(ARA) – Megan Johnson did something at 33 that she’d dreamed of since college — she entered a bodybuilding, figure and fitness competition and placed a respectable seventh in the figure category.

What’s the big deal? In addition to her age — the average female figure contestant is about 28 — she’s a mom of four: Max, 7, and triplets Hank, Sam, and Sophia, 6. She also employed a rather unusual workout regimen for a competitive figure contestant.

“I gained 25 pounds in college,” says Johnson, “mostly because I’ve always hated cardio. Weights I would do, but I just wouldn’t do anything aerobic.”

When Max arrived, Johnson knew it was going to be even harder to lose weight unless she faced her cardio phobia. That’s when she found a local women’s-only fitness center whose philosophy combined strength training and cardio.

“I belonged to a serious weight-lifting gym and I had doubts,” says Johnson, “But I knew I would never realize my dream unless I changed tactics, so I quit my gym and jumped right in.”

Johnson checked her progress against a friend who was training for the same event. “She lifted weights and did cardio two to three hours a day, six days a week. I did my 30-minute workout, three to five days a week, and nothing else. Our results were comparable.”

Research supports Johnson’s experience. Addressing the American College of Sports Medicine recently, Dr. Richard Kreider presented the results of the 2008 Curves/Avon Fitness Study, which tracked 43,000 women through the 30-day challenge. Participants worked out at Curves three times a week and were encouraged to walk an additional 120 minutes a week. The women saw considerable decreases in weight, body fat, inches, blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar. “It’s possible to make significant improvements with this type of program,” says Kreider.

Johnson took multivitamins and followed her gym’s eating plan. She loved the flexibility, meal plans and recipes. “I make the chili all the time,” she says.

“People think you have to work out for hours a day to get really fit,” says Johnson, “but I’ve proven to myself that’s not true. As a mom of four, I don’t have time even if I wanted to. And the good news is, if I give it my all during those 30 minutes, I don’t have to.”

Megan’s Favorite Cozy Comfort Chili

“I make this in batches of 25 servings and freeze in one-cup portions,” says Johnson. “Take one out, reheat, top with cheese and enjoy.”

Ingredients:

Garlic, to taste
Onion, to taste
Celery, to taste
Bell Pepper, to taste
1 teaspoon oil
3 ounces 95 percent lean ground beef
1/2 can diced tomatoes, with juice
1/4 cup black beans, cooked
1/4 cup pinto beans, cooked
1/4 cup kidney beans, cooked
1/4 cup shredded low-fat cheese

Directions:

Saute your favorite vegetables and spices (you can use unlimited amounts of them) in oil. Add lean ground beef and cook through. Stir in diced tomatoes with juice, black, pinto and kidney beans. Stir and cook until bubbly. Top with 1 ounce (1/4 cup) shredded low fat cheese.

Recipe from the “Curves Fitness & Weight Management Plan.”

Courtesy of ARAcontent

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The best way to begin is by assessing your current level of cardiovascular fitness. If you have a personal trainer, he or she can use professional testing equipment to determine the extent of your aerobic strength. For the rest of us without the benefit of personal trainers, here’s a simple routine that help you identify your level of strength followed by some tips for cardio toning.

Begin by standing with your feet about shoulder-width apart and your arms resting comfortably at your sides. Take a deep breath and begin walking briskly, swinging your arms gently. Continue this warm-up for about two minutes and then begin performing jumping jacks. Use both the arms and legs. Perform as many jumping jacks as possible for three minutes without resting. At the end of three minutes, stop movement and take your pulse. Your ideal heart rate should be about 75-85% of your maximum heart rate. A very basic method of finding your MHR is to subtract your age from 220. If you are thirty-two years old, subtract 32 from 220. This equals 188. Seventy-five to eighty-five percent of 188 equal 144 to 160; thus your ideal heart rate for maximum cardiovascular conditioning is 144-160 beats per minute for a thirty-two-year-old adult. Remember that this is only a very basic formula and can only give you a general range. There are personal electronics available now that track your vital statistics as you exercise and have a digital screen to keep you aware of your body. You may want to consider investing in one of these tools if you are serious about getting the very best cardio conditioning possible.

