I Am Iron Man

In keeping with the idea of revving up my cardio for bursts today I deviated from the usual weight training and did my Cardio Iron Man program that Jodi gave me about a year ago or so, I think.  It consists of a rotation between the rower, spin bike, treadmill and the stepper.

Round one is three minutes rowing where I aim for mid 40’s of strokes per minute, six minutes of spinning (one minute sitting, crank up the tension and one minute standing, turn it down a bit and a minute with my arms on the bars (repeat)).  Six minutes on the treadmill follows starting at seven miles per hour and going up by .5 each minute, then finish on the stepper where I try to keep it at about 110 steps per minute.

Round two is more of the same except it’s two minutes of rowing and stepping and four minutes each of the spin bike and the treadmill (1:20 minute lengths for the three stages on the bike and go up .5 every 40 seconds on the treadmill).  To finish on the treadmill this round I just kept tapping up on the speed and was going at about 11mph for the final 30 seconds.

Round three, more of the same, 1.5 minutes on the rower and the stepper and three minutes on the bike and the treadmill.

It is an intense workout and because of the constant switch up it’s easier to push hard on each machine each time around, the desire to coast never comes up as it does when running a long distance. the whole work out takes 39 minutes and at the end I added some back extensions and the stability exercises that the chiropractor gave me.  Apparently I have lots of abdominal muscles and they are dominating my lower back a bit so I have to get back on working my back a bit more.

So while I didn’t get to do my usual marathon of activities this weekend, partly because I have decided to not do much on Saturdays in the way of intense workout so as to be better prepared for hockey and partly because of rainy weather today, I feel that a game as goalie, karate, a game as forward and a workout that lasted over an hour is good enough for me to feel satisfied.