These three cardio exercises are simple, can be done from almost anywhere, and are sure to get your blood pumping and calories burning.
Exercise 1: Jump Rope
Exercise 2: Jumping Jacks
Exercise 3: Knee Highs
These three exercises are considered high intensity because they get your heart rate up and increase your oxygen intake. The harder you’re breathing, the harder your body is working to keep up and therefore, is burning more calories (fuel) to complete the action.
Reps: Generally speaking, you should be able to do a lot of these in a row, like, 50 or more (depending on the exercise), so if counting reps is too much too keep up with you can use a timer for starting and stopping.
To begin, time how long you can go before you feel like you can’t go anymore. Use that time for your interval. If you’re new, it could be 20 or 30 seconds. Hell, you may not even be able to jump the rope without it slapping your shin. It’s okay, just keep going and you’ll make progress.
Just do what you can until you do better and keep improving.
Rest: You want to keep your heart rate up to maximize your calorie burnage. On the other hand, you don’t want to jump so long you pass out, so take as long as you need to catch your breath. This should be 30 sec to one minute. Then start again.
Sets: If you do each exercise for one minute with a one minute rest in between that’s 6 minutes. That would be 1 set. 5 sets would take 30 minutes. Start there and tailor towards your level of fitness.
Switching it up. You can supplement these high intensity exercises with other cardio or resistance training to keep your heart rate up. You don’t JUST have to do these back to back to back. I personally like to run a lap at a park and do about 1 minute of jumps, run another lap, another minute of jumps, so on for at least 45 minutes. It’s a great way to stay engaged (not get bored) with just running or just lifting.
In summary, jumping rope, doing jumping jacks, and doing knee ups/knee highs are a great cardio work out and are wonderfully easy and burn a ton of calories.
Happy Hopping!
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