Back to the MHR: if your heart rate was wildly above the upper ranges of 85%, you need to scale back your activity and work on building more strength without placing so much stress on the body. On the other hand, if your MHR was below 75%, that’s a good indication your aerobic health is in good condition and you have a green light to work harder. Having a heart rate that’s solidly within the seventy-five to eighty-five percent range indicates that you are at a comfortable stage with your aerobic strength and can increase activity slightly to build more capacity. Always remember, though, if you feel lightheaded or dizzy during a workout, stop moving immediately and rest until you feel better.

Building Aerobic Capacity through Exercise

These are simple routines to condition the cardiovascular system and increase your aerobic capacity without depending on complicated equipment or attending a gym class five times a week. Go with whatever method appeals most to you and you’ll be much more likely to stick with it and build greater strength.

Lengthen Your Workouts

This is a simple trick that many people underestimate. By increasing your workout by fifteen minutes you can burn up to one hundred additional calories and give your metabolism a stronger boost as well as require your cardiovascular system to hang in there longer and increase capacity. If your typical workout lasts about thirty minutes, increase it to forty-five minutes three times per week. You should start to notice a difference within three weeks. Adding more time to every workout will bring results faster.

Get Wet to Build Strength

Swimming is one of the least appreciated workouts today. Few people understand exactly how challenging an underwater workout can be. Swimming requires you to learn how to pace your breathing and rely on your aerobic capacity to support you when you are underwater and cannot take a breath. Since the water supports your weight and makes you more buoyant, you are able to work more of your muscles, thus requiring more air to drive your system. Start doing one swimming workout of thirty minutes twice weekly and you will feel a difference in less than three weeks. Most people are truly amazed at the changes in their bodies and breathing capacity when they add swimming as a regular workout.

Use the Arms to Increase Lung Power

If you are a dedicated walker or runner, this is one of the simplest changes you can make to your regular program and it doesn’t even require equipment or special locations. Simply add arm movements as you move your legs. This works best for walkers, who move at a slower pace than runners and can more easily incorporate arm motions into the walk. Try raising your arms over your head for two beats and then back down. It may look funny but your heart rate will increase and start building the capacity in your lungs.

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Cardiovascular exercise primarily focuses on developing and strengthening the cardiovascular system through aerobic training. This means strengthening your heart, lungs, and blood vessels so that they all work more efficiently, both together and individually. By training the body to meet higher and higher levels of aerobic endurance, you increase the efficacy of your system. This is a fantastic move to make your present life easier and more pleasant, but it’s also a smart move to prepare for later life. Research proves over and over again that adults who maintain a high level of fitness throughout early and middle life end up living fuller, more productive lives as seniors. That’s in addition to living longer than people who don’t exercise. The benefits of cardiovascular exercise are almost too numerous to list: lower blood pressure, lower ‘bad’ cholesterol and higher ‘good’, decreased incidence of heart attack and stroke, decreased risk of osteoporosis, overall decreased risk of most cancers, increased life span and more. Cardiovascular or aerobic exercise is the smartest choice around – or is it?

Weight training aims to strengthen the muscles by lifting weights. By increasing the overall strength of the muscles in the body, the support of the body is increased and allows for greater ease of living. Since the muscles connect to each other and all essentially hold up the skeleton, without them there would be no way to move to exercise. People who lift weights are shown to have many of the same characteristics as those who engage in cardiovascular exercise. Weight-lifters also experience a decreased risk of bone fractures since the weights help build bone through the resistance. Lifting weights is surely the best approach to fitness – right?

In reality, the number one way to achieve ultimate fitness in your life is to combine the two approaches of aerobic exercise and strength training to boost your health to the optimum level. The two methods, though targeting different systems, form a beautiful relationship that works together to develop and build all aspects of the body to create the strongest, healthiest body possible. Cardiovascular exercise strengthens the lungs and allows the body to build up stamina. Weight training uses that stamina to build muscles for longer periods of time. The muscles then act in their roles as support team for the skeleton and organs, and can work more efficiently. The increased efficiency of the body means that it can develop greater aerobic capacity through exercise – and you see how the cycle begins again. Cardio and strength training feed off each other to develop your best body ever.

