Winter Cross-Training: Week 2

I know I'm a day late on this, but things have been crazy around here, so hopefully you will forgive me.

This week, we build on the foundation we laid last week. The general principles remain the same, but what we are looking for here is to expand on what we've done with new exercises that work out the same muscle groups. The variety will help you focus on the muscle groups you're working out, rather than focusing on a specific technique or motion.

So, without further ado...

A-Day (Sun, Tue, Thu)
Morning Workout: (Do all of the below four times)

• 50 crunches
• 10 incline press
• 10 lateral raises
• 20 squat-jumps or box jumps

Evening Workout:

• 30-40 minutes light cardio

B-Day (Mon, Wed, Fri)

Morning Workout: (Do all of the below four times)

• 20 dead-lifts with hand weights
• 15 front rows
• 10 pull-ups
• 30 lunges (15 per leg)

Evening Workout:

• 30-40 minutes light cardio

Rest Day (Saturday)

Spooky Halloween Socialism

Happy Halloween, everybody. Not to be outdone by even the spookiest ghoul, Barack Obama has moved to further socialize the pharmaceutical industry, as the New York Times reports.

As we have observed time and time again, every move to command-and-control the pharmaceutical industry results in unintended consequences. As such, this latest move represents a twofold failure in the Administration's cognitive time-horizon.

First, the federales can't seem to foresee the obvious consequences of their own actions. Namely, when they move to further increase the cost of pharmaceutical product production, such production becomes far less attractive to companies and their investors, thereby providing a disincentive to produce medicine. (You may remember that I blogged about this before.) As a result, Obama's latest round of despotism will only further exacerbate the problem.

Second, the government keeps making the same mistakes over and over again, implying that their cognitive time-horizon is so short that they cannot even reflect on the effects of the last time they engaged in similar courses of action.

If medicine in abundance is what we want to see, then we should get out of the way and let medicine producers do what they do best: produce medicine!

UPDATE: The incomparable Paul Gregory published a letter to the Obama Administration this morning from a former Soviet health care planner. It is well worth reading!

Portmanteau of the Day

Arnold Kling coins the phrase "Krulong," which is somewhat like Bennifer or Brangelina:

And then you get what Krulong describe as aggregate demand something which at times sounds to me like newspaper macroeconomics and at other times sounds like intermediate macroeconomics. In any case, they are really certain about it.

Genius. 

Here Comes Trouble

I was asked to demo this song for rehearsal purposes. So I did.

Enjoy!

Let the Idiocy Unfold

As you can imagine (or simply read and read some more), I am no fan of the various "Occupations" going on around the world.

That being said, it would be a serious mistake for any government thug to start nudging the protesters out of the way. The main reason for that is because the occupying mob has no end game, and the sit-in is therefore certain to disperse uneventfully as soon as the weather starts getting prohibitively cold and the national attention span wanes.

The sit-in is self-defeating. If one were truly interested in destroying the Occupy mob, one would simply opt to let it run its course and expose it for the leftist, syndicalist charade that it is. Just like the hippies of the 1960s, today's hippies will ultimately prove to be wholly unstomachable by the general public because the general public does not believe in hateful, resentful class warfare and cheap syndicalist power-grabs. We resisted this crap in the 60s, and we'll do it again if we have to. "Occupy" speaks for no one. The best indicator you have of that is the fact that their whole modus operandi is to profess to be the voice of the majority.

I mean, how many times can the socialists engage in these kinds of cheap antics before people catch on immediately? But anyway...

The statists evidently have a tragically short cognitive time-horizon. They cannot see the mob for the self-defeating herd of cats that it is. So they have instead opted to call out Johnny Long-Arm and engage in pathetic statist spectacles that only serve to legitimize the mob. Here it is slowly imploding in front of their eyes, and they decide to attack. All this, even after watching the world condemn Middle Eastern governments for doing the same (although, clearly not to the same degree). In doing so, the American statists have legitimized the mob's self-comparison to the Arab Spring. Sometimes it's better to let people hang themselves with their own rope, but I wouldn't expect government bureaucrats to understand that.

So now we, the public, are being asked to choose between the statist mob and the statist thugs.

Luckily, we don't have to choose between competing shades of statism. Resist the urge to pick sides. Have the strength to know that the mob and the governments are both wrong. My more cynical side might suggest that all this statist intervention is little more than a ruse to bring the public over to the side of the mob, and grab up some more of our personal liberties, if we have any left, that is. You know, either we favor shutting down the mob (more police government power) or we favor the mob (more government power in the form of economic controls).

