15 Minute Workout #1 – I Tried The BEST DAMN CARDIO Humanly Possible

Not everyone has the time of day to spend 30-60 minutes in the gym. Not everyone appreciates lifting heavy weights and resistance training. However, it’s been one of my goal to inspire anyone who’s been reading my blog, or following me through social media to start getting fit and active.

Also read: 15 Minute Workouts – 1% Challenge

Here’s the first of our 15 Minute Workout Series! The Best Damn Cardio Humanly Possible from no other than the KING of fitness and bodybuilding himself, Mr. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Not into cycling? You can checkout the main article so you can choose whatever workout you feel like doing!

What You Need?

• Indoor Bicycle – You can purchase your own or you can use the ones available at your gym

Directions

1. Start out by warming up for 5 minutes at half of the bike’s max resistance.

2. After 5 minutes, pedal as fast as you can for 10 seconds.

3. Then, increase the resistance to the max and still pedal as fast as you can. Continue this for 20 seconds.

4. Go back to an easy pace and resistance for 90 seconds.

5. Repeat steps 2 to 4 until you hit 15 minutes.

Demo Video on KikaysikaTV : The Macho Mom Workouts

I was out of breath by the end of 15 minutes but feeling pretty good! My heart rate maxed out to 162 BPM compared to my usual 119 BPM. Rare for someone like me who absolutely HATES doing cardio.

This is something anyone can do realistically if they have access to indoor bicycle or the gym. Remember, any activity is better than doing no activity at all!

What makes this cardio workout effective?

We’re going to be a little more scientific in this area so if you’re bored you can skip reading this and go straight to doing the workout.

The first step is we have to define what makes a cardio workout ‘good.’  If we want to improve body composition we know that weight lifting is king.  Period.

Cardio on its own, really ain’t gonna cut it.

We want a form of cardio that

1) maxes fat burning for our time involvement,

2) retains maximum muscle, and

3) retains maximum gym performance.

The first variable that was examined was the type of cardio training.  What he found may shock you.  The type of cardio performed made a HUGE difference in terms of proper strength and hypertrophy development in response to resistance training.  Endurance running or walking impaired strength and muscle growth significantly more than cycling (1).

This is also in accordance with a study that compared cycling with incline walking on a treadmill and found that cycling was significantly better for achieving hypertrophy when combined with resistance training compared to incline treadmill walking (2).

The researchers concluded that the differences observed here were likely due to the fact cycling requires more hip flexion and multi-joint activation of muscles involved in exercises like squats and leg presses compared to endurance running and walking which are not similar movements to any leg exercises that produce muscular hypertrophy.

 Additionally, while long distance running and walking result in strength and hypertrophy decrements, sprinting does not, most likely due to the fact that sprinting requires significant hip flexion and is more similar to multi-joint leg exercises.

*Source: http://www.schwarzenegger.com/fitness/post/best-damn-cardio-humanly-possible-in-15-minutes