Jacob’s Ladder
Holy heart rate, Batman!
I wanted to try something different at the gym today whilst working on my aerobic fitness. Decided to climb aboard “Jacob’s Ladder” and see what kind of burn could be achieved.
Quite a burn, as it happens. In six minutes I managed to torch 100 calories (at least, that’s what the machine said). And I wasn’t moving all that fast, although my heart rate was certainly quite elevated.
The machine is pretty simple: you climb the moving rungs of a ladder at a 45-degree angle, going faster or slower as you wish.
When I visited the company’s website a while ago, I read that the contraption’s developer was looking for a way to increase cardio fitness without stress to one’s back or hip and knee joints.
In any case, if your gym has one of these, give it a try. I’m thinking it’ll be a real boost for doing cardio intervals. The one at my gym is rarely used, so on most days I ought to be able to go back and forth between JL and treadmill—or just alternate heavy work and light work on the JL. I like the idea of doing shorter and more intense cardio workouts rather than long, slow, boring ones.
August 26th, 2006 at 9:57 pm
Goodness, I bet that would be a workout. I got winded just thinking about that!