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I love the Elliptical. It is a great way to burn a significant amount of calories at your own pace while minimizing the likelihood of injuries.
The problem is that doing the elliptical for longer then ten minutes can become.... boring.
For me doing the exact same thing for an ungodly amount of time with no end in sight is just never going to happen. So these are some of the things I do when I workout on the elliptical to keep it interesting:
Time Intervals. Yes intervals are a great way to effectively burn more calories, but its also a great way break up the work out into manageable time blocks that focus on different areas. Ex: I always work with intervals of 4 minutes, or technically 3:50. Every 3:50 I switch what I am doing so that by the time I am at 4:00 I'm comfortably doing the next type of move on the elliptical. I've found that 4 minutes is the sweet spot. 3 minutes is too short to get anything done, and 5 minutes becomes daunting.
Forwards and Backward Shifts. Most ellipticals can go both forward and backwards. Moving forward on the elliptical distributes your weight to the balls of your feet and works your hamstrings more, while moving backwards distributes your weight to your heels and focuses more on your quads (and in my opinion your glutes). Ex: So every 3:50 on the elliptical I reverse my momentum and begin to move in the opposite direction.
Intensity Intervals. Depending on what time you set for the elliptical the interval training mode will usually settle somewhere around 4 minutes per interval. So you'll have about 2 minutes at low intensity as a recovery and 2 minutes at a much higher intensity. I usually double my low intensity to get my high intensity. I've gone a little beyond that so I am increasing my resistance beyond doubling at this point or I would just stagnate at the same level. This would mean even longer workouts which I am not interested in doing.
Speed Intensity shifts. I recently found that I prefer to go FAST FORWARD and SLOW BACKWARDS. Its a lot easier to move faster forwards as this is the natural way my body wants to move, so during the higher intensity levels I usually try to go at break neck speed for as long and often as possible before I need to shift. ON the other hand, because of the resistance level I try to be more controlled and slower with my movement when going backwards so I can feel the full impact in my glutes and quads. I find that I am actually sweating more from going slower and controlled backwards then I am from going at a break neck speed. I also feel like I am getting a better overall workout as Im going for a lot longer than I would be if I had only gone in one direction.
Loud Dance Music. I usually do track changes around the 20 second mark of each interval so that by the time my music crescendos I am at a high intensity and going with the already fast beat. I don't think I'd last 2 seconds in the gym if I didn't have any music.
Lying to myself. I lie to myself a lot when I workout, and oddly enough I usually believe it. At the beginning of a 60 minute workout I'll tell myself "There is no way we are going to do a full 60 minutes and that is okay, as long as you make it to 30 you can quit and go stretch" but when I get to 30 minutes I usually think something along the lines of "Wow that wasn't so bad, you did GREAT maybe we can do until 45 minutes? I think you got it in you" and by the time I hit 45 minutes it sounds more like "You've already done 76% of the workout. Don't you want to finish? You don't want to be a quitter do you? Besides you LIKE this song keep going" and so on. Quite frankly I should be hip to my deceptive self motivating tricks by now, but they still work so I can't complain about my knowing gullibility.
The variety of all of these tricks combine so that I never really realize that I've been doing a very intense cardio and fat burning workout for nearly an hour or more.
