Cardio exercises are extremely important for your general health!
To live a strong and healthy life, the American College of Sports Medicine recommends you should try and undertake around half an hour of cardio exercise a day. However, some people may not have the time for that.
To help you out, we’ve put together a list of 5 quick and easy cardio workouts that you can either try out at the gym or in the comfort of your own home:
1. Skipping
We know that you might not have picked up a skipping rope since school, but more and more skipping is being used as a brilliant form of cardio. This skipping rope workout lasts approximately ten minutes. The basic version is to skip at any pace you want for 2 minutes. If you want more of a workout and a higher intensity try skipping faster, but this is totally up to you. After every 2 minutes give yourself a 30 second break. Then repeat 3 times to make up 10 minutes. It’s that simple!
If you really want to try and up your game, try doing it on one leg alternating between them every now and then.
2. Dance
Dance classes like Zumba are becoming more and more popular. Dancing is an extremely popular method for losing weight because it’s so fun to do. Whilst we can’t exactly describe a workout, just stick your favourite music on and get moving and shaking. Energetic dancing can burn up to 450 calories per hour!
There are so many variations and intensities of dance workouts online, but if you’d like to dance with a group of people; come and join one our Simply Zumba classes.
3. Jog
A 20 minute morning jog is often a great way to wake yourself up in the morning. In the winter months it may be a bit too chilly to jog outside, so why not stick your headphones in and go for a morning jog on the treadmill?
Alternatively, you could even just jog on the spot:
- Start with a 5 minute warm-up, this can either be a slow jog or a fast walk
- After the 5 minutes have passed step up the pace to a full-on jog for the next 10 minutes.
- For the last 5 minutes, decrease your speed back into the original warm-up speed to cool down the muscles and to allow your heart rate to drop.
4. BBB (Before Breakfast Body) Workout
This BBB workout is only 5 minutes long, so there’s no excuse! You could try doing this twice a day when you wake up and before you go to bed.
Here are the exercises that you need to complete them:
- Sumo Lunges- 1 Minute
- Squats- 1 Minute
- Jumping Jacks (if you have light dumbbells try adding shoulder presses to this)- 1 Minute
- Plank- 1 Minute
- Left side plank- 30 Seconds
- Right side plank- 30 Seconds
5. Stairs, sounds fun right?
You’d be surprised to know how many calories can be burnt just by climbing stairs. According to research, you could burn up to 15 calories per 3 flights of stairs, with the average flight being approximately 11 steps.
If your job involves climbing up a lot of steps daily, then you are in luck. If you have a flight of steps in your house, try climbing up and down them around 10 times, or at least until you start feeling like you’re actually having a workout.
Don’t have any stairs? Lots of our gyms have a step climbing machine, so don’t be afraid to check them out.
6. Cycling
Cycling burns up to 650 calories an hour. If you don’t have a bike, our gyms will always have plenty of cycling machines. But if you can’t get out of the house, try imitating the motion on a chair or another similar object!
These are just shorter versions of full workouts for those who don’t have much time on their hands. What’s your cardio solution?
