From Beginner to Beast Mode: Building a Sustainable Fitness Routine with Spinning, Weights & Cardio
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Mix it up and do the most.
I remember the first time I tried running. I almost passed out, but I felt incredibly accomplished in the end. Then I did it again and again, and fifty times more, with the same routine and route every day. And I found that I quickly grew bored.
Fitness can be fun. It can be exciting, thoroughly invigorating, and help you build a community of fellow fitness enthusiasts. But for some people like me, keeping to one activity can become repetitive, making long-term commitment to fitness much harder.
For Black women, keeping to one activity can also mean less all-around health, as I found that while I could now run miles without losing my breath so quickly, I hadn't gotten any stronger and couldn't lift any weights.
This is where combining workouts comes in, a technique that several fitness lovers use to keep committed and in check. And Alahna Dunbar, a lead fitness instructor at Third Space, is here to show you how to do so with a potent combination of spinning, weights, and cardio.
The Expert
Alahna Dunbar is a lead fitness trainer at Third Space in London, United Kingdom. At Third Space, she teaches a combination of cardio and weights classes such as Just Ride, Force, The Method and Pulse.
Alahna has a number of years experience as a fitness instructor and wellbeing coach. She is a N1 Athletics HIIT Instructor, NASM Certified (Level 3 Personal Training & Level 2 Gym Instructor) and AFAA Certified (Group Fitness Instructor, Fitness Nutrition Coach, Women's Fitness Specialist and Behavioural Change Specialist).
The Power of Combining Spinning, Weights, and Cardio
Spinning, or indoor cycling, is an exercise where you pedal on a stationary bike, and weights involve lifting heavy barbells or dumbbells to gain strength and muscle mass. Many Black women tend to gravitate towards one of these: choosing spin class over 10 minutes on the Stairmaster or choosing the gym over 30 minutes of jogging outside. But Dunbar explains that you can have a sustainable fitness routine with all three elements involved and have fun while at it too.
"I believe fitness for beginners has to be fun, or you likely won't continue. With the music, lights, and simplicity of spin, it is such a fun way to distract you from how hard you work in class. Spin can also burn a crazy amount of calories and improve cardiovascular fitness, which is crucial to maintaining overall physical health. Plus, cardiovascular fitness also has significant benefits in improving and maintaining mental health," Dunbar states.
Building Well-Rounded Fitness for a Strong and Healthy You
With its cardiovascular benefits, spinning is a form of cardio everyone needs in their routine. As Dunbar explains, weight training improves strength, endurance, bone density, and skeletal health.
"The stronger and better your muscles move, the more they support your cardio training, which can lead to further gains. For instance, the more lean muscle you build through weight training, the more calories you burn at rest, which is especially important for those looking to lose weight," Dunbar explains.
For Black women, combining these workouts can be especially helpful as we are at greater risk of several morbidities like obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.
"Women also can suffer from higher rates of loss of bone density and osteoporosis as we age, which can be better managed through weight training," she adds.
Combining workouts removes the eventual boredom and has proven health benefits for your skeletal muscles, heart, and mood. How, then, can we incorporate these exercises for the best outcome? Dunbar explains it's all about seeking out the right aid.
“Rest and recovery are required to improve fitness. Many people think fitness gains happen during workouts, but they do not! It is during the recovery and repair phase that you adapt to become stronger and fitter. If you don’t recover, you won’t see the gains you want, and you will likely overtrain and, thus, risk quitting or getting injured.”
A Beginner's Guide to Creating Your Personalised Fitness Routine
Jogging every day certainly works for some people, but it didn't do that for me alone. What I really needed was a personalised fitness routine that worked for me and my short attention span. For Black women like me who want to incorporate weights into their cardio routine, you must seek help.
"Beginners should seek beginner-friendly fitness classes or consider working with a personal trainer to ensure they execute the proper movement technique/form to reduce the risk of injury. Furthermore, technique is a good indicator of whether you need a break. If your form starts to go, that's a good cue it's time to take a break and reset," Dunbar advises.
