Cardio session is not my favorite thing when I have to workout. I enjoy weight lifting more than cardio. But I know cardio is very important when your goal is to lose weight and get in shape. I know how hard was it to get into workout habit when I was starting out two years ago. I’m a 6’0′ tall guy and my weight had touched 215 lb. I started to get belly fat and it didn’t look pretty. One morning, I looked at myself in the mirror in the bathroom and decided to change things.
First I decided to make use of my gym membership that I was paying for 2 years anyways without stepping foot in the gym. Gym fees were never bothering me because I was getting it reimbursed by my company even if I was not making use of it. You guys can find out at your workplace if they have a gym reimbursement program and start getting the benefits. Once you have the gym membership going, you have to work on getting into the habit of working out regularly. To get into the habit of working out, I started working out in the mornings at 5 am. To be able to wake up that early, I also had to go to bed early between 9-10 pm. That helped me in cutting on my weekday drinking with friends and late night binge watching which led to so many extra calories. So there was the first benefit that I got out of early morning workouts. I started out with going to gym 6 days a week and kept the routine for at least one year. With my workout, I also made changes to my diet, started including more protein and reduced the carbs. By the end of the first year of regular gym workouts, I lost 30 lb and gained a lot more muscle mass and strength.
You do not have to start like me, you can start small with 15-20 minutes of cardio training 3-4 days a week. By starting like this, your chances of not sticking to the routine are very less. I would advise to start with treadmills or elliptical machines. Once you’re comfortable with this routine, you can start increasing your gym times and start adding more variety to your workouts. by including weight lifting, yoga or circuit training.
We are all addicted to our smart phones screens these days. When it comes to cardio sessions, I think this bad habit can really help you to achieve that goal. From my experience, I think smart phone is a game changer for making the workouts more bearable and interesting. It can help you in so many different ways. If I start writing about all those ways then I will never be able to finish my first blog post. We will talk about all the other ways in future posts but the one that I want to talk about in this post is how you can use it as an entertainment device during your cardio sessions.
Listen to music
Invest in a nice pair of earphones if you don’t already have one. Here are some of my favorite ones for all budgets:
You can read the reviews on Amazon and pick up the ones you like. I prefer Apple AirPods because they fit so well with your other Apple devices if you own iPhone, iPad, MacBook, Apple TV, etc.
Here are the apps that you can download and use to listen to music:
- Spotify – Android | iOS
- Apple Music – Android | iOS (no app needed)
- YouTube – Android | iOS
- Pandora – Android | iOS
Watch your favorite shows
I cannot listen to music everyday when I’m doing my cardio. I have to use some variety to keep my cardio sessions interesting, so I try catch up on my favorite shows while I’m at it. I love to watch Netflix shows because Netflix lets you download the episode for offline viewing and you save your data plan if you get limited data. I always keep some episodes downloaded to pass time when I’m doing cardio or when I’m on a train. If you do not have Netflix membership, then I would strongly advise you get it and they even give you a free month which you can cancel after a month if you do not like without paying a dime. You can sign up for Netflix here. If you’re a Amazon prime member, then you have access to Amazon’s Prime Video which also lets you download shows for offline viewing.
Here are links to Netflix and Amazon Prime apps:
Listen to Audio books
You can also make use of this time to listen to your favorites books on Audible or Apple Books.
There are so many other ways the smart phone can entertain you which I could not cover in this post but I hope this gives you some idea on how to get started. I’ll bring more posts on how to keep up with your gym routine in the future.
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