How to Keep Cardiovascular Exercise Interesting
IntoFit | November 14th, 2008 | Workouts - Cardio | 3 Comments »
The weather is turning! If you’re someone who likes to get your cardiovascular exercise from outdoor activity, this can prove more challenging. Of course, you can ski, snowshoe and cross country ski when there is snow on the ground- but not all of us have the gear or the desire to do so.
I know that stepping on a treadmill or an elliptical machine can be boring! Most of the time, it’s not the actually work that we dread, it’s the boredom factor. It seems to take FOREVER!
A great way to not only pass the time, but improve the quality of your workout is with interval training. Interval training will help you burn more calories, strengthen your heart muscle, keep your metabolism fired up longer and help you develop overall fitness.
There are so many different ways you can preform intervals, for now I’ll keep it as simple as it gets.
- Get on your machine of choice.
- Warm up for 5 minutes.
- Perform a 30 second PUSH. You can either
- Pick up your speed and GO AS FAST AS YOU CAN.
- Increase your resistance level and GO AS HARD AS YOU CAN.
Bring your speed or resistance back for a 4 1/2 minute recovery. Repeat 3 more times.Cool down for 5 minutes.
- Tips:
Your PUSH should be a 9 or 10 out of 10 on your “how hard can I go scale?”. Its only 30 seconds so make the most of it. You have 4 1/2 minutes to recover from it.
Your RECOVERY is not a break. You will need to catch your breath and lower your heart rate, but stay working! You should be at a level 6 out of 10 on your “how hard can I go scale?”.
- Please note that everyone is different. If you need more than 4 1/2 minutes to recover from your interval (PUSH) – take it! It’s important that you bring your heart rate back to a reasonable working rate before you give it another PUSH. Reasonable would be about 70- 75% or your max. If you don’t have a heart rate monitor, do the talk test: You should not be able to have a full conversation but you should be able to talk in short sentences.
On the flip side, if 4 1/2 minutes is too long for you, shorten it! You can also increase the time of your interval to 45 seconds or even 1 minute. I say go for it!
- 6232 Steps. What happened?
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Great tip Jay! I rode the bike and jogged on the treadmill today. For both excercises I did intervals and it really made the time go by way faster. Plus I really felt like I got a great cardio workout. Too bad I flaked out on doing the weights
I’m glad the intervals helped make the time go by! That’s great! You didn’t flake out on the weights. Sometimes we just have to listen to our bodies and stop while where ahead!
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