Early Morning Workouts/Strength Training Combo

I've read quite a few posts from those of you who enjoy working out early of a morning. It sounds like a lovely idea to me seeing as my days are generally full. At any rate, I tried working out the other morning before breakfast and ended up dizzy/light-headed along with what felt like my heart racing more so than usual. It scared me a bit and I haven't done that since. The thing is, if I eat, I have to wait about 30 minutes before working out because I end up with an upset stomach.

My workouts are generally around an hour long and I'm also going to start a new workout routine containing 40 minutes (or so) of Tae Bo Cardio and a strength training program I just got finished putting together. I haven't tried this program as of yet, but I'm guessing that it should take me around 30 minutes to complete. If correct, this should put my daily workouts at around 1 hour and 10 minutes. Which should be fine. However, with that much time spent working out, it really pushes my morning time. I can deal with getting up earlier in order to workout. What I'm worried about is having to eat first because of my feeling dizzy if I don't. Then, waiting 30 minutes before I workout. This would push me at getting up around 2 hours early, whew!

If anyone has any suggestions, please post them. Thanks much.

 

Part two:

I recently read a post where the poster was looking for opinions about her newly created workout routine. I'd like the same if any of you know much about strength training. All the strength training is going to be at 3 sets of 12 reps.

Monday:

Cardio - 40 minutes which should also provide as pre-strength training warm-up and stretching.

Upper Body

- Shoulders - Front Raise, Shoulder Press, and Upright Row

- Biceps - Bicep Preacher Curl, Hammer Curl, Curl

- Triceps - Overhead Extensions, Tricep Kickbacks, and Tricep Skullcrunchers

 

Tuesday:

Cardio

Lower Body

- Quads and Hips - Squats, Plie, and Lunges

- Hams and Glutes - Bridge Pose, Leg Curl, and Ball Rollout (I use a stability ball)

- Calves - Calf Raises

 

Wednesday:

Cardio

Abs, Back and Chest

- Abs - Ball Crunch, Ball Oblique Crunch, 180 Ball Crunch

- Back - Shrugs, Bent Over Row, Dead Lift

- Chest - Inclined Chest Press, Declined Chest Press, Pull Overs, Ball Chest Press

 

Thursday:

Cardio

Upper Body

- Shoulders - Bent Over Lateral Raise, L-Lifts, Lateral Raise

- Biceps - Bicep Preacher Curl, Hammer Curl, Concentration Curl

- Triceps - Overhead Extensions, Tricep Kickbacks, Tricep Skullcrunchers

 

Friday:

Cardio

Lower Body:

- Quads and Hips - Lying Side Leg Raises, Adductor Squeezes, Lunges

- Hams and Glutes - Bridge Pose, Leg Curls, Ball Rollouts

- Calves - Calf Raises

 

Saturday:

Cardio

Abs, Back and Chest

- Abs - Ball Crunch, Ball Oblique Crunch, Standing Leg Raises

- Back - Back Extensions, Reverse Fly, Bent Over Row

- Chest - Inclined Chest Fly, Declined Chest Fly, Pull Overs, Ball Chest Fly

 

Sunday: Off Day

 

Please note that I did not include any kind of pushups, pullups, or the like because I'm physically not fit enough to do them as of yet. As I progress, I intend to slowly add them to my routines. Also, thanks to another site that gives very good information to beginners like me, I now have five different workout methods I can use in order to vary my workouts once every month. For instance, I'll be starting with the Basic Method in September. In October, I'll be going for the Pyramid Method. In November, the Superset Method. In December, back to Basic. If I still end up in a plateau with this strategy, I have a couple more I can try.

Thoughts, suggestions and critiques are most certainly welcome and appreciated.

It sounds like a good program, the only thing I have read is you should do weight lifting before cardio not after.  That way your muscles are not fatigued and you can lift more weight.

About feeling sick I used to get that way.  Now I wake up have a cup of coffee and a piece of fruit, If i am really hungry I will have pb with it.  By doing your weight lifting first you should not become so dizzy.  Maybe start with your strongest muscle group first and let your body wake up a little bit. If you are working out at home just take brakes if you have to and eat a few bites.

You don't have to eat a full meal before working out. Try to get a bit of protein--cheese, an egg, a cup of non-fat yogurt. A very small bit of food can do wonders and should not make you sick.

Alternatively, eat a late night snack or set the alarm an hour before you need to get up, eat a quick snack, sleep another hour and then get up for the work out. See it that works. Your cell phone should have more than one alarm to make this easy to do!

good luck.

 It kinda depends on what you're doing - pre-breakfast cardio has some teeny metabolic advantage that might conceivably leading to a few more grams of fat loss, but probably not - your body has a preferred fat/carbs/protein fuel mix ratio and if you try to skew it by exercising in a carb-depleted state your body will make a special effort to save fat and expend carbs later in the day, since you've disrupted its preferred balance.

 So over a 24-hour period your body ends up using roughly the same percentages of macronutrients no matter what you get up to with the "fat burning zones" and "fasted cardio" training - your body's pretty clever like that.

 Now, pre-breakfast cardio does have a point if it's the only way you're going to get some in, and it's vaguely possible that there's a metabolic advantage to pre-breakfast fasted cardio in the fat burning zone and then high-intensity strength training in the evening - Dr. Lonnie Lowery certainly thinks so and I'm not about to argue with the president of the American Society of Exercise Physiologists, but pre-breakfast strength training is still just crazy talk :-P

 Try a protein shake of some kind a little before your workout - in general most supplements are a waste of money but in specific cases they can help, and you're probably in the group who'd benefit from having 0.5-1 scoop of protein about 10-20 minutes before you start your workout.

