Most people believe we need to be in the gym for extended periods of time, doing complicated movements to see muscle growth and definition. Our programs and trainers cater to this belief, having women do 30 minutes or more of cardio on top of a strength workout.
 
We know it doesn’t have to be that way anymore, studies support the effectiveness and efficiency of high intensity training. Working out doesn’t need to take up 1/8th of our waking hours every day and it doesn’t need to be confined to the gym.
 
If you enjoy long workouts, I’m not here to tell you to stop doing something you really like. However, if you regularly do long workouts because you believe they’re the most effective for weight loss, burning calories or even increasing cardio health, I’m here to teach you otherwise.
 
Let’s talk about why long workouts aren’t worth your time.
 
1. It takes too long to get a good workout.
Most bodybuilding style workouts are split into body parts, ie: chest, back, legs, arms, etc. This style of training might be perfect if you’re trying to look like Arnold and step on stage, but for most people’s goals, its inefficient. The single body part split method can build some serious muscle, when done correctly, but it doesn’t address full-body, functional strength.
 
Workouts that include full body movements and/or an array of exercises to target the whole body are more effective at eliciting a cardio response, burning fat and training stabilizer muscles. Creating a higher intensity through total body training leads to greater fat oxidation capabilities and a better cardio response.
 
Have you ever done standard bicep curls and felt breathless and sweaty? Doubtful.
Have you ever done thrusters and not wanted to die after? Also, doubtful.
 
Full body workouts get more done in less time.    
 
 
2. It lacks intensity.
Longer conditioning or bodybuilding style workouts aren’t easy to keep up the pace because they’re longer and we know if we start out fast, we’ll fade before we’re halfway through. This means we automatically keep the intensity lower, which is fine because the workout is longer, but then we miss out on some of the benefits of high intensity training.
 
One of the reasons that high intensity training is beneficial especially for women, is it increases our levels of Human Growth Hormone (HGH). HGH is similar to testosterone in that it aids in muscle building and fat loss, however, as women we have higher concentrations of it for human reproduction.

HGH isn’t a bad thing, it’s a hormone that our body produces naturally to make babies and to prevent the mother from losing her muscle mass while pregnant. HGH obviously increases when we’re pregnant for that reason, but it’s available in our bodies regularly as well. High intensity training triggers hormone production of HGH which helps us gain some muscle, use more calories and lose more fat.

Intense exercise affects our hunger hormone ghrelin too and its ability to suppress hunger. Short bouts of high intensity exercise actually take blood away from our stomach to be used in our muscles and this alone creates appetite suppression. Whereas longer, less vigorous exercise doesn’t have the same affect.

High intensity training also increases our cardiovascular strength. Studies have shown that intense interval training increases the oxygen capacity of our lungs and rate at which blood travels back to our heart to the same degree as 60+ minutes of solid cardio. If you’re a runner or cyclist, you can benefit from HIIT and it might even help your sport of choice. And if you’re a meathead (like me) you’ll be surprised at how quickly your cardiovascular health improves.

3. You don’t have time for it.
What’s the effectiveness of a workout if you don’t do it?None.The number one barrier I hear to workout consistency is feeling like we don’t have enough time for it.
 
Often, we’re given a program or are coached by a trainer and the workouts are fairly lengthy. About a half hour of weights followed by another half hour of cardio, add a warm-up/cool down period for the workout and you can be looking at 90 minutes in the gym. We’re led to believe this style of workout is the most effective because we’re working on strength and cardiovascular health in one workout, but it’s a loooong workout. This style of workout may work for some people, but if it’s our only template, it can lead to a lot of missed workouts.
 
If we don’t have time for our workouts, they’re inherently ineffective!
 
Long workouts aren’t always the most ideal or efficient; this realization is the main premise of RLFitAtHome. It’s a 30-day program that incorporates HIIT and circuit training with bodyweight movements to help you get stronger and leaner with less time commitment than an average program.
If you don’t have access to a gym or don’t want to pay for a membership, you don’t have to and you can still get the results you’re looking for. If you have a busy schedule and feel like long workouts are impossible to commit to, you don’t have to!
RLFitAtHome only requires the power of your body and up to 16 minutes of your time. Fitness is accessible once we realize long hours and tons of money are optional. 
 
If you're wanting to stay or get back on track with fitness, but stress about the time and commitment it takes, this program will seriously be a lifesaver. RLFitAtHome is here to save you time, so you can work out, feel amazing, but not have to stress about long workouts.
 
The program is only available until Sunday, Feb 11th, so get it while it’s here!

With fitness people talk a lot about motivation, how to get it, why we lose it and the magic ways we can capture it. We want to be healthy and live in ways that make us feel good, but sometimes it’s just so damn hard to get to the gym or cook a healthy meal. We look at ourselves and say, “where did all my motivation go?!”.
 
I’m here to tell you that motivation isn’t effortless and it’s not to be treated as a fleeting emotion that comes and goes at it pleases. Truth is, the onus is on us. We don’t like to believe that motivation is in our control because when we feel out of it and unmotivated, it’s easier to blame that on the fickleness of motivation, than take responsibility and get to work.
 
There are two key factors to motivation: having a reason and determination.
 
Having a reason is often referred to as “knowing your why”, it’s the intention and explanation for why you want to act it the first place. Knowing the why challenges us to dig deep in our experience and struggles to figure out what we really want. We say we want to lose 20lbs, but what’s the reason we want that?
Because want to fit into our little black dress better. And what’s the feeling behind that black dress? We remember a date night we had when we first started dating our husband and we wore that dress and felt fantastic, the night was fun and it was a time when we felt beautiful. That’s the why. It’s not really the 20lbs and it’s not even the black dress, it’s getting that feeling back.    
 