Get Familiar with Equipment
There's also the task of becoming familiar with the equipment, especially if you're new to spinning or weights.
"If you are participating in a class that requires a particular kit or equipment like clip-in shoes or a bike setup, make sure you are aware of the kit you need before taking part in the activity and ensure that it fits you and is comfortable. If your activity requires equipment setup, arrive 10-15 minutes before your activity to ensure you get set up correctly and so you can ask your instructor any questions before you start," she adds.
Share Your Concerns with Your Instructor
Talking to professionals about where you are and what you can do with your present self is essential, which involves bringing up past injuries or worries.
"If you have any concerns, pregnancies, or injuries, you will need to communicate this to your instructor before the class to ensure they give you appropriate modifications, if necessary. And, of course, always consult your doctor or physiotherapist before engaging in a new activity", Dunbar recommends.
Sample Beginner-Friendly Workouts with Spinning, Weights, and Cardio
Starting out can be a hard step, but Alahna Dunbar has some sample workouts to help you break the ice and get started. But first, you need to recognise that you are a beginner and take things slow for your routine to be safe and sustainable.
"Complete beginners to any activity should approach with a curious and relaxed mindset. In short, don't come with performance goals. The beginning of any fitness journey is about assessing where you are and building a consistent fitness routine, whether you are totally new to fitness or just new to that activity," Dunbar advises.
Small-Scale Progress for Big-Scale Results
"You can create simple, achievable goals, like 30 minutes of weight training 2-3 per week or 50 minutes of low-impact cardio 3 to 5 times per week (both of which are the government recommended minimum). Your first goals should be about getting you into the habit of exercising and figuring out what will help you stay consistent," she adds.
To help with consistency, Dunbar recommends creating a workout playlist you love, finding a class of other women, getting a workout buddy, or taking a more active route while doing cardio.
"The beginning of your fitness journey is a time of exploration and discovery. It's the time to figure out what you like, how to move, how certain things feel, what you hate, what you're good at, and what you can work on," Dunbar says.
Sample Workout Routines
"The recommended minimum weekly activity is 150 minutes moderate cardio or 75 minutes intense cardio per week, plus two sessions of resistance (weight) training to build muscle strength," Dunbar says.
Moderate or intense cardio might not make sense to a beginner, but Dunbar explains what this might look like for your routine.
"For a beginner, this might look like 3x 50-minute cardio sessions per week (i.e. beginner spin classes, brisk walking sessions, dance classes, etc) with 2x full-body strength sessions (weights, Body Pump, Pilates, barre, etc) per week. If you are a total beginner to fitness, this may seem daunting, so you might start with two weekly fitness cardio classes that incorporate both cardio and strength, like a beginner spin class and a Body Pump class. Again, the crucial thing is to find something fun that fits your schedule and stick to your sessions. Even if it's 20 minutes of walking daily, that is better than nothing," she adds.
Progress like a Pro by Taking Your Routine to the Next Level
It's hard to start, but staying consistent and avoiding stagnancy is much harder. To keep your fitness journey interesting and impactful, it is vital to measure your progress.
"To progress your fitness and prevent plateaus, you can aim to increase your effort by about 5-10% each week, and there are many ways to do so. You can perform an effort for a little longer or with more repetitions or sets. You can do one more workout session per week or increase the duration of that session. You can also increase the weight or resistance, move a little faster, or work harder," Dunbar lists.
Increasing Intensity and Duration of Workouts
"The important thing is to progress incrementally to gain fitness without risking injury, overtraining, and burnout. A method I find useful is the "1 or 2" method. "Can I do 1 or 2 more reps, 1 or 2 more minutes, 1 or 2 more sessions, 1 or 2 more Kilograms or kilometres?" For me, this is mentally manageable and usually 1 or 2 or anything is enough", Dunbar adds.
