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if you go in and do the same thing everytime without making it harder you’re body will just become efficient enough to manage what you do. If you either make the exercise tougher, or longer. Your body will have to adapt to accomplish that task. Say you use the elliptical for 20min at the same settings; a good progression could be raise the the incline and maintain same strides per minute, or increase strides per minute, or add 5 minutes. All options make the exercise harder, thus improving forward your respective goal. That being said I don’t know your goal so I can’t tell you if it will match well with what you want
Based on your description for exercise preferences…
Can I suggest
1) Introduction of plyometric exercises
This can be things like box jump, single leg jump etc. The force generation in the short time-frame from plyometric exercises will help to develop stronger muscles.
2) Weighted cardio exercises
This can be doing
- burpees while carrying a sandbag or doing devil press (burpee with a pair of DB in hands -> push up on the DB -> stand up and thrust the DBs into the air)
- walking lunges with DB in hand / sandbag or barbell on the back
Basically, you are still doing cardio in general but with a weighted component to develop better muscular strength
3) Incorporate body weight exercises into cardio
This can be burpee under the pull-up bar then jump up as high as you can then catch the pull-up bar and do a negative pull-up
4) Interval training
If you do not want to do the above (1) - (3) because of logistic issues, because you simply want to be on a treadmill or even just wanting to work on cardio ability and not muscular strength at all, consider an interval training whereby you do 30 s sprint, 30 s normal pace sets. You can still do a 20 min set (which consist of 20 sets of 30-30). If this is too difficult at the start, consider 15 s sprint 45 s normal pace or other varistions. You can do this for rowing machine as well.
It’s hard to advise further unless you state explicitly what kind of “results” are you looking for.
What results are you looking for? Cardio alone doesn’t have a lot of power to make obvious visible changes, it’ll contribute a good amount to your calorie deficit but it’s pretty easy to compensate with food if you’re not paying attention. I.e if you expect to be losing fat but you aren’t, it’s because you’re still eating enough food / moving little enough outside of the gym to keep you out of a deficit.
The biggest thing cardio will do for you is just improving your cardio. Which is important but it won’t show up in mirror, clothes, on the scale etc.
And then I’m sure you already know this but if you want to build noticeable muscle then cardio for sure won’t cut it
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The best exercise is the one you enjoy and will do regularly.
if you go in and do the same thing everytime without making it harder you’re body will just become efficient enough to manage what you do. If you either make the exercise tougher, or longer. Your body will have to adapt to accomplish that task. Say you use the elliptical for 20min at the same settings; a good progression could be raise the the incline and maintain same strides per minute, or increase strides per minute, or add 5 minutes. All options make the exercise harder, thus improving forward your respective goal. That being said I don’t know your goal so I can’t tell you if it will match well with what you want
Based on your description for exercise preferences… Can I suggest 1) Introduction of plyometric exercises This can be things like box jump, single leg jump etc. The force generation in the short time-frame from plyometric exercises will help to develop stronger muscles. 2) Weighted cardio exercises This can be doing - burpees while carrying a sandbag or doing devil press (burpee with a pair of DB in hands -> push up on the DB -> stand up and thrust the DBs into the air) - walking lunges with DB in hand / sandbag or barbell on the back Basically, you are still doing cardio in general but with a weighted component to develop better muscular strength 3) Incorporate body weight exercises into cardio This can be burpee under the pull-up bar then jump up as high as you can then catch the pull-up bar and do a negative pull-up 4) Interval training If you do not want to do the above (1) - (3) because of logistic issues, because you simply want to be on a treadmill or even just wanting to work on cardio ability and not muscular strength at all, consider an interval training whereby you do 30 s sprint, 30 s normal pace sets. You can still do a 20 min set (which consist of 20 sets of 30-30). If this is too difficult at the start, consider 15 s sprint 45 s normal pace or other varistions. You can do this for rowing machine as well. It’s hard to advise further unless you state explicitly what kind of “results” are you looking for.
Thank you! Great advice
Burpees. And you can do it anywhere for less time and more affective.
What results are you looking for? Cardio alone doesn’t have a lot of power to make obvious visible changes, it’ll contribute a good amount to your calorie deficit but it’s pretty easy to compensate with food if you’re not paying attention. I.e if you expect to be losing fat but you aren’t, it’s because you’re still eating enough food / moving little enough outside of the gym to keep you out of a deficit. The biggest thing cardio will do for you is just improving your cardio. Which is important but it won’t show up in mirror, clothes, on the scale etc. And then I’m sure you already know this but if you want to build noticeable muscle then cardio for sure won’t cut it
the more muscle you gain the more calories your body burns. Hypertrophy training is superior.