The Only Cardio Hack You’ll Ever Need

I have a love-hate relationship with cardio. While a part of me loves the fact that I diet down at higher calories because of cardio, I just hate the process of cardio, especially nearing the end of my diet. Now when I say cardio, I’m talking about gym cardio. I don’t know how many of you can relate, but there’s something about performing cardio in the gym which makes it a lot more stressful than performing cardio outside. As a matter of fact, this is exactly why I stopped performing gym cardio altogether, but that’s for another post.

I know that a lot of people like performing cardio in the gym. And I do see the advantage of that as well. You can always perform cardio inside the gym, irrespective of the time. You wouldn’t really be able to do the same outside when the sun’s shining right over your head. That still doesn’t make up for the fact that it’s just boring. I knew I had to find a way to make it a little more bearable. For some reason, playing my gym playlist on shuffle just wasn’t cutting it. After a few days of thinking, I was struck with this brilliant idea.

What was the hack?

Watch series while performing cardio. Yeah, exactly that. I thought to myself, if I had to spend 45-60 minutes on the cycle/treadmill anyway, why not catch up with a few of my favorite shows while doing so. After all, this way I would save myself time later in the day to do something more productive. That day marked the end of my cardio boredom. If you haven’t tried this, trust me, it’ll be a game-changer. I used to download an episode on a tablet and take it with me to the gym. Some days it was just long format youtube videos on my phone. I kept the device on the part which usually displays stats like time and calories. This helped in multiple ways. Firstly, it stopped me from checking the time every 2-3 minutes to know when I’ll be done with the session. Secondly, it actually helped me stay consistent with my cardio sessions because I eventually started looking forward to them.

But like every other thing, this had to have its own set of drawbacks. The main one being given awkward stares in the gym. How often do you see someone walk into the gym, get on the equipment and start watching the latest episode of their favorite show? As you can imagine, that was pretty awkward. But with time, the few people who used to be in the gym at the time I trained got used to it. The second drawback was intensity. You can’t pull this off if you intend to perform HIIT sessions. There’s just no way you could be efficient at either task, leading to a complete waste of time. Then again, most of my cardio sessions throughout the week were Low Intensity Steady State, with the main goal of elevating my heart rate a little bit and burning a few extra calories.

Since we have that cleared, you can make a choice. If you are on the fence about trying it out, just go for it. You have nothing to lose. Just make sure that you follow common gym etiquette, for example, don’t do this if you’re on the only treadmill in your gym at a time it’s super crowded. Keeping that in mind, I do feel this makes LISS cardio in the gym a lot more bearable. At a certain point in your cut, you will have to add in cardio anyway. Especially if you wish to get down to low levels of body fat. If you’re going to be spending 4-5 hours a week doing LISS cardio in the gym anyway, might as well make it fun. If you try this out, or if you have already tried it, let me know in the comments below!