Cardiovascular training can become stale if your only using one piece of equipment and can often lead to poor results. So try something different, pick three different machines and plan a 10 minute workout on each. It could be a constant speed or intervals or what ever you come up with. Do 1-2 cardio days a week with this routine for about 6-8 weeks trying to overload your training. This could mean increasing the level or the time, or the distance. This means you have done 30 minutes and you wont even realise, because your changing your machine every 10 minutes your body gets a bit of time to rest and as its often a different movement it involves different muscles. So the benefits of this are you can train longer, you are less fatigue and your heart works harder to cope with the different exercises. Another great way of doing this if you dont want to workout all at once, break your routine up. Go riding one day, walking the next. There is no limit to how much cross training or what type you want to do. Some great ideas are rock climbing, boxing, kayaking, running, walking, swimming, riding, and sport. This is perfect for anyone and can work for everybody so get started on some cross training and reap the benefits.
By: Southern Cross Health Club

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Have you ever noticed that people who compete in triathlons or iron man types of competition are some of the fittest people on earth, this is due to their sport as it involves more then one type of exercise. This is known as cross training, the body works with one when only one training stimulus is present such as running is the body adapts to that movement and becomes more efficient, cross training however involves many different types of movements and exercises so our body has to adapt to a larger stimulus and to more muscles being used. This does not mean you need to go join your local traithlon or iron man club to reap the benefits, it is as simple as modifying your current program by changing a few things. An example of this could be if your doing 15 minutes of walking on the treadmill each time you come in you can try breaking this time up with different exercises, this could be done by adding 2 extra exercises like the rower and bike. So instead of doing your usual 15 minutes on the treadmill try 5 minutes on each, 5 minutes on the bike, 5 minutes on the rower, 5 minutes on the treadmill. Not only can this increase your cardiovascular fitness but it also burns more energy by recruiting more muscle groups. Try it and let me know how you go, if you would like some more training advice email me at joel@schc.com.au

By: Southern Cross Health Club

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