Will I still make progress with this schedule?

B

Boomdoggin

0
I'm going to be going away to college next month, so I won't be able to continue working out as much as I've been for the past few months. I would, however, like to continue working out just enough to maintain my current level of fitness and counter whatever forces of unhealthiness await me at college (ie, at least half of my diet being unhealthy, drinking copious amounts of liquor, etc).

This is approximately the schedule I've been working on lately:

Sunday: 1 cardio workout, 1 weightlifting workout (it's a continuously changing cycle), about an hour of stretching
Monday: 1 cardio workout, 1 Tae Kwondo class, about an hour of stretching
Tuesday: 1 weightlifting workout, either 1 cardio workout or 1 Tae Kwondo class, about an hour of stretching
Wednesday: 1 cardio workout, and either another cardio workout or a several-mile run, about an hour of stretching
Thursday: 1 weightlifting workout, 1 Tae Kwondo class, about an hour of stretching
Friday: 1 cardio workout, 1 Tae Kwondo class, about an hour of stretching
Saturday: Day of rest

All of the above is done while keeping a diet which is literally 95% clean, meaning I eat only clean proteins, simple carbs, small amounts of healthy fats, and small amounts of complex carbs.

Once at school, my schedule oughta look more like this:

Sunday: 1 cardio workout, about a half hour of stretching
Monday: 1 weightlifting workout (longer and more intense than the ones I'm doing now), about a half hour of stretching
Tuesday: nothing
Wednesday: 1 weightlifting workout, about a half hour of stretching
Thursday: nothing
Friday: 1 weightlifting workout, followed immediately by 1 cardio workout
Saturday: maybe 1 cardio workout

All of the above being done while eating, for the most part, only a large, healthy breakfast, and a mostly unhealthy lunch and dinner... and getting boozed at least 3 or 4 nights a week :D

Obviously, nobody here can really tell me whether I'm going to continue making any progress once I switch to the new schedule, since nobody can really gauge how much progress I'm making right now. I guess I'm just asking whether or not you all think the new schedule shown above is enough for the average person to maintain whatever their current level of fitness is. Thanks in advance for the input... and I'll understand if this is too vague a topic to warrant a response ;)
 
Why are you doing that much stretching? Since you're dropping your martial arts doing that much stretching will end up with you being hyper-flexible.

I'm not sure what your goals are because you have resistance training and a ton of cardio that seems low intensity steady state for long periods of time. You can't train for endurance and strength at the same time because strength and power production will suffer.

But overall it looks like you'll be pretty physically fit.
 
My hamstrings are unusually tight, so in order to build up their flexibility I usually have to stretch them for several minutes at a time. Flexibility's important to me because some of the kicks I have to do in Tae Kwondo require more flexibility than I currently have. But you're right; I probably don't need to do that much stretching.

You can't train for endurance and strength at the same time because strength and power production will suffer.
Click to expand...

Why is this? Is it just because, since I'm using so much energy for cardio, I won't have any left for strength training? or is there are a more complex reason? (also, I had heard at one point, from this board, don't remember who said it, that 'you can't do too much cardio,' which is why I'm doing so much)

How often could I cardio train without hurting the progress on my strength training routine? Also, would HIIT training be as detrimental to strength training as regular cardio workouts?
 
I'd say 15 minutes of static strethcing should suffice daily. You might get a Yoga video for active flexibility. I can't do the full splits and prob won't ever but at 5'8" I can still kick someone in the head taller than me.

What happens when you train for low intensity steady state you train the type I fibers instead of the type II fibers. Generally weight lifting is a very anaerobic activity unless you're doing super high reps (17+). The conclusions of multiple studies show that aerobic adaptions will win over anaerobic adaptions and so your VO2 max and aerobic conditioning will improve but your strength will take a back seat. However, there are some neat things that happen with aerobic conditioning, like increased capillary density and etc

HIIT is anaerobic in nature and will compliment your strength training. High intensity cardio will improve your recruitment of type II fibers which is what you want for martial arts.

You might try mixing up your cardio with a couple days of steady state for 20-30 minutes working at 70% of your max heart rate and a couple days of HIIT for 20 minutes. I find 100 yard sprint intervals to be nice for HIIT.

Here is what my cardio days look like-
100 yard sprint, 100 yard jog back, rest 60 secondsX6
50 yard sprint, 100 yard jog, 50 yard sprint, rest 90 secondsX4
20 yard sprint, 20 yard walk back, no restX10
And I'm done.
 
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