Sunday, July 19, 2009

Dear Elliptical: I want to marry you.

My weekend workout schedule this summer is hit or miss. Allow me to explain.

Boyfriend is home every other weekend this summer, because his job is 3.5 hours from our lovely shared apartment. So, on weekends he's not here, I do a pretty good job of kicking ass and taking names. Or, I at least make sure to work out twice. Whichever seems most prudent at the time.

But then there are the weekends when he is in town. You see, usually I spend most of my weekend workout time at yoga, to rid myself of the stress of the past week and get set up for a good week to come. But Boyfriend doesn't do yoga (yet -- he has promised to try it in the fall when he has more cash), and the weekend classes are 1.5 hours, so I counting the time it would take me to get to and from the studio, I would lose 2 hours of precious Boyfriend time.

That is completely unacceptable, when I get roughly 96 hours per month with him, and about half of those are spent sleeping.

Enter the campus fitness centers. You see, students here can use them for free with a student ID. So, we can go together and work out.

And today we did. Despite a heavy lunch (I blame Boyfriend for wanting to get Reubens. In my defense, I only ate half!), I think I did a pretty good job. I worked on the elliptical for about 50 minutes and burned 650 calories. I may be ready to graduate to the treadmill soon for part of my cardio workout -- the elliptical no longer makes my heart feel like it's going to pop out of my chest. I'm a little wary, just because I think I jumped in too fast last time. But, I can go an hour on the elliptical without stopping and while keeping my heart rate at a good hard cardio pace. It's probably time to just take the plunge.

But the real reason I want to marry the elliptical is because of what it does for my butt. I felt muscles there that I never even knew I had. I make sure to work my calves too, of course, but about 60% of my time with my favorite machine today was focused on my thighs and my glutes. I so very desperately want my thighs to not rub together when I walk. And I want my butt to be high and tight.

Aside from the elliptical and the chair-sits/lunges we do at yoga for the legs and glutes, anyone have any lower-body sculpting exercises you swear by? I'm all ears.

2 comments:

  1. Incline training! Of course you can use good ole fashion hills, but hop on a treadmill with high incline options. It is a leg/glute toning master! Seriously. You will feel that wonderful bum-burn (most likely much more than the elliptical!) Happy Toning!

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  2. the elliptical can be so many different things!! you can do sprints, you can do stairs, you can do resistance, you can rotate, you can do backwards and forwards, you can do it with your fists on hips to promote balance, you can hold weights (or wrist weights). don't feel like you need to move to the treadmill just yet ... spice it up!

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