Challenging Yourself with Advanced Spinning, Weight Training, and Cardio Exercises
It's okay to be wary of overtraining while getting started, but as time passes, it also helps you challenge yourself with more advanced levels of your combined fitness training.
"When it comes to any cardio class, the more beginner-friendly option will be endurance-focused, with moderate intensity and longer duration effort. For weight training classes, you can always advance by going to a class that uses heavier weights or more complex moves. Some classes are strength endurance-based, which are higher repetitions but lighter weights. Muscle-building classes tend to use more challenging weights at a lower repetition. And more advanced weight classes focus on power, which combines lifting heavier weights quickly and usually more complexly," Dunbar explains.
So do challenge yourself as you go on, but do so with guidance and within reason.
Beginner Mistakes to Avoid
Like every other workout routine, combining spinning and weights has a few pitfalls you must be wary of, especially around setting unrealistic goals for your body.
"The most common mistakes I see beginners make are setting unrealistic goals and expectations, forcing themselves to do exercises they hate and going too intense too soon. All these mistakes set you up for failure and usually lead to people getting discouraged and quitting because they don't see results fast enough, dread going to that boring but tough class, or work so hard the first session that they need a week or more to recover. By then, they lost the habit," Dunbar says.
So rather than setting such a high peak for yourself in the first few tries, Dunbar says to focus on consistency instead.
"Find something fun and simple. Build a consistent fitness habit. Be kind to yourself, try your best, embrace the challenges and give yourself time to adapt. The good news is that beginners do tend to improve the quickest! So long as you are consistent, typically, you will notice the biggest change at the beginning of your fitness journey. You'll likely keep going once you see the changes start, so just get started!" she adds.
Building Habits for Long-Term Success is the Key to Sustainability
It's not enough to combine these workouts; you need to focus on keeping your routine sustainable for your lifestyle and health. To do that, Dunbar emphasises the importance of rest and recovery for your fitness journey.
Prioritising Rest and Recovery for Optimal Results
"Rest and recovery are required to improve fitness. Many people think fitness gains happen during workouts, but they do not! It is during the recovery and repair phase that you adapt to become stronger and fitter. If you don't recover, you won't see the gains you want, and you will likely overtrain and, thus, risk quitting or getting injured," she explains.
Just like you need a long nap after a long day of work and a quick one during midday activities, the amount of recovery you need after a workout depends on the intensity of said workout.
"Generally, you can do more low-intensity and moderate-intensity workouts daily or every other day, as long as you properly warm up, cool down, eat nutritiously, and hydrate. Higher-intensity work requires more recovery. For instance, I would only recommend that my riders do two (three max) high-intensity weekly rides for more advanced riders. The same goes for weight training," Dunbar recommends.
Rest and Burnout
Rest is essential to avoid burnout, but your body will not cooperate further if you're already there.
"The big cue of whether you are overtraining or burnout is how you feel. If you aren't getting proper sleep, are in pain, can't maintain proper form, are too breathless or dizzy, are not able to progress your workout due to fatigue or are even regressing, these are all signs that your body is not fully recovered," Dunbar says.
Finding Joy in Movement: Making Fitness Fun and Engaging
In all, it's imperative to have fun with your fitness in order to stay motivated.
"Start with something simple, start with something FUN. It might be tough to start, so you find something you enjoy: find a class with or listen to your own banging music, go dancing, get outdoors, enjoy a swim, exercise with friends who make you laugh, whatever gets you going! There are so many unique, enjoyable activities out there; you will fall in love with one of them. Just start moving and keep moving. Consistent, small efforts win", Dunbar says.
"Furthermore, embrace the wobbles, mess-ups and struggles; they're a part of the process of becoming healthier, stronger, fitter and more resilient. Trust the process. And above all, be kind to yourself. Fitness is a journey of highs, lows and everything in between. So give yourself a break, give yourself credit for showing up, learn to laugh at your mistakes, and, even when it's challenging, try to enjoy the ride".
