Lifting Through Cardio

In my last post I talked about getting more cardio from your lifting. This time around I will talk a little bit about getting more of a lifting workout through your cardio. The way to accomplish this is through resistance.

Most people usually do cardio on a treadmill, bike, or eliptical machine. All of which provide a good cardio workout. An often overlooked piece of equipment, or at least, I tend to overlook it, is the stair climber. I usually avoid this bad boy because, well, it's hard. It forces you to do more work and keep your heart rate pumped up through the duration. I guess in essence it is probably one of the better machines to use, but with all things, it depends on what you hope to achieve.

Stair climbers allow an increase level of resistance to add to your cardio. You get the benefit of constantly moving which is what cardio is meant to do, but it also works your legs, namely your quads, more so than a standard treadmill would. People usually try to seperate their lifting from their cardio, and I think that is why the stair climber is usually avoided.

If the stair climber isn't your machine of choice, any of the above machinery listed above will work, you just gotta know the adjustments. For the bike you need to increase the resistance. This will force you to pedal harder giving your legs a better workout. On the treadmill you need to raise the incline of the machine making it seem like you are running up a hill. The eliptical you can do both, increase the resistance and the incline. There is a little debate on whether or not the eliptical machine is worth the time, but I will cover that later.

There you go, lifting from cardio, hope it keeps you going, 365 Fit for life.