I was mostly A’s, always multitasking to the fullest. Now here’s some elliptical workouts to try that match your exercise personality:

• If you were mostly A’s with me, you can try watching your favorite television show while on your elliptical to make the time go by faster, as well as get in your show and workout at the same time. I know for me I feel I am wasting time when only doing one thing at once. You should also try out the total body elliptical workout we mentioned in a previous post to work more body parts in one workout, getting the most out of your workout.

• Mostly B’s are social sweaters and like to work out with friends. Although there may not be any elliptical workout classes available at your gym, try getting on the elliptical machines right next to each other and help pushing one another on! You can also share elliptical workouts with each other.

• You C’s are mindful masters and are usually found doing yoga, yet you need to get that heart pounding once in a while as well. Tuning into that body-mind connection is a great way to reduce stress while working out, so do that while you are on the elliptical as well. Try out this beginner treadmill workout to help you stay focused during your workout, but still raising your heartbeat at the same time.

• Now for you adventurous type, mostly D’s, you like to have an experience when you workout. Try out this workout from LiveStrong.com:

Warm up for five minutes at an easy pace. Then, for every two minutes, switch up your routine. Go forward for two minutes, then go backward. Use your hands for two minutes, then don’t use your hands. Use your hands while going backward and then try not using your hands going backward. Change up your intensity levels from low to medium to high and back. This constant shifting around will help keep your body from reaching a plateau, since it’s not repeating the same motion over and over again.

This workout will leave your body switching up what’s it’s doing constantly, leaving you with quite the “experience”.

• Mostly E’s, now you are the athletes when it comes to fitness. You probably usually aren’t found on an elliptical, but try out this core elliptical workout to strengthen your core for whatever your sport may be. All athletes need a strong core for balance and coordination.

• Now for you hardcore exercisers that got mostly F’s, you are going to want to experience the most from your workout. Try out this 30 minute interval elliptical workout to leave your heart pumping and your body sweating, in just 30 minutes time. You are using shorter recovery times than usual interval workouts leaving your heart pumping!

But for those of you who don’t want to take the time to head over to the site, I thought it’d be fun to share with all of our ellipticalcoupons.com blog readers on here. Yet you will have to go over to see what your answers reveal! Sorry!

This quiz is made to determine what kind of exerciser you are. They say knowing your fitness personality will in turn help you use this information to your advantage and make it more likely for you to stick to a routine.

Have a pen and paper?! You’ll want to make sure to write down your answers.

Question 1 – I like my workouts to take place:

A) In my home, or wherever and whenever I can get them in

B) In a high-energy atmosphere with other exercisers

C) In a calm, relaxing environment

D) Wherever suits my mood that particular day

E) On the field or court

F) Wherever I can best challenge myself

Question 2 – Which of the following workouts sounds like the most fun to you?

A) Walking during my lunch break, or doing a DVD at home

B) Zumba

C) A Pilates-yoga fusion class

D) A crazy obstacle course

E) A game of pick-up basketball

F) A really difficult boot camp or circuit workout

Question 3 – If you could have any of the following for FREE, what would you choose?

A) A home gym (side note – check out elliptical coupons for home equipment here, here, and here)

B) A 10-class pass to my favorite group fitness class

C) A new high-end yoga mat

D) A session of rock climbing

E) Tennis lessons

F) A one-on-one session with Jillian Michaels

Question 4 – How would you describe your ideal workout experience?

A) Convenient

B) Social

C) Present

D) Fun

E) Competitive

F) Challenging

Question 5 – What song lyric best describes your workouts?

A) “Taking care of business and working overtime.” – Bachman–Turner Overdrive

B) “I get by with a little help from my friends.” – The Beatles

C) “Who can say where the road goes, where the day flows.” – Enya

D) “It’s not about winning, it’s about fun.” – Spongebob Squarepants

E) “Put me in, coach. I’m ready to play!” – John Forgerty

F) “Harder, better, faster, stronger.” – Kanye West

Question 6 – What fitness goal would you most like to accomplish?

A) Completing a workout DVD system (such as “Insanity” or “P90X”

B) Setting up a regular running group

C) Holding crow pose for more than a minute

D) Climbing a mountain in another country

E) Winning a basketball tournament

F) Completing an Ironman or marathon

Question 7 – What motivates you to work out?

A) Knowing it gives me the energy to cross things off of my to-do list

B) Having workout buddies to exercise with

C) Finding my inner calm

D) Trying new things and having a good time

E) Winning

F) Pushing myself to my limits

Question 8 – How do you plan your workout schedule?

A) I work out whenever I can squeeze it in

B) I plan my workouts around my social calendar

C) I work out during the time of day when I feel the most centered

D) I don’t schedule my workouts–I do them when I feel like it

E) I work out when the court or field is available

F) I work out when my energy is at its highest 

Alright, now the fun begins, we are going to calculate our scores. Count out the total number of each letter you got, which one did you receive the most for?! Head over to SparkPeople.com to see what your answers reveal and how you can use this information to better your workouts!

