Inundated with your normal tasks AND facing the additional chores and functions that surround the holidays you’re thinking “Are you NUTS?Like I have time to exercise with everything else I have to do?!” If you can find 12 minutes in your day, 3 times per week, you can accomplish your cardio.
Getting your cardio accomplished is important for several reasons. First, it’s crucial to maintain your exercise routine since you’ve undergone the painstaking process of making it a habit. In Making Habits, Breaking Habits: Why We Do Things, Why We Don’t, and How to Make Any Change Stick psychologist Jeremy Dean explored the popularly held belief that it takes 21 days to form a habit. He was particularly interested in ‘automaticity”, the pivotal mental state that changes an activity into an automatic behavior. Automatic behaviors could be described as brushing your teeth every night without making it a conscious choice or turning on the coffee machine as soon as you awake. Contrary to the notion that it only takes 21 days to form a habit Dean’s results indicated that the more difficult the activity the longer it takes to become automatic. A habit like a daily exercise routine can take as long as 88 days or longer. Breaking your exercise routine could set you up for a long reinstatement period. And everyone knows that creating a habit is often uncomfortable.
Next, it is paramount to your fitness goals to burn extra calories during this particular time of year. The plethora of cookies, cakes, pies etc. encourage all of us to put on those holiday pounds. According to a study published in Journal of Obesity in 2017, most adults experience significant weight gain during the period from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Day. Most disturbing is the weight gain among those that are already overweight and/or on a reducing diet, logging in more than 7.5 pounds in those few short weeks. A study published in Physiology & Behavior Volume 134, July 2014, Pages 66-69 indicated that these pounds, if not dieted off following the holiday splurge, become our annual weight gain. Log in a few years like this and our health suffers significantly.
This routine scorches calories. But, more importantly, it creates an environment that forces your body to use more calories during the following 24 hours. Called Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption, or EPOC, essentially the more intense your exercise the more calories you will burn afterward. I employ Guerilla Cardio multiple times weekly as part of my regular cardio, most often tacking it onto a longer run. But it’s my go-to cardio under time constraints.
Essentially, this is a 12 minute jog/sprint/jog routine. First, choose a good light cardio pace, maintaining a heartrate of no more than 80% of your maximum heartrate. (Maximum heartrate is calculated by subtracting your age from 220. If you are 40 years old 220 – 40 = 180. Multiply 180 x 80% = 144 beats per minute). This 80% cardio pace is set for the first 4 and last 4 minutes of the workout. The middle 4 minutes are a sprint. This is accomplished in running bursts of 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off, each cycle a half a minute long. This section has 8 sprints, or 2 per minute. The pace of the sprint is determined by your respiration. The final 2 sprints should have literally gasping for breath. This gasping action indicates you’ve thrown tons of fat into the bloodstream to be burned as fuel, and maintains your EPOC for an entire day. 12 minutes and you’re done. Please remember that this is YOUR pace. If jogging and sprinting are too difficult, slow down to the appropriate fitness levels to reach your heartrate goals.
I know you can find 12 minutes in your day to get cardio, but, more importantly, maintain your exercise routine and burn off Mom’s homemade chocolate chip cookies that you couldn’t resist.
Happy Holidays!