So Monday’s clinic taught me that I needed to add anaerobic exercise to my routine. Today I made a stab at that.
First, this is not a recommendation or suggestion for what you should do. I’m not at all knowledgeable about exercise, fitness, or nutrition – I’m just trying stuff and relating the results. It’s entirely possible that I’m killing myself with this, so emulate at your own risk.
That being said, my understanding is that I need to add short periods of intense activity (anaerobic) to my longer, less strenuous efforts (aerobic). Although the coach recommended blue-line to blue-line sprints during public skating, work and money prohibit me from going skating every day. The impact makes running or a treadmill out of the question for me, so I decided to add more intensity to my time on the elliptical.
Using the machine’s built-in interval setting with a base resistance of 5, my 30-minute workout looks like this:
Starting slow today, trying to avoid that whole killing-myself thing, I went with increased intensity every fourth minute (arrows). The machine handles adjusting the incline and resistance, I just had to increase my strides.
I slowed my normal pace to the 100-120 strides per minute range and increased it on the red arrows to 180-200. Well, until about the twenty minute mark, when I really started wearing down and settled for 150+.
This is going to be a work-in-progress as I try to find a base resistance level and strides that will start taking care of that anaerobic-thing.