We’ll go over some workout regimens to try out on your elliptical trainers next time,

so make sure to check back with your answers ready!

Written By: Jentry

As this article puts it, “it has just as many features as a treadmill and more benefits.” The only drawback they point out is it not ideal if training for any sort of race, being that you are not exactly running as you are on a treadmill. But if weight loss is your goal, ellipticals are the best way to go.

With that being said, here is a great total-body workout I found on FitSugar’s site, which you can read more about here, to try next time you’re on the elliptical:

“Push the handles to work your chest more, and pull the handles to focus more on your back. Skipping the handles altogether gives you a change to focus on your core.”

Time               Resistance      SPM*              Details

00:00-03:00     3                      130                  Warm up

03:00-05:00     3                      150                  Warm up

05:00-07:00     5                      150                  No hands

07:00-09:00     7                      170                  Hands — Pull

09:00-11:00     5                      150                  No hands

11:00-13:00     9                      170                  Hands — Push

13:00-15:00     5                      140                  No hands

15:00-16:00     7                      200                  Hands

16:00-18:00     7                      130                  Backward with hands

18:00-19:00     7                      150                  Forward no hands

19:00-21:00     9                      170                  Hands — Push

21:00-23:00     5                      130                  No hands

23:00-24:00     7                      200                  Hands

24:00-26:00     5                      130                  Hands

26:00-27:00     3                      120                  Cool down

27:00-29:00     3                      120                  Backwards

29:00-30:00     3                      110                  Cooldown

*SPM=Stride Per Minute

Try it out and let us know if it persuades you on the elliptical more! And when it does, check out NordicTrack Coupons has some amazing elliptical trainers you can check out here, sure to fit your price budget.

Written by: Jentry

So it’s summer time again, and if you’re like me, you may or may not be dreading that first pool party of the year where everyone gets to see how much your didn’t work out over the spring semester.  Yeah, it can be a painful time, but it’s all the more reason to get back into the habit of exercising.  The problem is, it’s hard.  Let’s be honest, you’ve probably ran a couple miles here and there, and then told yourself it was too cold to start running again, or you thought about going to the gym, but you told yourself I’ll do it once finals are over.  The fact of the matter is, it has to be done, whether or not it’s hard for you, because, it’s good for you.

With that being said, the big question is, so where do I start?

Well, a good place to start is putting all those digital planners to use.  Let’s face it, there are apps, calendars, and even monthly planners that we can use to keep everything on track and where it’s supposed to go.  Put all that to use!

Next make sure you are using your time wisely.  Sometimes you may only get a small amount of time in, maybe 10 or 15 minutes, that’s fine, just so long as you make sure that you use your time to the fullest and get as much as you can accomplished.  You may consider circuit training or intervals.

Another great way to make sure you get to working out is doing your workouts or classes with a friend.  There’s something about having the feeling that you need to show up for someone that just gets you to show up.  Some people call it accountability.

Finally, remember that it’s ok to break things up.  A couple 15 minute workouts a day will be just as good as working out for 45 minutes straight.  Again, that is, providing you make the best of your time.

There’s no need to stress about getting back into the habit of working out.  It’s going to be hard, but hey, it’ll definitely be worth it in the end.

Carlos Morgan is a 22 year old Communications Major hoping to get into Law School one day and make a difference. If you feel you want to know more, check out his Google+

Time management is not something everyone is born with and some people struggle daily with using their time well. When it comes to exercise you really need to plan time for stretching, warm-ups and cool downs. Make sure you add these important steps into your exercise time so you do not feel rushed and skip them.

This is the best way to protect your muscles from injuries specifically related to working out. The health and wellness industry these days has become all about preventative care so it makes complete sense.

Here are a few ideas to help you manage your time wisely:

• Use a stop watch when moving from one activity or exercise to another.
• Count to 30 before moving on to another stretch.
• Workout to a music mix and when its finished you should be too
• Watch a television show that fits the time you have available for your exercise

You will find that following a few helpful ideas on time management will make it much easier to fit in your daily workouts. Pay attention to the time it takes you to do a few activities and write it down.

It may take you a few minutes to figure out how much time you have to work with on different days but it will help you greatly in choosing which exercises you have time for on those certain days. Keeping track of your exercise times may be necessary in the beginning but this will soon be something you can cut out once you have mastered the art of time management.

Learning to balance your time well will lessen the stress of everyday life and make it much easier for you to figure out how to fit everything in including the time you need to exercise.

So how can a personal pedometer help you get in shape? Information. Knowledge is power, right? Pedometers can give conscientious exercisers the right information to help them get in shape.

