A cardio day before we end wrap up the first-week gym routine for beginners. This is the third cardio session in the week and I know it, yes, I’ve been counting too! But there is no way out of it. The first week was only meant to open your body up and get you used to the gym routine and the gym equipment.
By now, if you have diligently followed the gym routine for beginners on cannot cardio, get it? No? Anyway, you would know the drill. Cardio sessions are open to choices and preferences, you can do either machine-assisted workouts or the floor workouts, but today, we will just keep it light.
Instead of doing any heavy floor exercise, or any type of high-intensity cardio sessions we will keep it low to mid-intensity. So, if you don’t want to go to the gym today, and hit the park instead, then it is up to you. Before we get into the workout, give yourself a pat, you completed one big milestone, your first week at the gym.
Day 6 – Gym Routine For Beginners
The gym routine is going to be about 45 minutes to 1 hour at tops. Just keeping it to simple cardio variations. If you are going to the gym for machine-assisted cardio sessions, then remember all the variations can be shuffled in gym routine for beginners. You can do any and you don’t need to wait for a machine to be free before you can hop on to it, just use a different one.
If you are planning to follow the floor variation then you can follow what we did on day-3 in the gym routine for beginners or you can follow them at the end of today’s routine.
Exercises
- Treadmill
- Elliptical
- Cycle
- Skipping – Optional
- Crunches – Optional
- Stretching
Treadmill – 15 minutes
Start off with some low-intensity cardio on the treadmill. Just walk on optimum speeds, don’t run and neither walk too slow. Keep the speed of the treadmill a little faster than your normal walking speed, this you challenge your body a bit and warm it up quicker.
Don’t keep it too fast, as a treadmill can hurt your foot in the long run, in fact even right now, if you have an alternative to walking on the treadmill you can skip it altogether, or you can just go ahead and add a few minutes to other cardio activities. You can also skip treadmill and do a few floor exercises after you are done with the other cardio activities. But keep away from intense floor activities.
15 minutes of walking (low-intensity) would be perfect for the day.
Elliptical Cycle – 15 minutes
Elliptical Cycle or Elliptical machine is hardly used in cardio routines here at Cannot Cardio’s gym routine for beginners. However, it has more benefits than ordinary cardio machines. First off, it puts little to no pressure on your joints and certainly does not hurt your foot, unlike a treadmill.
Secondly, it kind of mimics the natural running posture and is an assisted machine, so even if you had an injury or you haven’t run in a long time, this can open up your body and really well. Burns a lot of calories and targets specific joint movements.
So, why don’t we recommend it often? Well here at cannot cardio we hate recommending any machine-assisted variations cardio. The more you get dependent on machines for cardio, the worse it gets.
Anyway, let’s take 15 minutes of the elliptical cycle and we shall be good. Again, if you think you can run outside of the gym and skip the cardio machine totally, go ahead. It is always better to do cardio in the open, without machine surrounding you, and without straining yourself.
Cycle – 15 minutes
For the last variation of cardio before we wrap up the first week at the gym, let’s do a few minutes of cycling. While cycling remember, to keep the strain low and keep your hands on the bar and pedal as if it is real.
Pedaling too slow or too fast, or keeping the resistance of the pedals too high or too low will eventually interfere with your normal body movement. We don’t want any of it. Keep it as real as possible, in fact, as always try doing it in a real environment even.
Just remember, there is no time limit on cycling and this could be your last variation. So, do a minimum of 15 minutes on the cycle, but you can extend it as much as you want.
Core Workout – Crunches – Additional Variations
Next up in the gym routine for beginners, crunches. A variation that works on your entire abs structure, and it never hurts to focus a little more towards the core exercises except, of course, your core hurts but not in a bad way. It is the muscle recovery kind of hurt.
You can do some crunches if you feel you have a little bit of energy left in you after the long week or you can leave, I understand it is the end of the week. Besides, the goal for today was cooling your body down using cardio and not strain up more muscles.
But if you are down for doing some core variations, crunches would be a good place to start and you can take up more variations from day 3 gym routine for beginners.
4 sets with 20-25 reps each would be great.
Cardio – Skipping – Additional Variations
If you can skip and if you have shoes you are comfortable hopping in then grab a skipping rope and start skipping. If you can’t skip then just pretend you are holding a rope and start skipping.
Skipping works in a lot of ways, it works on your calves, hamstrings and lower belly. Just like any other not-machine-assisted cardio, it works great on increasing your endurance, stamina, and strength.
The variation is optional and you can skip it completely, it is called ‘skipping’ anyway, okay this was the last dad joke. Anyway, if you want to do it, you can skip anywhere for 5 minutes to 500 hops, or extend it further, it is up to you.
Stretching
We did not do any weight lifting today, and for those who skipped the optional exercises, we do any training today, so why do we need stretching? Your muscles are still tensed form all the workout we did throughout the week. It is always good to stretch and relax your muscles whenever you can, so make it a habit to always do it when you leave the gym.
Okay, Bros and Broettes, no gym tomorrow, take a chill! Keep stretching and keep building! Enjoy a fit and healthy life and follow Cannot Cardio for more fitness posts! Remember to Stay Awesome!
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