Brick by brick

Scott Schwab

We have discussed before the benefits of what is known as brick training, but I wanted to revisit the discussion and add some tips and additional benefits.

For those of you who may have not read the previous post, brick training is taking a couple of exercises and stacking them on top of each other. For instance some people lift hard in a circuit fashion and then immediately head to the stair stepper. Other people may swim and then jump on a bike.

The key is to move quickly and not let your body have much time to adjust. Different exercises will require different levels of cardiovascular strength and endurance. Based on the article from Friday by John Gibson, we also know that interval training keeps the body burning calories like a machine.

Brick training is similar to interval training in that you move between exercises relatively quickly and increase and decrease the intensity. The intensity is up to you, but based on John's recommendation, it is better to do short bursts within your reps. It is also similar to the effectiveness of muscle confusion. Your heart is a muscle, and the stronger it is and the more you do interval training, the lower your resting heart rate will be.

Remember, the principle called EPOC (Excess Post exercise Oxygen Consumption).
The higher intensity exercises have a tendency to increase the amount of calories
burned after exercise. With interval training, your metabolism has been shown to nearly double for up to 48 hours after exercise.

The moral of the story is this, choose the exercises that you can do and stack them in one day. Do short and intense intervals and then move to the next workout. Doing this will prepare your mind and body for workouts that will always push you and take you to a higher level of expectation. Plus this is the quickest way to lose weight based on continuous burning of calories. Another benefit that you will enjoy is the full body workout that multiple exercises that push your entire body.