There is only one liberty, and it's not a leftist's liberty, nor a rightist's liberty, nor anything else of the sort.

You might call people like you I "the 100%." 

Is Every Business Now a "Monopoly?"

Lately I have been thinking a lot about business models, profits, and so forth. There seems to be a significant difference between "the way things used to be" and "the way things are now."

As a simple illustration, we can look at the market for large home appliances or furniture. There was a time when durability, reliability, and longevity was the major selling point for such things. People would make their purchases based on what they thought would last the longest and provide the most reliable use. Such products often came with a lifetime warranty, or at least a twenty-year warranty. Companies became successful by producing the most preferred product, by earning good will with their consumers, and being the best. If a product failed early, that failure and how it was handled by the company impacted that company's reputation - for better, or for worse. The absolute best producer with the best warranty and best customer service made the most money.

And life was simple.

As certain means of production became much less expensive than the old way, businesses discovered the opportunity to make a profit in a slightly different manner. By manufacturing products of a lower quality and selling them for a much lower price, companies could expand their clientele to people who previously could not afford such products - or who could only afford them in limited quantities.

What companies discovered was that consumers seemed to prefer this approach. It offered consumers the ability to re-design their homes more often, experience the excitement of "new stuff" more frequently, and so forth. These days, most consumers have really warmed up to this approach. It is easy to decorate homes and have a well put-together house on virtually any budget. Companies have ditched the warranties and whittled prices down as low as they can go, even outsourcing manual labor to China or, as in the case of IKEA, to the consumers themselves.

Problem?
So life has changed and while we once used to pay a lot for a little bit of really high-quality stuff, we now have inexpensive, good-looking, disposable stuff in abundance. That this is a boon for society, there can be no question. Those of us who still want the really high-quality stuff have to be willing to pay for it. Very high-quality furniture and appliances are out there for a higher price. Everybody wins because everyone has access to the products that are consistent with their needs and budget. Life is great, right?

Well... Some of you may note that I have sort of cherry-picked my example. Virtually everyone loves IKEA, so no one would ever suggest that the market for furniture has deteriorated.

On the other hand, the market for guitars has changed radically. A few decades ago, every instrument was hand-made by an artisan using pretty much the same components. These days, even very expensive guitars are manufactured by laser-guided machines. But the quality of the materials used varies widely between low- and high-end instruments.

And guitarists don't like playing cheap guitars. So, while everyone has a guitar available at their preferred price-point, the only guitars anyone really wants to buy are the ones with high-quality components, and those are all expensive. Buying guitars can be frustrating because no one wants a cheap guitar. We only buy cheap guitars out of necessity, not out of demand.

Withholding Supply
These days, the most common business model seems to be one of withholding supply.

As our guitar example illustrates, the approach is not to offer the best of the best at the lowest price, but rather to use lower-priced items as incentives to spend more. Rather than offering existing levels of craftsmanship at the lowest possible price, guitar manufacturers simply compromise on build quality and offer the resulting compromise at a lower price than the "real" models. In fact, manufacturers are now offering guitar models with special name extensions, like "SE" or "MIM" to differentiate the lower-quality goods from the higher-quality ones.

Another example of how you might observe this phenomenon is in the "modularization" of software products. What used to be an upgrade to an existing product's functionality is now sold as a separate "module." So you might be able to purchase a cell phone that makes calls, but if you want to send pictures using the camera's built-in phone, you'll need to download a separate software module. At its worst, you will often purchase software that promises to do everything you want it to, only to discover that in order to make that happen, it involves purchasing numerous expensive add-ons.

As you can see, these kinds of business practices are much different than capturing production efficiencies as we described in the furniture examples. This is nothing more than the hallmark behavior of the monopolist: withholding supply in order to raise prices above marginal costs.

Let Me Be Perfectly Clear...
Now, unlike the average weirdo, I do not really have a legal or political problem with companies that choose to engage in business practices of this sort. I don't think "there ought to be a law," nor do I think it represents any major abuse of market power. I'm not saying that.

But as a consumer, I find this kind of behavior annoying to point that it is starting to impact my own market decisions. I no longer want to patronize businesses who engage in cheap tactics to squeeze more money out of me, withholding what they know I want with infuriating teasers to try to dupe me into over-spending for it.

