Cardio workouts are known to help people strengthen their heart and lungs. It also helps the muscles to use oxygen more efficiently. Over time, your body gets used to your fitness level and your endurance has increased! With these types of benefits, I have been trying to workout more. For some reason, as soon as I get home, I don’t workout. Instead I make a ton of excuses like:
- I’m too tired
- I don’t have the money for a gym
- I can’t run to build my cardio
Finally, I came up with a solution to workout at home, which of course, cost NO money at all and I’m actually getting a good daily workout. After googling, “how to do cardio without running” I found a site called http://www.shape.com. They had some GREAT exercises in their article called “No-Running Cardio Workout You Can Do at Home”. The article has like fourteen different exercises, but I only did four.
Here are the four I did:
Squat Jumps
Squat down and up straight up, arm over head. Do 10 reps.
Pilates 100
“Lie face up with your knees and hips bent 90 degrees, hands by your side. Lift your head, shoulders, and upper back off the ground, and begin to pulse your arms, taking long, deep breaths (inhale for 10 counts, exhale for 10 counts).”
I did this 20 times.
Mountain Climbers
“Come into a straight-arm plank position with your hands directly below your shoulders. Your body should form a straight line from neck to your ankles. Lift your right foot and drive your right knee up into the center of your body. Quickly switch legs, driving left knee up into the center of your body. Try to keep your hips level and your shoulders directly above your wrists. Do as many as possible for 1 minute.“
Actually I did this 20 reps, instead of one minute. I counted my right coming up and my left coming up as one rep.
Squats
Bend your knees, drop down and come back up with no weights. I did ten of these.
Believe it or not, I was very sore the next day. Then two days later, I was still sore. Again, I didn’t use any weights and it only took me twenty minutes.
What do you think about this routine? Please leave your comments below.