HIIT on the Curve
Does your gym have one?
Very rarely do I ever enthuse about gyms per se - I mostly use a gym because I need a convenient place to train not necessarily becuase of their equipment, most of which is useless.
Yet the Curve is one of those inventions which despite my initial scepticism really does add to a workout. It is in fact a treadmill with a difference. The belt is not powered by anything other than kinetic force i.e. your own momentum. Yes - it moves by you moving your feet.
As the name suggests it is a curved base so that you aim to run on the curve itself. This kind of simulates hill-running so that you are working that much harder. You brake by moving your feet to the back where it grinds to a halt (although to be honest I don't trust it or me to get that right and I use the handrails to get to the side plates if I need to). That said you can easily and simply move back to walking pace
This machine is absolutely perfect for HIIT - high intensity interval training (see earlier posts). Ireckon that for the average person 5 minutes is sll you need for a really intensive workout. I use it normally at the end of my session.
There is another up-side too. For those of you who have bad knees (sadly that very much includes me) the process of simulated hill running means you don't fully extend your legs (because of the gradient / curve) and that in turn means you massively reduce the jarring. Inthat sense it works better than real hill running because the track helps also to absorb leg shock. Add to this that you're not on it for that long then it simply is a great way of adding to your training with little time investment.
Happy training
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