Furthermore, as an economist, I find this behavior preposterous. There are a lot of people out there making far too much money while producing not nearly enough goods and services. A little aprioristic reasoning applied to these situations suggests that their days are numbered.

But perhaps more importantly, it also suggests that the modus operandi of most North American businesses is flawed, and these flaws result in a deadweight loss to society at large. When we stop to consider how far technology has come over the past one hundred years, and compares that to the cheap, brittle phones we carry in our pockets that shatter when dropped, or the fact that we must save up for years just to purchase a guitar that doesn't warp in expected weather conditions, it gets really obvious. We are getting hosed.

The Punchline
The reason I have been thinking about all of this is because I have been mulling over my own entrepreneurial prospects. My ethics are such that I would not feel comfortable engaging in supply games to squeeze my consumers.

What I want is to offer the best services I can at the most attractive price. I want to offer content and quality. I want to offer the best. I will never be able to offer "the best" by playing cheap games that take advantage of my consumers' ignorance or inability to strike a better bargain elsewhere.

Call it professional ethics, if you like. What is sad is that withholding supply seems to be the rule to me, not the exception.

The Cognitive Time-Horizon

Health news agencies are buzzing (example) about a recent study that seems to have discovered a link between certain hormones and weight re-gain after weight loss. The researchers have apparently discovered that after the body loses weight, hormones are secreted that try to get the body to put the weight back on again.

This makes some logical sense, when you think about it. If a healthy person suddenly experiences significant weight loss, it is usually indicative of health problems. The body would want to "compensate for the weight loss" and return the body back to a healthy state. Obese people, on the other hand, find themselves fighting a process that is designed to keep them healthy, but which is triggered at a time that they don't want it triggered.

It is fascinating news that demonstrates an important concept in the Stationary Waves philosophy. I call this concept the cognitive time-horizon. I am unaware of whether or not it exists elsewhere by any other name.

What Is the Cognitive Time-Horizon?
The cognitive time-horizon is the length of time over which a person is capable of conducting some kind of internal cost-benefit analysis.

Let's look at a couple of simple examples:

1. Your friends invite you to spend all next week in Las Vegas. Whether this is a good idea really depends on what your other obligations are. If you have no conflicting work or family obligations, then why not? But if you plan on running a marathon the following months, then the question becomes whether you can afford to compromise your training regimen so close to the event for which you're training. Therefore, according to a one-week time-horizon, you should go on the trip; on a one-month time-horizon, you should not.
2. Your grandma asks you if you'd like another slice of pie. You're still hungry and everyone else is having a second piece, too, so why not? But if you are overweight and have been trying to lose a few pounds, then the question becomes whether you would rather enjoy an extra slice of pie, or whether you might enjoy yourself a bit more if you succeeded in losing a few pounds. Therefore, according to an instantaneous time-horizon, you should eat the pie; on a one-year time-horizon, you should not.

Choices present themselves to us throughout the course of any one day. Our decisions will almost always be different depending on the length of the cognitive time-horizon used to assess the situation.

Happiness and Time

Certain time-dependent choices are no-brainers. It is better to throw someone a great surprise party than it is to reveal the surprise early. It is better to save some money and get a good education than it is to live paycheck to paycheck. It is better to put some money away for the future than it is to spend every red cent you have...

Of course, the vast majority of life's choices aren't so easy. Is it better to postpone working for two more years and get a Master's Degree, or is it better to spend those two years on-the-job acquiring hands-on skills and experience? Is it better to enjoy the finer things of life liberally while you're young enough to appreciate them, or is it better to restrict yourself to a regimented diet and exercise plan from a very early age?

The longer the time horizon, the more complex the issues involved. Eating a piece of grandma's pie right now, on an instantaneous time-horizon is always a "yes." Extending the time-horizon a few hours presents the pie as a trade-off between pie now or having a healthy appetite at dinner time. Extending the time-horizon across the course of a month presents a choice between eating treats regularly and having a healthy body and figure. Extending the time-horizon to decades into the future presents as trade-off between grandma's pie and diabetes.

Each different time-horizon presents its own unique version of what yields the greatest happiness. 

