Mindful Cardio

I know quite a few people who absolutely hate cardio. Luckily I am not one of them . . . .I actually enjoy cardio, especially morning cardio. It keeps me out of bed in the morning and gives me some quality time to reflect on the day ahead.

The other morning when I was at Golds on the elliptical and not feeling so hot, I felt like I was just barely moving and doing it just to say I did my cardio. I was sweaty at the end of the hour but not like I know I should be. This got me thinking . . .what can I do to really step it up? I want to be good and drenched at the end.

When I'm at home doing my cardio during the week, I pay more attention to my speed, etc because I'm on the treadmill and changing the incline and speed every 1 -2 minutes. After 35 minutes, I'm panting and drenched. When I'm on the stepmill at Golds I HAVE to pay attention to how fast I'm moving unless I want to trip on a step and go flying off (yea that's totally almost happened to me!) I love the elliptical but sometimes I just zone out and people watch.

So how did I solve this problem? A little mindful cardio this morning . . .instead of just watching the calorie count go up or my distance, I changed the display to watch my RPM and set myself a minimum number that I had to keep it at. I decided to stay between 145-150 RPM. If I dropped below 145, I peddled my little heart out and got it back up. At the end of the hour, I was good and sweaty, had burned a whopping 695 calories and gone over 6 miles! I also barely made it through Turbo Fit a few hours later so I knew I had kicked my cardio up to where it needed to be!

From now on it's only mindful cardio for this sweaty beast!