I was in Target the other day, and bought a new set of dumb bells - eight pounders, because I really needed to juice up my weight collection, since I currently only have a 3 lb. and 5 lb. weight set currently, and feel like these don’t offer enough weight for my arms any more, especially if I’ve been focusing on my arms for a week or more, my muscles demand more and more weight so that they are actually working and not becoming used to the old weights.

If you don’t constantly up the ante in your workout, you’re not really pushing your body enough to the point where you are building more muscle mass or burning any more calories. An example of this is if you have a physical job where you work a certain way every day, this job no longer constitutes a physical workout when your body becomes used the moves, the pace and the frequency at which you perform it.

This means you don’t continue to build muscle and burn calories at the same rate, because your body is too used to it and doesn’t burn any faster. This is exactly the reason why I bought a fitness jump rope at Target the other day.

I figured jumping rope is a motion and intensity that my body is not used to at all, and this could not only spice up my work out, but it could also add the new moves, new muscle groups, and new cardio intensity that I need to keep my body moving, burning calories in a different way, and targeting different muscle groups. Oh, and not getting bored is important too!

It’s a very simple jump rope. It is a plastic weighted rope with neoprene handles for easy gripping, and it jumps really well, although I bought it at a cheap price and wasn’t even expecting to have a good performance out of it as I did. This may become a small part of my workout, because honestly jumping rope is kind of hard to do for a long time, and I think that about five to ten minutes is plenty. It also can be high impact, so you want to watch it if you have sensitive joints or any back issues.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 25th, 2007 at 10:05 am and is filed under Fitness Accessories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.