Too short a time-horizon results in a life lived purely according to whim. Whatever makes sense or feels good in the moment is what you will choose to do. Whatever good or bad things are happening now is what you believe about the future in perpetuity. The past, future, and present all become the same thing and therefore the relationship between each (and virtually every cause-and-effect relationship for that matter) completely disappears.

Too long a time-horizon may seem silly at times, but is otherwise not really a problem. Those with a very long cognitive time-horizon are perfectly capable of engaging in shorter-term analyses.

Thus, people in general should always seek to develop and extend their cognitive time-horizons.

The Importance of the Cognitive Time-Horizon

More and more, I have come to the belief that people have difficulty assessing longer-range cognitive time-horizons. It is this "psycho-epistemological" shortcoming that prevents many people from being able to understand the Austrian theory of money and the business cycle. It is also this shortcoming that leads people to drug abuse, self-destructive behaviors, poor moral choices, and objectionable politics.

You may not always agree with what I happen to say about morality and politics, but it is extremely crucial that you approach every issue from both a short and a long time-horizon in order to get a better sense of the issues involved.

In the end, it really comes down to being able to conceive of how one event impacts one, ten, fifty, or one-hundred future events. The more foresight you have, the better your understanding of every issue you encounter.

Conclusion

I am adding the phrase "cognitive time-horizon" to the Stationary Waves Lexicon for future reference. I am also creating a new blog post label for this term. In the future, I will make an effort to relate more and more issues to the concept of an extended, long-run horizon of analysis. 

This Deserves to Be Shared

Prof. Paul Gregory writes an invaluably interesting blog. You can find it here.

His most recent post deserves to be read by a wider audience, as the following excerpt demonstrates:  

The Soviet leadership did not publish deliberately falsified statistics. They just dropped statistical reporting when things went bad. Outside observers could get a sense for how well the economy was doing by the number of pages in the annual statistical handbook.

It seems as if Brussels bureaucrats have learned from Soviet practice.

The European Union Commission, in its latest proposed regulations of financial markets, wants to prevent rating agencies from releasing their reports on European Union member countries. According to the Commission spokesperson: “When the Commission comes to the conclusion that a rating is not correct, it can set it aside for a specified period of time.” The temporary ban should prevent rating agencies from pushing debtor countries deeper into crisis, the spokesperson declared.

Bangla Word of the Day

পড়াশোনা (porashona) noun - Studies, reading

Painting Themselves Into a Corner

The CBC reports that the mayor of Vancouver is calling to meet with the "Occupy Vancouver" mob in order to figure out how to end the situation peacefully. Mayor Gregor Robertson hopes to open up a dialogue with the group to figure out a way forward. Meanwhile, the occupiers reportedly have no intention of leaving "until their message is heard."

But I think it's highly unlikely that the occupiers have any functional exit plan worth talking about. They have essentially created a situation that they are incapable of putting a stop to. Really, it's a question of methodology. For all intents and purposes, the "Occupy" hippies are essentially staging a large-scale sit-in.

Now, the methodology of a sit-in is to create a massive immovable object that makes life so inconvenient that the other party is forced to relent to the protestors' demands.

However, the occupiers have never produced any set of specific demands, nor do they have any intention of doing so. Some of them are classic hippies, some of them are transients, some of them are anarcho-syndicalists, some of them are uncategorizable leftists. The only thing they really have in common is a self-proclaimed adherence to leftist ideology.

Now, some of them may be more moderate than others. There has been a bit of blowback from those moderate protestors who insist that they are not, in fact, anti-hard-work or self-determination. They simply object to a "corrupt system."

Like all moderate leftists, however, these folks are practical nihilists. They make broad, nebulous claims like "the system is corrupt" or "banksters are corrupt" or "we need regulations" without ever making a particularly clear, specific claim. In part, this is just the classic shortcoming of moderate leftism; the modus operandi of moderate leftism is to try to get "the other side" to concede the broadest possible point and thereby score a few leftist policy points, by degrees. But the other, more important point, is that people who neither believe in ideological leftism nor ideological rightism, nor ideological libertarianism, nor outright authoritarianism are nothing more than people who believe "something," but can't really articulate what it is.

This is what I mean by "practical nihilism." In practice, they believe nothing in particular.

But back to what I was saying about painting themselves into a corner. With no list of demands, the sit-in has no conceivable end-point. The occupiers simply plan on occupying until they cannot possibly sit there any longer.

