Getting Your Heart Rate Up With Apartment Cardio

It’s cold out there, but you can’t fall off your training schedule. If you can adapt and overcome, then you’ll feel a lot better about yourself and manage to stay healthy over the long winter. Granted, I’m not coming up with the next Sweatin’ to the Oldies; rather, I am reminding you of some cardio classics with a little twist to keep it interesting and account for living in a small space.

Ok, let start with a boxer’s favorite – the jump rope. If I’m going to jump rope I have to have something else going on. What can I say? I get bored easily. I don’t have a T.V. so I usually watch a 30 minute episode of something online. I’m still not very good at jumping rope so I had my girlfriend show me how to do the “skip rope” method. This is a different than the typical foot-together method. I like it because it keeps my heart rate up, but it isn’t totally exhausting. Another bonus is that the cost is low. A new synthetic rope will cost about $10 – $15 dollars.

A favorite intense cardio workout of mine is really more of a rapid-fire series of calisthenics. After some stretching and a warm up, I start with a set of push ups. I take a short rest then I do a set of sit ups. I take another short rest then I do a set of pull ups.

Here is what it looks like:

Set #1
1. Push ups
2. 30 second rest
3. Sit ups
4. 30 second rest
5. Pull ups
6. 30 second rest

Then I repeat the whole thing a few times. You know your limits, I always push my limits but never so hard that I injure myself. Keep that in mind during your work out. The trick to keeping my heart rate up is minimizing the periods of rest between sets. I like to try to keep those rests down to about 30 to 45 seconds. Find what is comfortable for you and start there. Believe me, depending on how many reps per set and how many sets you do, this can be a very intense work out. Now, let’s take a look at cost. Oh wait, the cost is zero dollars and zero cents!

So there you go – an awesome workout for next to nothing.

Ask questions or, please, share with me what your favorite (cheap) work outs are!

By: EricBrown

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Eric Brown owns and manages the Urbane Apartments in Metro-Detroit. He shares his stories of apartment lifestyle and experiences discovering Birmingham and Royal Oak, Michigan.