadmill reading a magazine while I amble. From now on, I plan to work hard. That's why they call it a "workout!"