The next question should be obvious: what’s the best combination aerobic and strength training workout? The answer to this is swimming. Swimming is the ultimate aerobic conditioner as well as muscle builder. Thanks to the buoyancy you experience underwater, your muscles can concentrate more on working than on supporting your body. Doing all those laps, though, requires a great deal of aerobic stamina. Thus all of your body’s systems get a thorough workout when you swim. One recommended program is to swim a certain number of laps in the pool but on each lap, swim a different style. On your first lap, swim freestyle to get into the groove and warm your muscles. On your second lap, swim breaststroke. Do backstroke on the third. Rotate the strokes so that your muscles are continually surprised and challenged. Do this as your swimming workout four to five times a week and you will be amazed at the change in your body both in shape and in endurance.

The smart exerciser knows that there’s no choosing between cardiovascular exercise and weight training. The best programs always incorporate a variety of the two to provide maximum development and strength. Start adding your own combination workouts to your schedule and be delighted as your body starts to truly reinvent itself.

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Swimming and Water Aerobics

Swimming should be the king of all workouts for its user-friendly status and low stress on the body. If you fit in three 45-minute swimming workouts every week, you will see major changes in your body in just two to three weeks. Your body becomes buoyant in the water, meaning that it is supported by the water and does not have to depend on the muscles nearly as much. If you just stand still in the pool, your muscles will have very little to do, but when you start swimming at a brisk pace your muscles become involved with pushing your body through the water – not an easy task. That’s why swimming burns so many calories; the muscles work almost twice as hard as in land workouts and torch up to three times as many calories. Challenge yourself by swimming one lap breaststroke, one lap backstroke, and still another lap butterfly. Freestyle is good but you burn far more calories when you mix it up and challenge the body to respond.

Water aerobics offer the same support as swimming but instead of propelling your body from one end of the pool to another you stand in place in the water and use the water’s resistance to build muscle and burn calories. Water aerobics frequently use accessories for strengthening workouts but if you don’t have any, don’t worry! Just go to your pool and perform the same toning exercises that you would do in the gym. Squats, lunges, leg lifts – when done under water, these movements become more challenging and require muscles to work harder, resulting in a higher calorie. The best part is that the support of the water cuts the stress on joints and can help people with arthritis and other joint disorders to get exercise back in their lives.

Power Walking (at home)

A power walking life up to its name and requires you to put out a lot more power than a stroll around the block. In power walking, you swing your arms back and forth as you walk briskly – this helps to burn calories as well as propel you through your walk faster. Increasing the speed will boost your calorie burn even higher. An excellent variation for a power walking routine is to add arm movements a few days per week. As you walk briskly, raise your arms overhead and bring back down to the pace of your walk. This can seriously raise your heart rate and increase your fat burn.

Power Walking (at the gym)

Power walking at the gym is as easy as hopping on the nearest programmable treadmill and setting off. If you are not sure how to program the treadmill, ask a trainer or knowledgeable friend to show you how. You should choose a walking route that includes inclines and changes to surprise and challenge your muscles. Most treadmills that offer these walking programs talk you through the route so that you are alarmed with the incline increases. Use the same variation from the home power walking and add arm movements to increase heart rate and calorie burn.

Belly Dancing

Belly dancing won’t burn quite as many calories as swimming or power walking, but for sheer fun and novelty this workout can’t be beat. Belly dancing has become wildly popular across the nation in the past few years and nearly all gyms offer at least one class for interested parties. You will work your hips, thighs and waistline in a typical class as well as increase your aerobic capacity. And who knows, your belly dancing skill might come in handy some day!

Ashtanga Yoga

The most physical form of yoga is Ashtanga yoga, which uses the same traditional yoga poses but incorporates powerful aerobic conditioning at the same time. You will move quickly and powerfully in a fast-paced routine that is led by a certified instructor who is experienced in moves that boost your heart rate and burn the calories. Ashtanga yoga is still relatively new in some places and it may be difficult to find a class at first, but more and more gyms are offering classes. You can find Ashtanga videos at stores nationwide, so you may want to consider having your own private session at home.

    

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