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Adding sizzle to your elliptical workout

Morning,

Today is my lower-body day!  So I scheduled out the following to-die-for exercises for me:

• Every hour or so, do 30 of my famous Killer Karate Kicks

Well!  Read by itself, that sounds rather boring indeed.  But that work out was for when I was at home - it’s very easy to take out 2 or 3 minutes an hour and get your heartrate up!  I neglected to mention:

• I also indulged in 30 minutes on the Elliptical.

But not ANY 30 minutes with your typical ANY HIIT or otherwordly workout, oh no!

Because today is lower body, I set the resistance to 15 (it goes from 1 to 20 on the commercial gym-quality Precor).

Let me tell you, slogging thru wet slushy knee-high snow couldn’t have been more exhausting.  And I did a nice nifty 30 minutes of this joy!

My heartrate was happily meandering along between 150 and 170 BPM.   Now, normally you’d think, Jeepers Barb, that must have been a bit exhausting on your thighs, to which I would cheerfully respond, HELLO, that was the point! 

But!  In order to engage other muscles in my lower torso and core, I made certain:

• NOT to hold onto anything during half the workout (this meant I had to actually balance myself…and since I always do karate hand motions while on the elliptical, it did add quite the challenge)

and

• HOLD onto the hand grips during the other half while leaning back (this engaged other muscles within my legs that had me joyfully singing to myself EEK EEK EEEK I WILL SURVIVE!).

Wasn’t that special?

Seriously, however.…how many times have you been on an elliptical only to monotonously bore yourself through Entertainment Weekly or How It’s Made etc.?  You’re really short-changing yourself if you choose NOT to use different resistance modes or different pedaling techniques (forward, backwards, leaning up, leaning back, etc.etc.etc.).

By the time I was done with my workout (and yes, I did add some HIIT to it), my thigh muscles were the consistency of jelly.  Happy jelly, mind you, but I had no doubt in my mind I had done a super workout.

You can get great ellipticals without busting the bank, either.  Consider:

Thus, the next time you’re at the gym….try it yourself!  You might be surprised at the extra benefits you reap when you shake up your own personal workouts.

Enjoy,

Barbara Ling

ps - and if you’re looking at other fitness goodies, check out:

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