Last week I wrote about the wonders of walking lots, even if it won’t help you lose weight. At the end of the post I promised to talk about cardio exercises for those of us who can’t walk very much at all. I can manage a dog walk with my knee brace but I’m pretty slow moving and nervous with my seriously arthritic knees. Stairs are okay going up but impossible coming down.
I walk sometimes just for the joy of being outside but it’s not my go-to fitness activity.
But also it’s winter, in Canada, and some of my fitness time these days is in the gym.
My go fitness activities at the gym used to include running on a treadmill and that’s completely out of the question now. So with the help of a personal trainer (hi Meg!) I’ve been exploring some new cardio machines at the gym. Rowing was already on my hit list and I’ve left out cycling altogether. You’ve heard me talk lots about that. Yawn. Sometimes I go to the gym and just do 5 min of each of the following things and then repeat. It’s not a bad routine. Also, these machines are usually free even at the busiest of times. That’s one advantage of not using treadmills, elliptical machines, and the like.
These won’t work for everyone as some of them involve standing.
My gym, the campus fitness center, has all of the following machines:
Hand cycle: You can do both steady state and sprints with these. It’s more work than you might think.
Ski-erg: This was completely new to me and it feels like a pretty good full body workout.
Jacob’s Ladder: I’ve blogged about that before here.
Rope machine
Rowing machine: I’ve spent a lot of time erging, as rowers say. It’s a terrific workout. It’s the thing to me that feels most like the treadmill in that I can do it for awhile and listen to music. I often start my workouts with a 2k warm up and then try to do a speedier 2 k at the end.
There are also non-machine options, like aquafit and swimming, but I’ll leave those for another day.
How about you? What do you recommend for cardio that doesn’t involve knees very much?
The elliptical is also another low impact exercise machine. Power walking and swimming. Rowing is so good as you mentioned in your post. xo Angi
Yeah the elliptical isn’t low impact enough for me. In theory I like it but in practice my cranky knees complain.
My knees don’t like the elliptical either.