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 APRIL 17, 2002 Get Fit Fast for Spring If you want to get fit fast for springtime sports or an upcoming race or event, all you need is a month's time and the dedication to stick to your fitness goals. You will need to do cardiovascular training four to six days a week for 30 to 50 minutes, weight training two to three days per week, and have a nutritional consultation the first week, suggests Ken Baldwin, president of Premier Fitness, Inc., a personal training company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Exercise and a low-fat diet can help you lose one to two pounds per week. "Don't get hung up over eating proteins and restricting carbohydrates. Just concern yourself with total calories," he says. It's also a good idea to find out your current fitness level first to help gauge improvements. If you don't have any past experience getting into shape, Baldwin suggests hiring a qualified personal trainer and getting nutritional help from a dietitian. Even if you feel the frenzy to get in shape, you need to start off slowly to get your muscles, ligaments, and connective tissues ready to gain strength before increasing the intensity. For your baseline, do 1 or 2 sets of strength training exercises, using enough weight to feel fatigue after 12-15 repetitions. Do a total body workout that involves all of the major muscle groups. Multi-joint exercises that involve more than one joint, such as squats, leg presses, dead lifts, bench presses, and pull-downs, are the best. You can also use circuit training by moving quickly from one exercise to the next. Or try split body training that works different body parts on different days: Day 1- chest and triceps, Day 2 - hamstrings and quadriceps, Day 3 - back and biceps, and Day 4 - shoulders and calves. For enhanced strength training, do more sets (4) with fewer repetitions (8-10) with more weight to gain power and at least 2 sets with many more repetitions (20-25) using slightly lighter weights for muscular endurance. Do power workouts twice a week and a muscular endurance workout once a week. For cardiovascular training, "the ultimate goal is to go as long as you can as hard as you can," says Dale Huff, co-owner, NutriFormance, a personal training and sports nutrition company based in St. Louis. If you become stagnant, start using the hill or interval programs on exercise machines. You will burn more calories and get more variety to get you through the doldrums, he says. The key to fast fitness is "the synergy of proper exercise and nutrition to help you reach your fitness potential," says Huff. Sport-Specific Exercises After you have built up a base in about one month, start sport-specific exercises to simulate movements of your chosen sport. Golfers or tennis players can use flexible exercise bands to simulate their swings. Wrap the band around a door knob, and turn your body against the resistance. Or go to a pool to simulate your swing under water against the resistance of spongy paddles that fit over your hands. For more leg power, run in the deep end with the aid of a floatation belt and do calf raises in the shallow end. And you can add in plyometrics, which are explosive movements that mimic you're sport. For example, tennis players can set up two cones a few feet apart and practice hopping over them laterally back and forth. |
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