During the warm weather months I like to run sprint intervals. Last year I didn’t do any due to my hips and plantar fascia. Last week, on an off day, I went to the gym and just shot the basketball around a little bit for a half hour. The next day my leg training was ruined as my piriformis were screaming at me. I loath steady state cardio. The mindless monotony of it is more than my ADD brain can take. What’s left? Swimming? Yeah, right.
Getting fat isn’t a problem for me. I’m about as fat as I’ve ever been in my life and I’m still probably less than 12%. I’m a little concerned about cardio fitness. I took my resting pulse a couple of times last night and was in the low 60s. That’s reasonably low, but in the past it would be in the forties when I’m sprinting and fifties when I’m not.
So, is just lifting weights enough for general health?
[quote]on edge wrote:
During the warm weather months I like to run sprint intervals. Last year I didn’t do any due to my hips and plantar fascia. Last week, on an off day, I went to the gym and just shot the basketball around a little bit for a half hour. The next day my leg training was ruined as my piriformis were screaming at me. I loath steady state cardio. The mindless monotony of it is more than my ADD brain can take. What’s left? Swimming? Yeah, right.
Getting fat isn’t a problem for me. I’m about as fat as I’ve ever been in my life and I’m still probably less than 12%. I’m a little concerned about cardio fitness. I took my resting pulse a couple of times last night and was in the low 60s. That’s reasonably low, but in the past it would be in the forties when I’m sprinting and fifties when I’m not.
So, is just lifting weights enough for general health?[/quote]
If you have access to an olympic pool, why could you not substitute some swimming for cardio?
I hate steady state cardio myself and I’ve been worrying about the same thing myself lately. The weather is starting to warm a little so hopefully I can make it outside and do some hill sprints and push the prowler a bit and get in better cardio health … to get to weights at my gym I have to walk through the cardio area and fuck me if all those people don’t look misearable (except for this crazy cadio tred mill chick … man ehs’s smokin).
[quote]Enders Drift wrote:
Heavy bag work and medicine ball work are two things that come to my mind[/quote]
Fucking Heavy Bag! One of the guys at my work put up a heavy bag in the gym. Seemed cool to me so I started hitting it. I aggravated a bone spur on the back of my hand to the point I went to visit a hand surgeon. He said he could operate, file it down and it would be AT LEAST A THREE MONTH RECOVERY. He also wasn’t convinced it would help any. He said there’s a good chance the excessive bone growth is not just out, but also into the joints of the hand hindering the natural flexibility. So, just another pain I’m going to have to live with.
I do more cardio than lifting weights but I’m one of those fools who likes it. I work with a lot of guys who play hockey and they get healthier because of it and they love it. They generally don’t lift weights or try and get bigger however. Most people seem to hate cardio so much it seems like a good idea to try and find something enjoyable.
But if your resting heart rate is in the low 60s, and you don’t feel like you’re out of shape maybe you don’t need to.
[quote]on edge wrote:
What’s left? Swimming? Yeah, right.
[/quote]
Wtf is wrong with swimming?[/quote]
I was ripping swimming partly for fun. I have two problems with swimming. One is that I go “swimming” (playing in the pool) with my children 3 to 4 days a week, so more isn’t appealing. The other problem is time. i currently train on my lunch break, 1 hour, four days a week. Something I can fit in on my Wednesday lunch hour and/or Saturday morning before the kids get up will work. Swimming takes up too much time with traveling to the gym and showering and all that.
Maybe you can sneak in steady state cardio via a non-boring team sport? Adventure Racing sounds like a lot of fun, see the article on that in issue 3 of my magazine.
Other than that, maybe do quick metabolic conditioning workouts, with stuff like barbell complexes, jump rope, burpees, strongman type stuff, sleds, etc. Variety, speed, and intensity to satisfy your stimjunkie brain
Man, I always warm-up with a few minutes of jumping rope and try to finish my workout with some prowler work. I played basketball but stopped a few years ago and pretty much just lifted outside of the occasional pickup game. I realized a few months back that I was in great weight training shape but everything else had fallen off drastically. I mean I could barely dunk anymore. After that realization I’ve been training to be bigger, stronger, faster, and I look and feel a helluva lot better.
