Last quarter, we are going to step up on the challenging and planning. We are building habits that progresses your physics and develops your mental health.

Per Olsson, Strength stairs

Theme

Hiit, heavy and light right

Takeaway(s)

• If you exercise smart and intense in the right way it becomes easier to create a habit.
• Muscles, both mental and physical, needs to be challenged with weights, intensity, length and in the way to exercise to progress.

Purpose

To train smarter, heavier, more intense and developing. You will be challenged both physically and mentally now, all the time with your motivation and status as a starting point. It will be a little for the heart, a little for the brain and a little for the muscles because all good things are three. Suggestions for training schedules and exercise suggestions can be found below.

To keep writing in your diary so you can go back and reflect. As usual when you exercise, recovery is important and this month you will have to take responsibility for getting it done, you will receive our suggestions for a suitable recovery in future challenges.

Take the schedule, apply the principles on your favorite exercises, adapt it to suit your everyday life and communicate it to your surroundings. It is good for your success if more people are aware of what you do for your sustainable health .

The change is made, if possible, together with colleagues, schoolmates, friends or family. The changes you make should be at a level so that it feels positive and it should help you stay motivated for more and other improvements and changes in future challenges.

Remember to Find a role model and compare you with yourself, hence you decide what is heavy and intense.

Target group

You who want to create more structure in your life, getting more out of your exercise, sleep, recovery, breath and nutrition. And that want to take conscious steps towards a sustainable health.

Activities

So, this month is about raising the pulse, exercising smart for the muscular systema and on top of that we add some cognitive training to get a holistic effect. Smart for sustainability and effect so to say.

The thought is that you will get a couple of principles to apply to make your favorite exercises smarter, heavier and more intense without adding more weight, time or resistance.

HIIT all out for better endurance

A high-intensity ride on an exercise bike, regular bike, rowing machine, walk or whatever you can think of. The idea is that you warm up for a couple of minutes, maximize the intensity and speed for 20 seconds, rest for 3 minutes and then do this three laps. Research on McMasters University (there are of course several sources) shows that this can give as good a result as cardio for 30-50 minutes. Smarter training in other words.

Keep in mind that the habit of holding on for a long time still needs to be practiced, if we look at, for example, long running, rowing, or cycling trips where tendons, back, hands and so on need to get used to.

Stop and do more repetitions with lighter weight and resistance for a heavier result

The recipe is 30 reps, 60% of 1RM resistance and a clear stop. Again the scientists at McMaster University and Sport university of Köln that has found some hacks you can do to exercise smart for a heavy effect. It is about getting a similar effect on muscle strength doing many repetitions with lighter weights/resistance as if you exercised with low number of repetitions and high resistance (close to 1RM)

Challenge the brain for double effect

Researchers have shown that if the physical exercise is done with a little bit cognitive challenges, a larger part of the brain is used in the exercise, the brain becomes more receptive to more exercise and depending on the cognitive challenge you add, you can postpone certain dementia diseases.

If you do something that challenges balance, mobility, focus and so on, it is good, and we want you to put on an extra level of cognitive training.

What you should do during the warm-up on one of the fitness sessions and one of the strength sessions is that you:

• Count down in steps of three and start on 18. So instead of counting 1,2,3…n you count 15, 12, 9…-n

Schedule

Here is our suggestion for your schedule, as you can see it focus the exercise to workdays to emphasize recovery during weekends. You are of course free to set your own schedule.

Diary, reflection and together for more success

Just like previous challenges, look in your diary and reflect every now and then what worked for you.

Go through your program with your surrounding for support and perhaps a exercise buddy or two?

Summary

• Please commenct below how you combine different physical exercises and regimes with cognitive challenges.
• Keep it simple, continue writing your diary as a part of your sustainable change.
• Give exercise changes at least three months of time so it is properly tested.

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