AL2105,

I'm happy to give you a greater breakdown of my workout schedule:

Daily: 30 min of Cardio as soon as I get up. I usually do either a fitness walk (to Starbucks), or, if the weather is bad, treadmill cross training. My treadmill has a preset program that gives me a series of flats and hills (12% grade) and I hike the hills (3-4mph) and runs the hills (5-6mph). If the weather is great, and I'm in the mood, I'll do 7-8 miles on the road bike through varied terrain.

Monday is a high intensity day: 60 min at lunch at 24hr Fitness doing a Group X class: Spinning. It's instructor-led with great music. 60 min after work of either elliptical trainer, treadmill crosstraining or road bike. 120 minutes in the evening at 24hr Fitness at another Group X class: 1 hour of Spin class followed by 1 hour of BootCamp (which is 40% Spinning, 20% Step-Aerobics and 40% Weight-Training).

Tuesday is a light-intensity day: 60 min at lunch doing either fitness walking or fitness housework (my own concept), or maybe 15-16 miles on the bike. 60 minutes after work again doing a fitness walk (fitness walks are just quick-paced walks) or 15-16 mile bike ride.

Wednesday is a high intensity day: 60 min at lunch at a 24hr Fitness Group X class: 50% Step-Aerobics-Express and 50% Weight-Training. (My weight-training (resistence-training) days are Monday PM, Wednesday PM, Friday PM and Sunday AM; thus giving my stressed muscles at least 24 hours to recover, mend and rebuild stronger.) 60 min after work doing either elliptical trainer, treadmill crosstraining or road bike. 120 min in the evening at another 24hr Fitness Group X class: 1 hr of BootCamp (40% Spinning, 20% Step-Aerobics and 40% Weight-Training) followed by 1 hour of Coached Weight-Training.

Thursday is a light intensity day: 60 min at lunch doing either fitness walking or fitness housework, or maybe 15-16 miles on the bike. 60 minutes after work again doing a fitness walk or 15-16 mile bike ride.

Friday: 60 min at lunch at 24hr Fitness doing BootCamp again and 120 min after work doing either elliptical trainer, treadmill crosstraining or road bike.

Saturday: 3 hours of road cycling on a sponsored ride during daylight savings. During non-daylight savings months, I may do 3 hours of hiking or even home remodeling if the weather is bad.

Sunday: 3 hours of mountain biking, pretty much all year-round.

75% of my workout is cardio at my aerobic threshold, but I am always trying to push the limit up slightly. 25% resistance training with 24 hours of recovery inbetween. I consider the mountain biking resistence training because me and my friends climb some fairly long and steep hills. I am fortunate in that I live less than a mile from a mountainous ridge with great bike trails. I also feel fortunate that California has so many sponsored century rides, nearly one every weekend within an hour or two from my home.

I try to keep my routine varied, this keeps it interesting and reduces the chance of repetitive stress injury.

On your question on Glycogen stores, it really varies per person. Some ultra-lean, long distance marathoners run an entire race on their stored gylcogen. They can economically burn 2000 calories of their stored gylcogen and finish 26 miles, amazing! Some less-lean, out-of-shape people can burn through their entire gylcogen supply in less than 20 minutes, very uneconomically. It really depends on your physique.

J,

P.S. to AL2105: 2 a days 2-3 days a week is great! Keep up the great work! I stay at my routine because I really like it. I like the way it helps me feel and I always want to come back for more. That's why I say that you should listen to your body, monitor your heart rate, and check how you feel. Experiencing the excerise "high" is so much better then "bonking" when you hit the wall.

Thanks for the detailed breakdown, J! Its motivating to see someone who can fit all that into one week.

The bootcamp you attend sounds pretty interesting. The bootcamps I've heard of consist of basically calisthenics. Do you hop from one exercise to the other or do they finish the spin bike portion, then move on to the next thing, etc? And incorporating the weights, is it like a Bodypump class where you lift the weights to music, without changing the weights used? The reason I'm asking is I might try to recreate something like that to use on my own.

I vary my routine alot. Sometimes its weights, sometimes calisthenics, sometimes sprints with weight vest, etc. Today was the 'deck of cards' routine, where each suit represents a different exercise and you do the number of repetitions of that exercise equal to the number on the card. For example, clubs are squats, so 9 of clubs = 9 squats. Flip the next card, diamonds are pushups, 10 of diamonds = 10 pushups and so on. If you turn the cards as quick as possible you burn through a deck in about 25 minutes. Then I hit the treadmill with 20# vest and did hill sprints, almost just as you described in your workout.

Thanks again. As they say, the devil is in the details
AL

Hey AL,

The BootCamps vary with the instructor, some do one portion and then finish and move on to the next portion, some instructors like to rotate through for the entire workout, doing a weight segment, then spin, then aerobics, then back to weights, spin, aerobics, etc, for the entire hour.

The workouts are always done to lively music. I usually have 4 or 5 preset weights that I use. I'll have a couple 8lb, 10lb and 12.5lb hand weights, for the smaller muscle groups; and a heavier barbell or two, sitting right next to me, for the bigger muscle groups. Sometimes we stop and change the weights if we are doing an excersize that we don't always do.

J

Oh, one more thing AL,

The gym that I workout at subscribes to the S.E.T. concept. The S.E.T. concept (Strength and Endurance Training) means that each muscle group will get multiple sets of high reps. We'll typically do 3 or 4 sets of 15-20 reps with varying degrees of muscle tension. Flexing for 3 counts and releasing for one, flexing for 2 counts and slowly releasing for 2, slow motion flex for 4 counts and slow motion release for 4, singles, holding a tension for up to 16 counts, and doing dungens (flexing with constant tension for 16 counts).

This kind of workout tends to create a lean physique, rather than a bulky one.

J.