Can You Get In Shape Without Endurance Sports ?

Let's face it, treadmills are boring. Bicycle ergometer especially. Jogging isn't for everyone, and neither is swimming.

In addition, every endurance sport takes a lot of time, and not everyone can or wants to invest that. The price question: Is there an alternative?

Train Your Condition Without Endurance Sports?

You get more condition than a sofa sitter with any kind of movement. Every sport that you practice for more than a minute at a time creates a bit of endurance. Even yoga. But let's assume you've already left the sofa and are training, for example strength. Also, you want endurance, but you don't want to run a marathon with it. Medium level is enough. Targeted fitness training, you don't have the time or motivation for that. What to do?

You can modify your training a bit so that it not only allows the muscles to grow, but also creates endurance. This means doing the exercises less intensely, but with more repetitions. Stay aerobic for as long as possible by not taking long breaks during a workout (where your heart rate would drop too low), but also not doing overly strenuous sessions (where you would go anaerobic).

If you don't train for strength, but for a technical sport such as gymnastics, climbing or yoga, you can try to build in endurance units. In everyday life you can climb stairs. However, without your own endurance training (or at least jumps with a run-up), it will take a while before you get into shape.

The Secret Weapon : Sprints

If you are ready to lace up your running shoes and invest a quarter of an hour in endurance twice a week, you can achieve a lot with sprints. With the 10-20-30 technique you can train a lot of fitness in 12 minutes. The special interval training pushes your pulse to the peak again and again, lets it drop a bit and off to the next sprint. I've tried it; it works amazingly well.