Just curious to hear what everyone’s favorite cardio routine is and why?
Mine is personally sprints on an airdyne bike or outdoor running sprints, always felt like sprints was the best for me when it comes to conditioning, but I’m opening up for everyone else’s take on best/fav cardio.
-Harnessed tyre pulls (lengths of park) on leg day (as many as possible in 15 minutes)
-Body weight squats & easy angle push-ups OR db presses on push day (as many as possible in 15 minutes).
-Tyre face pulls, tricep extensions & rows on pull day (as many reps as possible in 15 minutes).
Very nice, currently i just do 20 second sprints on an airdyne bike take like 30/40 rest, go again for around 15 minutes or i will bike sprint for 20 seconds then do a bodyweight excercise for 20 then rest 20 until 15mins is done
Swimming and martial arts. I originally took up weight lifting to improve my martial arts, but the older I got the more my priority shifted from martial arts to weight lifting.
Go to a tire shop that changes tractor/heavy equipment tires. They’ll have old big ones for flipping/smashing, medium ones for dragging and smaller ones for throwing and they’re happy to get rid of them otherwise they have to pay for disposal.
non-machine → sprint/run intervals <= 1 km with short rest, on a track or street, structured or freestyle, for at least an hour total (1 - 1.5 hours, including warmup).
Two example workouts that I love:
12 x 400m with 1-3 minutes rest depending on the goal of the session, finish with 200m repeats with ~200m light walking recovery.
20 x 200m with 200m walking or light jog recovery, finish with light 400m’s with ~400m walking recovery.
fall over and die
“machine” → jump rope, continuous (30-60min) or interval (N x 3 min, 1 min rest), or even sometimes continuous for 30-60 min then finish off with fast intervals.
At some point when I boxed in ~2007 and was in peak condition, I could routinely do that with <= 5 mess-ups; lots of work to do to get back to that level. I love the monotonous stuff. Give me one exercise & I just try and do that for a long time. I’ve said it before on here, but I think “monotony” is important. IMHO, switching things up when you get “mentally bored/mentally tired” of something, as you become more fatigued, can become a crutch and doesn’t build up the “mental callus” that’s so important for competitions that involve one specific thing (like running or boxing). Switching things up is fine for the raw physical components like the heart, mitochondrial density etc… But I find that there’s a huge mental component that can become neglected if we throw in too much variety. That’s just my personal experience though, not everyone is the same obviously.
One of my go-to’s is max incline treadmill walking, 15-20 minutes at a pop like I explained here. It’s high enough intensity for a conditioning effect, but low enough intensity that it won’t impact recovery.
My next two choices are either barbell complexes like this Cosgrove routine (55 pounds never felt so brutal) and heavy bag work for rounds with at least a 4:1 work to rest ratio. So like 2 minutes on, 30 seconds off; 4 minutes on, 1 minute off; etc.; progressing up to something like 5:1 or 6:1 for the same number of total rounds.
Crikey! 12 repeats of 400m!?
Im lucky to get through 3-4 repeats, and maybe 5 if I have been working hard on my conditioning and the moons are aligned! even with 100m, I find that 6-7 repeats and I am fried.
Im looking into learning on how to jump rope. Anybody have any particular beginner programs they ca suggest? Previously when I got into jumping rope I developed “jumpers knee”