{"id":412,"date":"2012-06-11T09:30:33","date_gmt":"2012-06-11T16:30:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gahealthguide.wordpress.com\/?p=412"},"modified":"2012-06-11T09:30:33","modified_gmt":"2012-06-11T16:30:33","slug":"making-the-most-of-your-cardio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devinephysiques.com\/blog\/2012\/06\/11\/making-the-most-of-your-cardio\/","title":{"rendered":"Making the Most of Your Cardio"},"content":{"rendered":"

When you are pushing yourself during cardio, do you ever find yourself hunching over on the machine?\u00a0 Do you know what you are doing to your workout?<\/p>\n

Here’s a different question:\u00a0 Why do you burn so few calories while doing the stationary bike at the gym?\u00a0 Give up?\u00a0 It’s because cardiovascular activity requires your largest muscles in order to be effective, and the more muscles you engage, the more calories you will burn.\u00a0 So with the stationary bike, the only muscles engaged are those in your lower body–\u00a0 Typically just your quadriceps and hamstrings, with some minor involvement from other muscles.<\/p>\n

So, the elliptical is more effective because it engages more muscles in your body–\u00a0 Specifically, doing the elliptical right is more effective.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

At this point, you might as well be on the stationary bike.<\/p><\/div>\n

When you do the elliptical, or stairmaster correctly, you’re keeping your body upright, which engages your core to keep you this way.\u00a0 Your lower body is obviously working, and not just your legs;\u00a0 Your glutes are also targeted when you do the elliptical, which is another large muscle group.\u00a0 Whatever you choose to do with your arms will engage them somehow.\u00a0 If you hold on and keep them still, they’re working (slightly) to keep you steady; or, if you have them assist you, this engages your entire upper body.\u00a0 As soon as you hunch over, however, you isolate your lower body and make the work easier. . .\u00a0 And then you’re back to a low intensity workout that burns a significantly lower amount of calories.<\/p>\n

It’s more effective to do a lower resistance on a cardio machine than it is to sacrifice your form, since the lower intensity will keep the maximum amount of muscles engaged to burn calories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When you are pushing yourself during cardio, do you ever find yourself hunching over on the machine?\u00a0 Do you know what you are doing to your workout? Here’s a different question:\u00a0 Why do you burn so few calories while doing the stationary bike at the gym?\u00a0 Give up?\u00a0 It’s because cardiovascular activity requires your largest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fitness"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3DfsS-6E","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devinephysiques.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devinephysiques.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devinephysiques.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devinephysiques.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devinephysiques.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devinephysiques.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devinephysiques.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devinephysiques.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devinephysiques.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}