 Whether you do weights or cardio first depends a bit on intensity, but if you're doing anything much rougher than a walk you're better off with weights first; unless you're a college-age male endurance athlete in which case it doesn't matter which order you do it in.

 I don't suppose you've suddenly woken up male this morning though :-P

 In general it's sufficient to do 3 sets of 8-12 reps for any one particular plane of motion when you're first starting out - multiple exercises and isolation exercises are pretty much pointless until you've trained sufficiently to have identifiable weaknesses in your kinetic chain. So think in terms of pushing and pulling when you plan your exercises - you can push and pull in a horizontal and vertical direction for upper body, and for legs you can squat, deadlift and lunge/stepups. Which translates into bench press and rows in the horisontal plane, chinups and military press in the vertical plane, plus squats, deadlifts and lunges or step-ups.

 Well, for starters - there's lots of fiddly bits and trying something new is always fun, but for anyone starting out it makes sense to train movements instead of muscles - up until you have identifiable uneven developement of muscles anyway.

 Oh, and if you have poor posture, it makes sense to do two pulling exercises for every pushing exercise; postural imbalances tends to involve forward flexion (aka. hunching over) and are best fixed by strengthening the posterior pulling chain.

 So, in light of that, do you have an idea of how you'd want to redesign your program?

 

Thanks everyone for your input and help.

Melkor, I really appreciate your advice. I am a bit lost though. You're basically saying that I should not do multiple exercises that target the same muscles? So, only one for my tricep, one for the bicep, etc, correct?

Could you please give me more examples of pushing and pulling exercises or are those available online somewhere? I really have no idea what exercises to do. I found all these listed on this site: http://www.strength-training-woman.com/beginn ers-strength-training.html which is the only way I even know the information I know now.

Is this not really a good source of information for someone like me? I tried to go through all the exercises and pick out the ones I thought I could actually do at this point. Then, tried to make a program with those seeing as I truly have no idea what else to do in terms of exercises. Currently, I do workout DVDs.

I certainly do have poor posture. I'm a 6' 1" tall female and have always slumped over. It's odd being taller than most men! But working on posture is definately something I'd like to do. I also have very poor balance. My mother used to tell me that I'd fall walking on flat ground. I don't think it has anything to do with an inner ear issue. Being so tall and not very fit seems to be the culprit.

Now, off to do a few Google searches on these key words:

Kinetic Chain, Posterior Pulling Chain, and Pushing and Pulling exercises for each muscle group.

 

Hmm, seen Lynn's site before and there's some good stuff there, but argh, there's that "toning" word again.

 Every time you see "toning" used about strength training you can pretty much perform a mental search&replace of "toning" with "insufficiently challenging high-rep exercises that will take about 5 years to do what real strength training can accomplish in 5 weeks".

 Lynn isn't quite that bad, but the combination of using 'toning' as anything but an example of bad information and being impressed with SuperSlow in the wrong way certainly sets off red flags. I mean, I though the Superslow study was impressive as well - I've never seen a more flawed study design or a worse experimental methodology in any exercise physiology experiment which is an impressive achievement in some respects, but Lynn didn't catch on to that and writes about Superslow as if it was a serious training method.

 Apart from the obvious flaws though I suppose you can learn a thing or two from Lynn too, but Krista of Stumptuous.com is so much better that I really wouldn't bother; Krista doesn't have all those little flaws that make you go "huh?".

 A kinetic chain consists of all the muscles that work together to exert force in a particular direction or plane of motion - your posterior pulling chain is all the mucles from the heels to your neck that work together to generate force when you're trying to pull something off the floor like with a deadlift for example. That one motion trains all the muscles in the chain, so you don't need to do isolation exercises for specific muscle groups if you're doing the big compound movements - your biceps are part of your horizontal and vertical pulling chains, so when you're doing rows you're also working biceps. And your triceps are part of the pushing chain so when you're dong pressing exercises they're getting a workout. Which means that unless you have strength imbalances between the right and left arm there's very little point to doing biceps curls and triceps extensions in addition to bent-over rows and bench presses or wall pushups.

 The best web site bar none when it comes to workout information and exercise descriptions is exrx.net - though it can be a bit tricky to navigate unless you already have a rough general idea of what you're looking for - like these instructions for developing your own workout.

 Can be a bit involved though, so you might wanna have a look at the List of weight training programs from the FAQ and see if you find a ready-made one that suits your needs.

 Exrx.net also has instructions on how to develop corrective exercise programs, but you might get more mileage out of reading the Neanderthal No More series by Eric Cressey and Mike Boyle ;)

Well, aren't you simply heaven-sent. Thank you very much for the tips and information. Information itself is key with me seeing as I'm new to all this. Trying to get in shape and develope a bit of strength/muscle is quite hard when you don't even know where to start.

I'll be doing a ton of research with these sources you posted. I could kick myself though. I just bought this new Stability Ball yesterday so that I could do those workouts, heh. Maybe I can fit it into something else.

Hey, I have a stability ball too, it's a useful tool for several exercises - no need to kick yourself :) The rollout for example, is a great exercise for abs, glutes and hamstrings, and is excellent balance training. And unstable surface training has its place, plus the ball makes a dandy chair, so it's not a waste of your money to have bought one ;)