Finding our reason isn’t simple, it takes some thought and sometimes brings up realizations that we aren’t too happy about. Given the black dress example, we could realize we want to lose 20lbs because we want to feel sexy again and maybe we realize that the 20lbs has nothing to do with solving the real issue! Instead we could just need more time and intimacy with our hubby. This is the reason we often don’t go searching for our why because just wanting to lose 20lbs, in an effort to look better, is easier than trying to revamp our relationship.
 
But it’s also why having a reason is so important. Maybe revamping things gives you lighter spirits and more energy and you feel like working out is less of a chore again. Taking care of yourself feels right because you feel better.
  
 
Determination is also known as: perseverance, dedication and resolve. It follows finding your reason because it’s hard to be determined about something you’re not certain of.
 
It’s much easier to be determined about a why that means a lot to us. A wishy-washy reason for losing 20lbs will result in subpar resolve. At the same time, without a sense of determination, our why can dissolve back into the clutter of our minds. People often confuse motivation and determination to be the same thing, but determination is the assuredness in our why that causes us to act.
 
Our reason is the catalyst for our action and determination is what keeps stoking the fire of motivation.
 
Determination is where the real effort comes it. While finding our reason can be tricky, it’s the determination we put behind it that really causes us to work. The days when we don’t want to put in the effort or fight in the arena are the times when our determination will need to kick in for us to make progress. In fact, those will be the days of the most progress because we defy what we’ve always done and always thought possible.
 
Motivation isn’t a temperamental and fleeting thing, it’s actually rooted in conviction and tenacity for something we care about. When you’re wondering where your motivation has gone and why it won’t come back, dig deep, find your reason and then get determined AF.
 
 
I put out great content like this every week here on my blog, and also to my email subscribers. Weekly emails usually go out Thursday mornings and you can add your name here to get them too! 

I read an article yesterday about a girl who was trying to change her life around. She wanted to be more productive and successful with her days, so she decided (in her words) to live “perfectly” (she put perfectly in quotes, but that idea alone is enough to make me cringe) as a life experiment.
 
Her daily/weekly goals were to:
-spend less money (she had a budget set)
-workout 5x a week
-eat out only once a week/meal prep most of her meals
-wake up early
-cut out sweets
-cut out alcohol Mon-Thurs
-make sure all her chores and “to-dos” got done each day
 
The article did a mini day-by-day synopsis, if she accomplished her goals and how she felt about her day in general. At the end of each day there was a check list for whether or not each of her goals were reached. Obviously, life happened, shit got messy and she ended up rarely, if ever, accomplishing all her daily goals.
 
I need to give her some credit and say 1) she’s a journalist/blogger, so the point of the experiment was to have something to write about and 2) she had some good takeaways and a positive outlook on the experience.
 
I also have to say that all of her goals are super valid and many of them are universal struggles.
 
However, aside from the living “perfectly” analogy, I hate that she started the process with an “all or nothing” mindset. She had seven different areas of her life she wanted to change and she was determined to change them all at once. It’s the classic New Year’s Resolution mistake of wanting to be a new and better person and be that way now.
 
Was I surprised she didn’t accomplish most of her goals each day? No.
 
Am I surprised when someone’s lofty New Year’s Reso fails by Jan 6th? Nope.
 
Because the best way to set goals isn’t all or nothing, it’s by taking each piece one at a time.
 
This feels like the hard way. We want to change, we want our lives to be different and we want it to happen all at once.
But what’s harder, trying to take on too much, flailing then failing and feeling like shit about ourselves? Or taking baby steps toward change and it feeling manageable and gratifying?
 
Personally, I don’t really like feeling poopy about myself, so I’m gonna go with the second option. :)
If you’re wanting to make some changes or have tried to make changes and failed, here are three quick tips for how to make sustainable change in your life.

1. Take it slow. This should be obvious given the previous part of the blog, but when you’re wanting to make a change, pick one thing to start. If you want to be “healthier” (a general idea), think about what goes into that: more exercise, eat more veggies, drink less alcohol or soda, walk more, etc. Take one of those pieces of the big idea of being healthier and implement it for a week, then add another on the second week and so on. After a month or two, you’ll be living the healthier life you originally imagined and it won’t feel so oppressive or restrictive.
2. Realize you have time. The reason we want to stack goals on top of goals is because we get freaked out that we aren’t meeting our potential right now or we aren’t as “________” as we’d like to be. The best part about reinventing ourselves and striving for more is that we get to do it over the course of our entire lives, it’s a process. There’s always time to add something more and always more that can be added!
3. ​Go easy on yourself. We aren’t perfect and we aren’t meant to live “perfectly”, so don’t try to! There are going to be times when the goals you’re reaching for are tough and you’ll stumble and make mistakes and it’s all okay. Setting goals and making change is about improving ourselves and our lives and if we can’t learn lessons in the process, then what’s the point?

 
It’s a little silly that the “quick tips” aren’t quick fixes at all, but change usually isn’t. I hope you have goals and milestones you’re trying to reach, but I also hope you won’t make the classic mistake of trying to do it all at once. Strive for change, but set yourself up for success too.
 
ps- It's not too late to get the workouts for the 7-day at home workout challenge! It's seven FREE at home workouts with full length videos and explanations. Join now and you can still get a sweet discount on my upcoming RLFitAtHome Program!