The Professional Football cardio workout
How to double your fun on a Sunday afternoon.
I know you have a stereotype of the sports fan. That man, maybe in his 30’s or 40’s that waits all week for the big game on Sunday. He listens to that brash sports radio to keep his juices flowing and maintain the appropriate level of fanatical fervor throughout the week.
On Sunday he clears the couch and his calendar. He gathers his beer and salty snacks around him in a great pile. He watches the 4 hour pregame show. Yells at the TV for anotherr 2 hours of football and then simmers through the hour of post game interviews and highlights.
The next week the cycle repeats.
That’s not me. But I did invent a new workout this week that leverages the natural rhythm of a TV football game. It’s the Professional Football Cardio workout.
This is a great workout because it kills two birds with one stone and turns a potential exercise liability into an endurance win.
Here’s how it works. A TV football game is designed to maximize advertising. As such the commercials are very predictable in both timing and length. The football game itself has a predictable rhythm. There are two halfs made up of two quarters.
On paper the quarters are 15 minutes, but in practice run much longer. In reality the half will take closer to an hour run time. The commercial breaks are predictable and scheduled. There is a long break between quarters, a big break at the half and a long break at each 2-minute warning points. There are also unpredictable commercial breaks. There are time outs and injury timeouts. I don’t have the official stats but it feels close to 40-50% of the time is commercial or other breaks.
This is where the beauty of the TV football cardio workout comes in. You can use both the predictable and non-predictable to get a great cardio workout in.
Here’s how it works. You can mix and match your favorite stationary cardio, treadmill, bike, elliptical, rowing, etc. I used elliptical and bike.
Every gym has TV’s that are tuned to the local sports team. On Sunday you get to the gym in time for the start of the game. You start your exercise on the machine in front of the TV.
Start with a Zone 2 effort so ‘2’ on a scale of 1-5. Should be comfortable pace.
Then, and this is the beauty part, every time they go to commercial take your effort up into zone 4. Most of these commercial breaks are 2 – 4 minutes long and are perfect for a sustained effort. Then when the game comes back on you drop back to a 2 effort to recover.
If you do this for the first half of the game it will end up giving you a 45 minute (approximately) killer interval workout. It makes the commercial breaks fly by and allows you to focus on the game.
At half time you can get off the first machine and do a set of stretching or yoga or whatever.
When the second half starts you get on the second piece of equipment and repeat the routine.
This is a beautiful workout. You end up with about 1.5 hours of intense interval work and you get to watch the game at the same time without ever getting bored. It’s a Win-Win.
You can adapt it to other sports using the same framework. You can make up your own rules. For example does the intro and outro graphics count as part of the game or the commercials?
You could even get all your tailgating buddies into the gym with you to have a workout party!
I did this with elliptical and stationary bike for the Pat’s – Broncos game last week and it was a blast – although some of the ladies at the gym were frightened by my inappropriate yelling at the TV.
Give it a try. Kill two birds with one stone. Turn a potato-chip disaster into a thrilling sweat-fest!