If I were the city, I would simply wait it out. If you're not sitting on the dirt protesting the system, then you're sitting in the comfort of your own home, going to work, having fun, and enjoying all the conveniences of modern life.

Clearly, those of us who do not support the "Occupy" mob have every strategic advantage. Let them protest. They will go home eventually.

Bangla Word of the Day

নাখুশ (nakhush) adj. - Disappointed

Why Two Workouts Are Easier Than One

At this point, some of you may be thinking, If we're just beginning to build up a fitness base, why does Ryan assume we can work out twice a day? Another way you might be thinking this thought is, Twice a day? Working out twice a day?? What are you, crazy? I'm not that hard-core.

So is working out twice a day "hard-core?" Not at all! In fact, I believe that twice-a-day workouts are actually a little easier on your body than once-a-day workouts. Here's why:

Humans Throughout the Ages
In ancient and prehistoric times, human beings were engaged in a constant, daily struggle to survive. We had to keep moving in order to find food. We had to keep working, keep going, never stopping. The cost of not doing so was starvation and death. Our only thought was to survive, therefore there was really no such thing as "spare time," except an hour or two at night when the exhaustion finally set in, but it was still too early to sleep. These are our physiological roots. The human body was designed to endure such circumstances. It endured then - it can endure today.

Today, only an ever-shrinking subset of us know what it's like to be engaged in physical activity all day long. Only those of us who engage in hands-on farm work, construction, and labor-intensive manufacturing know what it's really like to run around and lift things and pull things and hit things and swing things all day long, six days a week, sometimes for twelve hours at a time.

Even fifty years ago, the number of people who were engaged in physical activity basically all day long was much higher than it is today. That's only really a generation ago.

"Once-A-Day-Only" Makes No Sense
What I'm getting at is that the idea of being sedentary all day long and then getting one good, hard workout in once a day is not merely a modern phenomenon - it is a phenomenon utterly unique to this generation. Prior generations moved around and were active all day long, even your parents and grandparents. So, physiologically speaking, there is no reason to believe that you can't be active all day long.

If you think about it, there is no good reason to believe that a species of organisms that were designed to hunt-and-gather on the Serengeti plains would suddenly become delicate, sedentary creatures that can only endure thirty-to-sixty minutes of organized movement per day without hurting themselves.

No one is "hard-core" for working out twice a day. It's not "extra," and it's not "intense." Indeed, done correctly, working out multiple times per day is nothing more than returning your body to something more closely resembling the human body in a state of nature. It is certainly more difficult than sitting on the couch and eating Doritos, but definitely not beyond the pale. Our bodies were intended to be active like this. The more active, the more we are reflecting our evolutionary development. It's only logical.

Competitive athletes know that if a person neglects to warm-up prior to major competition, he or she stands a good chance of pulling a muscle. Extending that logic to a slightly longer time horizon, it makes some sense that it is potentially much harder on your body to kill yourself during a single, isolated workout once a day than to engage in regular, ongoing physical activity throughout the day.

For these reasons, I think a once-a-day workout regimen may not be the most logical approach to fitness.

You Can Do It!
The point of all of this is that there's nothing "special" about a person who works out more than once a day. Such people don't have anything "extra" in their bodies that allows them to push themselves to limits inaccessible to the rest of us. We can all do it! That's good news!

The key is simply this: While a once-a-day workout regimen focuses on completely exhausting the muscles over the course of a short period of time, a twice-a-day workout regimen is a little more relaxed. This very fact is why I think two-a-day workouts might be even easier for beginners than a once-a-day regimen.

Think of the last time you went to the gym: what did you do? Quite likely, you stretched a bit, maybe got in a light cardio warm-up, and then you hit the weights hard. You likely pushed yourself as far as you were willing to go that day and then slogged your way over to the cardio machine to go for as long as you could before you got too tired, too hungry, and too bored to keep going. Then you went home.

Two-a-day workouts are a lot more fun than this.

Let's take my Week 1 winter training workouts for example. Today, I pulled myself out of bed and went downstairs to work out. Rather than blasting my muscles with the world's most award-winning weight workout, I took things slowly. I started with the deadlifts because it is a calm, almost relaxing motion. I took deep breaths and concentrated on the way my body felt as I did them. I didn't worry too much about how much weight had in my hands, I just concentrated on having good form and enjoying the motion. I approached each one of the exercises this way, and in between each set of four exercises, I checked my email and read the news. Easy.

