How to Lose 26 Pounds a Year by Watching TV!

If you fall into the same category as most modern people, you watch TV at least once a week. Truth be told, you probably watch TV much more than that, if you're average. Most of us have *at least* one program that we watch during the week, whether it be sports programming, a drama, the nightly news, or the Saturday morning cartoons (you know who you are!).

Furthermore, if you fall into the same category as 100% of the people on the planet, your body adapts to the demands that you place on it. What this means is that the more random your exercise becomes, the more favorably your body responds to exercise. This is why individuals who change their exercise routine every 2-8 weeks see more benefit than those who do the same weekly workout routine throughout the entire year.

So where on earth am I going with this? Here it is: I'm going to teach you how to use the randomness of your television programming to design your own home TV workout routine or gym cardio routine. Since you never know what's going to happen, this type of training will keep your body guessing. And if you watch, say, just 2 hours of television per week, this type of training could allow you to burn as much as 600-1600 extra calories, leading to as much as 26 pounds of fat in a single year! I'm going to give you three workout examples that are arranged according to television genres (by the way, this could work with radio as well if you're creative):

Sports:

Choose a Team A and Team B. Ball possession by Team A signifies a superfast interval, so every time Team A has the ball, you go hard, whether it be pedaling faster (bringing the RPM up), increasing the treadmill speed, or raising the elliptical strides per minute. Anytime Team B has possession, you decrease to a moderate pace. Commercial breaks represent superhard intervals, so every time a commercial break shows, you increase the resistance or incline for the first commercial, decrease for the second commercial, increase for the third, and so forth. To continually challenge your body, you can see that this workout would dramatically change for a football game versus, say, a basketball game.

Drama:

Let's use an abdominal workout example. Choose an exercise for 5 major characters in the show. Character 1 would be a crunch, Character 2 could be a side crunch, Character 3 a bridge, Character 4 a bicycle crunch, and Character 5 a reverse crunch. Or, for example, for the legs you could use double leg squats, reverse lunges, side lunges, forward lunges, and calf raises. Every time a character associated with an exercise appears, you perform that exercise. The commercial breaks represent cardio intervals, where you can either perform jumping jacks, step-ups, or jog in place. Use the opening and closing credits for stretching.

Movie:

As you can guess, a movie workout could be fairly long. A good way to approach movie exercises is to associate certain exercises with genre objects in the movie. For instance, during an action film, a police car would represent 10 overhead presses, gunfire would represent standing 10 shadow punches, explosions would represent 10 lunge jumps, and aircraft would represent 10 side planks. Depending on how many "objects" you choose, this can be a very challenging workout. Be sure to choose exercises that allow you to keep your eyes on the screen (primarily standing, seated, or back lying exercises).

I realize that this type of exercise is unconventional, but if conventional routines aren't working for you, or you just want to try something new, a television based workout could be the answer! Try it out and let me know what you think. Remember, by signing up with www.pacificfit.net, you can receive brand new workouts as often as every single week, like the PLATEAU BUSTER, or have a trainer update a customized workout routine once a month. That will keep your body responding!

Until next time, train smart,
Ben Greenfield
M.S. PE, NSCA-CPT, CSCS