The cross trainer and I have a love hate relationship but we seem to make it work on a regular basis and there is no denying the chemistry we have. Unlike walking, this exercise is a piece of equipment and thus requires more effort than just popping on my gear and hitting the streets. But in my current abode its actually very similar; I get out of the elevator on the ground floor and instead of turning right to hit the pavement, I turn left and hit the gym. My life is exceptionally difficult.
I do like that the cross trainer requires minimal concentration; I pretty much stand on it, get the pedals moving and try to maintain a consistent speed. I start at a doable resistance and increase it over the first half of my work out until I'm really feeling it in the legs and they really just want to quit. Then I bring it back down slowly over the final half of my workout. I have become somewhat anal about hitting a calorie count on the machine that is nice multiple of 5. I don't really care what the calories are, and seriously doubt they are accurate, but I like it to be a nice number to keep the ocd monsters at bay.
I sometimes really struggle to get on the cross trainer, especially if I've only just done a session the day before and my body wants some sunshine. But living in the northwest means rain is a part of life and I'm just not up for my usual 90mins walking in rain. And, to be honest, sometimes the only way I'll do my exercise that day is to bribe myself with some tv trash viewing, which is easy to do on the cross trainer. I used the cross trainer on day 2 of the challenge because I was short on time and I get more cardio in using the cross trainer than walking.
So, in terms in this glute challenge, the cross trainer does not give me the same muscle twitchiness that walking does. I do recall when I first started using the cross trainer seriously that my butt muscles hurt quite alot, to the point where sitting the day afterwards was uncomfortable. I've realised these two things constitute my ranking of exercise: does it make my muscles ping afterwards? And, does it make my muscles really hurt afterwards? Somehow, this seems like a pretty daft scale to measure exercise. And kinda mean to myself. I'm going to have to work on this.
Because I know it was worrying everyone, I have looked up my muscle pinging phenomenon and it is quite normal apparently. Thankfully I can give up the freakoid label I had given myself, phew, I feel like a dodged something pretty major there.
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