Tonight, my only obligation at the gym is to put in 30 to 40 minutes of cardiovascular exercise. I don't need to worry about blasting my muscles and then killing myself on the treadmill. My only responsibility is to do some relaxing stretches and then get a quick bout of cardio in.

The reason I can relax so much as I do these workouts is because I know that - at any given workout - I have "another workout in the bank" for today. No need to push too hard in the morning, because I have a cardio workout in the afternoon. No need to push too hard in the afternoon, because "I already worked out today."

The mental effect is that it takes the edge off. Less pressure, more fun. Less grunting, more deep breathing. The enjoyment you get from relaxing and spending time with your body will make each individual workout far more effective, even though you are spending less time per workout, at a seemingly lower intensity level.

Conclusion
Before you completely write-off any fitness enthusiast as "too hard core for me" just because they work out twice a day, you should consider changing your paradigm a bit. Two workouts in a day need not necessarily mean two evil, crushing workouts every single day.

Instead, think of it as two short, focused workouts spaced across the day as opposed to one, gargantuan killer workout. This provides the benefits of perhaps saving some time, and certainly relieves some of the mental pressure we all feel when we're working out. It allows for a more relaxed approach to fitness and provides you with a means to getting closer to your physiological roots.

Maybe twice-a-day workouts are right for you, too!

Sunday Morning Motivation

This morning I was scouring YouTube for some good, unheard music. Being the big Frank Zappa fan that I am, I decided to search for Robert (Bobby) Martin, former singer, keyboardist, and horn player with FZ's band throughout the 1980s.

As it turns out, he is a bit of a fitness expert. Check it out:

For the record, I was able to do the "hardest push-up," and also the 5-fingertips version. I tried the finger + thumb version of it, and couldn't quite do it. I'm a bit out of practice, so I didn't try the one-arm version.

Unlike traditional push-ups, the push-ups in this video rely more on core strength than tricep strength.

Winter Cross Training: Week 1

Tomorrow we begin Week #1 of a special five-week winter training regimen for distance runners. As I mentioned earlier this week, this regimen is in anticipation of the Ottawa Marathon this coming May.

For the purposes of this five week regimen, I will assume that none of us are in particularly great shape. Perhaps we work out three times a week or so, but nothing major.

Build the Fitness Base
The goal of this regimen will be to build up what I like to call a "fitness base." This concept is a bit analogous to what we runners call an "endurance base."

A runner's "endurance base" is a level of cardiovascular fitness built up prior to taking on a serious training regimen. While building up an endurance base, a runner virtually ignores other aspects of fitness, such as speed or resistance training. The purpose of the endurance base is to provide an endurance "foundation" upon which greater speed and longer distances can be built. Serious, competitive athletes often rack up as much as 100 miles per week while building up their endurance base. In anticipation of training for the Ottawa Marathon, I too plan on building an endurance base.

However, before I can do that, I need to ensure that my muscles and joints can handle that kind of exertion. If I jumped straight to the endurance-building, I would risk pulling a muscle, or developing tendinitis or shin splints. Perhaps more importantly, my upper body and core muscle groups would have completely atrophied by the time I was ready for the race, and things wouldn't go well.

So, to prevent injury and ensure total body health, I intend to dedicate this five-week period toward building up, not an endurance base, but a general fitness base.

Week 1
We are just getting back into the swing of things. We may have taken some time off during the Autumn months, and so we are aiming to start off somewhat lightly and work our way up over the course of five weeks.

Week 1, therefore, should be relatively simple. Here's what I am prescribing

A-Day (Sun, Tue, Thu)
Morning Workout: (Do all of the below four times)

• 50 crunches
• 30 push-ups
• 20 rear-deltoid raises (light weight)
• 30 unweighted squats

Evening Workout:

• 20-40 minutes light cardio

B-Day (Mon, Wed, Fri)

Morning Workout: (Do all of the below four times)

• 20 dead-lifts with hand weights
• 20 bent rows
• 20 bicep curls
• 30 lunges (15 per leg)

Evening Workout:

• 20-40 minutes light cardio

Rest Day (Saturday)

Don't take on too much weight for the resistance exercises. Just do what you can do. The goal here is just to get into the swing of things. If you're finding it hard to get up in the morning, just try to focus on getting used to the routine. Don't kill yourself here. Just take pleasure in moving your body around.

I'll post Week 2 next Saturday.