Solid Stepping

I had a great stepping workout this evening. My after-school student cancelled on me today, which meant I could have afforded an hour or so of running, but work preparations for the days ahead took a little longer than I would have liked, so I was left with less time. (Usually I try to be at least 3 or 4 days ahead with my work so if I fall ill, have an off day, or something crops up, I can afford to coast a bit.) In any case, I had also wanted to experiment with the stepper, so I wasn’t all that fussed about missing a chance to run.

Here’s the workout, if anyone’s interested:
5 mins stepping warmup – 60-70% MHR
1 min medium effort, 1 min all out, 1 min easy
1 min medium effort, 1 min all out, 1 min medium effort
2 mins all out, 30 sec easy (repeat)
1 min all out, 1 min easy (repeat until you get bored)
30 seconds all out, 30 seconds medium effort (repeat as often as desired)

I stepped for 20 minutes until the “1 min all out, 1 min easy” stage, then experimented with the next stage of shorter intervals at 30 seconds. Somehow I found that 30 seconds all out, 30 seconds medium effort got my heart rate going, more so than doing it in 1 min intervals.

Another interesting thing was that after 25 minutes I started doing 30 seconds all out, and then 30 seconds of squats – full ones, no weight at all – instead of stepping at a medium effort. I found that 30 seconds of all out stepping got my heart rate to about 70-75% MHR, but when I did the squats my heart rate was nearly 80%.

While doing 30 seconds of squats and calf raises (all in one motion) following 30 seconds of stepping, my heart rate got to 85% MHR. I confirmed these over three sets.

Conclusions(from this experiment at least): Doing weight training in the middle of cardio seems to get the heart rate (mine anyway) going even faster. Combining weight training and cardio is fun too.

Sorry this post is so muddled, but I'm having problems thinking through my endorphin rush!