You reached the final week of your virtual personal trainer - well done!
We hope that you've enjoyed the past 12 weeks and feel that you've achieved your goals by getting and staying active. By the end of this week, you will have worked your way up to running for 60 minutes and completing at least 250 squats, 100 push-ups and 5 minutes of planking in a week. You've also learned a variety of ways to earn Vitality points towards your weekly Vitality Active Rewards goal.
Week 12 - time to give it all you have!
During this virtual personal trainer programme, you built tools across three categories. We hope that you've learned how to tackle your goals sustainably. Even though the goals were designed for a specific level, you could still benefit by using the programme structure and adjusting your weekly goals to your comfort and fitness levels. Keep track of this week and compare your progress using the weekly goal tracker.
Your final running goal
The goal for this week is to run for 60 minutes.
Accomplish this by walking for 3 minutes and running or jogging for 7 minutes; completing 6 of these cycles. Compared to week 11, you are adding an extra minute of running to each cycle.
If you'd like to challenge yourself more, identify different ways of breaking up the 60 minutes so that you take shorter walk breaks. This session is more than 30 minutes, so if your average heart rate is above 60% of your maximum heart rate, you will earn Vitality points. Remember to link your fitness device to Vitality and share your progress on Strava.
- Looking for a cycling alternative? Download your final cycling goal.
Your final strength goal
This is the final week of the planking portion of the programme, congratulations! Take a moment to reflect and see how you've improved from week 9 when we first started planking.
The goal for this week is to plank for at least 300 seconds (5 minutes).
Here's a good way to break up the 300 seconds:
Day 1
55 seconds of planking
Day 2
Rest
Day 3
55 seconds of planking
Day 4
60 seconds of planking
Day 5
65 seconds of planking
Day 6
Rest
Day 7
65 seconds of planking
Visit Vitality at Home for a refresher on how to do a proper plank to make sure your technique is correct.
You can do it all at once or break it up over the week. Experiment and see which approach works better for you. Remember, everyone needs to build up their endurance and strength at their own pace, so break it up as needed rather than compromising your form or reducing the duration.
You may have challenged yourself further last week by completing multiples of the recommended number each day, for example doubling or tripling it. Try to stick to that again this week. Remember to note down what changes you made so that you can track your progress.
Your final Vitality points goal
You can earn 300 Vitality points a day through a vigorous workout where you reach an average heart rate of 80% or more of your maximum heart rate for 30 minutes or more. In week 8 you identified ways of increasing your heart rate from a light workout (60 to 69%) to a moderate one (70 to 79%).
Try to identify a safe way to increase your heart rate further to 80%+ once this week.
Record the session with your heart-rate monitoring fitness device. If your heart rate was sufficiently elevated during the running goal, then you'll have achieved both these goals with a single activity.
Check out how to adjust this target for Vitality 65+ or Vitality Baby.
Let us know!
Would you like to do this again? Let us know what you enjoyed or how you would change the programme by emailing VITALITYRESEARCH@discovery.co.za.
Stay safe. Stay active. Stay rewarded.