Non-Traditional Cardio Ideas

Non-Traditional Cardio Ideas

If you’re anything like me, you’ll hate ‘cardio’ – those long, boring runs on a treadmill whilst you stare at the gym wall. Even worse is the stationary bike – sitting on something that isn’t even close to a real bike, pedalling away but still going nowhere.

Then there’s the queueing…

At most gyms, during peak hours you’ll have to wait for a while. If it’s an important part of your training, it’s not like you can skip it either.

In some gyms, the wait for kit can be so bad that at peak times they try to enforce a 10 minute maximum time allowed on a treadmill for example, just so people can get a chance to use them.

Is that real exercise? Surely there’s a better way?

Well there is. As I said, I hate the old fashioned form of cardio. I hate it so much that I wrote an entire book on how to get the benefits (plus a load of other benefits) of cardio without having to even look at a cross trainer or treadmill. (You can buy it by clicking on the image below!)

This non-traditional cardio is HIIT and has been in the sports performance world for years, but is a relative newcomer to the wider exercise world. It involved mixing periods of high intensity work with periods of lower intensity work.

A sample non-traditional cardio workout would look something like this…

• 20 Kettlebell Swings
• Sprint 40 metres
• 15 Kettlebell Swings
• Sprint 40 metres
• 10 Kettlebell Swings
• Sprint 40 metres
• 5 Kettlebell Swings
• Sprint 40 metres

Repeat x 3

This kind of workout would probably take around 10-15 minutes but would push your cardiovascular system incredibly hard – significantly harder than a 15 minutes steady-state treadmill job, certainly!

It’d burn a lot more calories and fat and improve your fitness significantly more than more traditional forms of cardio.

Personal training was one of the first areas of the fitness world to embrace HIIT to help clients drop fat and improve their overall fitness faster. If you’re lucky enough to train in a facility with enough space, new types of flooring helping with HIIT workouts.

If you have an artificial grass surface you can use it include training such as prowler pushes, tyre flips and sprint work…

Artificial surfaces with court marking make these workouts a little more creative – you can section off zones for specific exercise and use the lines for sprint markers etc.

Taking advantage of the extra room an artificial surface affords you is a great way to switch up your cardio from treadmills and cross trainers to this non-traditional cardio where you sprint, lift weights, drag things, flip trees and the like.

Non-traditional cardio is harder, offers lots of additional benefits and is a great way to mix up your normal routine.

For 52 non-traditional cardio workouts, pick up a copy of my book ‘The Ultimate HIIT Workout Book’ by clicking on the image below…

By the way, if you subscribe to the Hoyles Fitness mailing list you’ll receive a free eBook containing 101 Health and Fitness Tips, plus offers and news exclusive to Hoyles Fitness subscribers. Click the image below to download…