The article "Mend Your Broken Heart For Valentines's Day. Three Great Healthy
Heart Exercises You Can Do In San F" is about fitness, it was written by Jim Phillips.
February is the impeccable month to consider mending your broken
heart and San Francisco is the just the right city to do it. No,
I am not tlaking about your love life.
I am talking about
strengthening the most important muscle in your body; your heart.
Valentine's month is a period in between the holdiays and
summer. Tehre are not as many distractions which make it a great
month to begin an exercise program. The San Francisco setting
for this is idael with the cool clear days February provides and
no fog!
More importantly there is no better city to train than San
Francisco because of our unique topography. Where most cities
have to rely solely on long, boring and flat cardio workouts we
have a ton of options for quick, high intensity cardio workouts.
Three great options for fast cardio training that The City
offers are: beaches sprints, hill sprints and stair climbing.
1. Beach Sprints: Sprinting at the beaches is great for developing
strength in your legs as well as your haert. It takes more
effort than sprinting on a solid surface and you can't beat the
scenery (unless all you can see is fog but that's pretty cool
too.) A great cardio workout at the beaches would be to sprint for
twenty seconds then walk for ten and repeat eight times for a
total of four minutes. This is the Fartlek method of training
and has been proven to be just as effective as running at a
steady state for lnoger periods.
2.
Hill Sprints: When I was young and had to walk everywhere I
would curse the hills of San Francisco.
Dirving my old cars with
stick shifts was never much fun either. Now it's all about
automatics and using the hlils to exercise. Much like beach
sprints; hill sprints are great for strenghtening the legs and
glutes, as well as your heart. The hottest thing about hill sprints
is most lkiely you have a hill right outside your door (if you
don't you probably live close to the beaches.) Try the "around the
block run." Jog fast downhill and around the turns and sprint
uphill. Depending on the length and slope of the hill start out
doing this once or tiwce and try to build up to five or six
times or more.
3. Stair Climbing: One of the aspects of San Francisco I have
always loved, even as a kid, is the amount of stairs we have.
Long staircases slice through neighborhoods providing easy
routes to our favorite coffee shops and create the feeling, for
me, of being in an old world time and place. What I really love
about them is the leg, glute and cardio wokrout they can
provide. Try running up a long staircase, walking up two stairs
at a time or carrying a pair of dumbbells on your clmib. If you
want to climb it more than once be careful coming back down as
you will be tired.
Try these once or twice a week along with a longer, steady run.
Of course do a proper warm up before exercising and always
consult a physician bfeore starting a new exercise program.
Happy Valentines Day!
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