Conscientious means that an individual is actively involved with a process. Since personal pedometers make no claims to be a miracle solution (why would anyone ever pay good money for a sham product that claims to fix all the problems with no personal effort?), it is up to the individual to do the work– read: walking.

A fantastically simple exercise regimen that can help most people lose fat, strengthen muscles, improve cardiovascular health, increase bone density, and refresh the mind on a daily basis involves nothing more than walking. Experts have said that walking 10,000 steps a day is enough to help individuals get in shape and reach a healthy weight.

So how many steps do you walk a day? Are you even close to 10,000? Don’t know? That is why you need a personal pedometer.

The slickest personal pedometers on the market like the fit bit, do all the work for you! Shame on you if that got your hopes up; you still have to do the walking.

However, these pedometers will count your every step and wirelessly sync and track your data so that you can keep track of your progress. What type of changes could you make to walk 10,000 steps every single day? Get a personal pedometer and know where you stand! Uh… walk?

Jeff Ostler is an aspiring writer who has written dozens of published articles about personal fitness and sleep health. For everything you never wanted to know about fitness, billiards, parenting and more follow up on Jeff’s posts.

1. Space!

Provide adequate space to conduct your exercises. Most people who start home gyms will have a separate room designated specifically for exercise equipment; which is a very good idea. Also, just because you have space to put your equipment doesn’t mean you have room enough to use them and exercise. Of course this is dependent on how much equipment you want to get; if you only want an elliptical or treadmill, then you won’t need that much space.

2. Consider Quality, Not Convenience

If you are a serious fitness person, then you only want to get the best. For a lot of equipment, “convenient” features actually bring down the quality of the machine. Features like portability, or fold-up, may sometimes be red flags that signify lesser quality; not always, but it does happen. If you want to get the best equipment to get the best workout, you need to be getting quality machines rather than convenient machines; unless convenience is what you are all about, in that case, go for it!

3. Get Machines That Work A Different Part of Your Body

Getting to the point of muscle stagnation is one of the most counter-effective things you can do when exercising. In order to get in the best shape, and see the best results you are going to want to have a varied machine selection in your home gym. Get different machines that work different muscles. Some machines will actually pack different muscle-working exercises into one machine.

There you have it, if you follow these 3 tips your are going to be well on your way to getting a great workout from home!

1) You’ll be able to work out comfortably longer and harder if you’re cool. Heat stresses the body out and makes working out for long periods of time considerably harder.

2) Warming up for 5 minutes before you start helps you to lose more weight. This simple act helps you muscles become more pliable, and also increases your range of motion.

3) Saving your energy for the end of your cardio workout can prevent you from losing as much weight as you possibly can. Opt to instead do high-intensity cardio at the beginning of your workout.

4) Two smaller workouts can be more effective than one. The reason behind this is that working out boosts your metabolism for about an hour or so, so boosting your metabolism twice can give additional calorie burning time.

5) The less time your rest in between sets the more calories you are going to burn. Short rest periods keeps your heart rate up higher, thus helping you burn more calories.

In conclusion, many of these as mentioned before are so simple, but perhaps never really considered. The best part is, these are only little shifts to workouts that you are probably already doing, so make these little changes can make all the difference between a really good workout and an excellent one.  So I hope that these can do someone a little good!

-Ace

Same picture from the joke article.

You can imagine my disappointment. I wanted to read about how using an elliptical could have possibly combated the adverse effects of smoking. Well the article didn’t give me what I wanted, but it did tell me some fun facts about how cigarettes are causing fatal diseases. According to that article, since 1964 2.5 million “could have been spared from death had they adhered to the surgeon general’s warning”.

So I did my own research and forgot about that trick article I read. So I started perusing different websites looking for the information I wanted. LiveStrong is a very helpful site. It turns out there are many studies showing that whole body workouts will increase the body’s immune system, and will help prevent cancers of all types. Then I found this testimonial, posted on WebMD, of how aerobic exercise cured this lady’s cancer.

Getting in shape means getting all of your body systems in line as well as maintaining good mental and emotional health. None of these will come without effort, so an imbalanced effort whether it be higher costs without real effort; physical effort without fitness education; or physical education without putting anything into practice; none of these will help a person achieve physical fitness.

Physical exercise is the hardest step for many people, and far too many people think that exercising is only for meatheads who are trying to get ripped. One of the best pieces of advice concerning exercise that the best type of exercise for an individual is the type of exercise that he or she is actually willing to do.

This means that riding a bike to work, playing street b-ball in the evenings, doing push-ups and sit ups in your bedroom or jogging with your dog are all great exercises and are all infinitely more beneficial than doing nothing. The first step to exercising right is to start, and then just keep going.

Once a person has cleared the hurdle of physical exercise they will need to make sure that they also educate themselves concerning the other aspects of fitness such as nutrition and lifestyle habits. None of these come easily or without effort but they will all have results.