Sometimes it’s good to get those competitive juices flowing.
It’s a great way to distract yourself from the workout you’re actually getting. Tons of different sports can do this for you. Our weathermen at KKTV are known to throw down when they play basketball. Our McKenzie Martin is an ironman tri-athlete. And Sports Director Jesse Kurtz is training for the Tour de Cure (which you’ve read about here in the KKTV Fit Club blog).
We have lots of folks here at the station who make these sports part of their fitness routine.
For me, I’m getting into racquetball.
It’s tough. Great cardio. And you can get out all your stress and aggression with a swing of the racquet.
FULL CONFESSION: I’m not particularly good at it. But I’m getting better. (And you have to start somewhere, right?)
My husband and I play occasionally. But he hits the ball so hard, I spend most of the game in the fetal position on the floor, ducking his power swings. Haha It’s not much of a workout that way!
We recently started playing with another couple. It works out well, because the boys can swing as hard as humanly possible in one court. And Tori and I can have a perfectly respectable game in another court. We all played on Sunday. And in two games (about half an hour), we worked up a decent sweat. I checked my Bodybugg. In that half an hour of racquetball, I burned over 200 calories. Not bad at all!
According to the website for Mayo Clinic, you can burn anywhere from 511-763 calories in an hour (depending on your weight). And that’s just for casual racquetball. So, there are more calories to be burned if you get REALLY competitive (like our husbands).
And I got a pretty good ab workout too, because Tori and I have a good time laughing at ourselves and some of our sad attempts (quasi ballet moves) to hit the ball. So we have a good time too! And when we were bored of playing (or as I like to say – when she was tired of losing!!! Ohhhhhhh!!!! Haha), Tori and I hit the treadmill and ran some sprints!
We all left the gym having burned some good calories. We got our heart rates up. And, more importantly, we had FUN being competitive.
Feel free to list some of your ideas for fun calorie burns here. I’m ALWAYS looking for ways to workout, without “working out”… you know what I mean??
