Today I’m sharing a fun 30 minute elliptical interval workout. It’s perfect for those days at the gym when you don’t have a lot of time.
If you’ve been following along with my Weekly Workouts posts you’ll know that I recently rediscovered cardio intervals over the last few weeks. I don’t know why or how I’d forgotten about them, but I did. They popped back into my workout repertoire a few weeks ago and they made my workouts fly by. I know cardio gets a bad rap for being monotonous, but when you include some intervals they really do make the time go by so much more quickly.
Start and end this work on the elliptical with the resistance at 1. During the warm up you want to gradually get your blood flowing and prepare your body to workout. Lower the resistance to 1 again at the end to allow time for your body to recover from your hard work and your heart rate to lower.
The bulk of your workout will be done with the resistance at 10. At minute 6 up the resistance and start your first interval. For minutes 9, 14, 19, and 24, pick up your pace and challenge yourself to go harder. It’s only one minute – 60 seconds – and you’ll then have 4 minutes to recover at a lower pace.
I find that having the intervals in my workouts helps me to focus on the interval that I’m doing instead of the entire workout, which can be daunting, especially at the beginning of the workout when you have 28 or 29 minutes to go. In addition the higher intensity sections allow me to get my heart rate up in manageable chunks that don’t seem as intense as doing 4 or 5 minutes of cardio at a higher intensity all at once.
As for defining the intensities, they’re going to be a little different for everyone, depending in where you are on your fitness journey, so I won’t be listing speeds. At the low intensity you should be able to talk in a sentence at a time. For the high intensity parts, a word or two should be all you can get out because you’re working hard and breathing fast. Use your low intensity intervals as a sort of active recovery for your higher intensity ones.
For more workouts, check out my workouts page.
As always, check with your doctor before beginning to workout. Remember to honor your body and modify this workout as needed for you.
Do you include cardio intervals into your workouts on a consistent basis?