Hey, Athletes! Want to hear about cardio equipment that won’t break the bank? How about how to “run” in Zone 2? Listen to this week’s AMA to learn all about it!
Episode 13 of Ask Me Anything is Up!
Cheap Cardio Equipment and Zone 2
On this week’s AMA Joe joins Jerred to answer a question from Dylan. He asks about some cardio equipment that won’t break the bank! He also asks about Zone 2 and how to go about it if you can’t run in Zone 2.
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To becoming better!
Jerred
Transcript:
AMA 13
[00:00:00] Jerred Moon: Welcome to garage gym athlete. Ask me anything. It’s pretty simple. I’ll be answering questions from the thousands of athletes that follow our daily programming. If you have a question or topic you want submitted, go to garage dot com slash AMA let’s get started.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the garage team athlete podcast. Special edition asks me anything with Joe Courtney. What’s up, Joe?
Joe Courtney: Super special. We’re, we’re even wearing matching shirts. Not planned.
Jerred Moon: Not planned. Yup. You can see it. There it is. which is awesome. So this one is a little bit different than normal.
I mean, really guys, the honestly, it’s just the pandemic. The pandemic is creating all sorts of. Craziness for everybody, I’m sure, but we’re going to do an ask me anything. let’s see. This one was from Dylan and Dylan had kind of a two part question, so we’ll dive into it. He said, what would you, what would be [00:01:00] your recommendation for a cheap piece of cardio equipment?
I don’t like rowers because I have a history of low back problems, but I live in Wisconsin and it gets too cold to run year round. Do you recommend airbikes and if so, which brands are decent for the money? I think I’ll just, I’ll just stop there and then we can answer that one and then we’ll answer the second part of his question.
So, cheap cardio equipment, what you got, Joe?
Joe Courtney: I mean, I almost want to unpack the, lower back issue part because I feel like rowing shouldn’t be too much of an issue, but that’s something else to address. I think it’d be good to look into as far as cheap equipment. the best bang for your buck, I think would be a spin bike to me because treadmills.
I don’t think treadmills are very good at all. And, even like Liz, my wife’s experienced, she has to run treadmills cause she’s stuck on a ship and after a few weeks or a month or so, if she’s, if there’s a heavy amount of running and the program and she gets stress fractures in her foot, she doesn’t get that on regular writing surfaces.
so treadmills can be a bit of an issue and they’re a bit more clunky. [00:02:00] But, we love our, our spinning bike when we’ve had it
Jerred Moon: and did a lot of research before you pulled the trigger, what was the price range you were getting.
Joe Courtney: So, and funny enough, my, my new roommates just got one as well. And you can get pretty decent ones for two 50 to 400, depending on, what your price range is.
There’s obviously going to be ones more that are getting more expensive. The really, really good ones, if you, if you bump it up to about 400, there’s some real, you can get some really, pretty decent ones and they’re all on Amazon. I did do a. Ton of research, and there’s even a dedicated, like websites, if you just Google, like comparing spin bikes, you’ll come up with all kinds of articles and websites that just, it just compares spin bikes and they’re like, Hey, for your price point, this is what you want.
If you want to do this, this is what you want. And even like a little bit of a specs here
Jerred Moon: and there. Yeah. And I think, so I have the concept to a biker, but I, that’s probably not on the. It’s not on the most expensive end as far as bike go, but they’re also not cheap. I don’t remember how much it costs. I think it’s like a thousand thousand [00:03:00] dollars sound right,
Joe Courtney: biker that I was like, I thought it was, the cheaper one is like 800 cheaper than the rower, but I have no idea.
Jerred Moon: Yeah, I can’t, I can’t recall. I mean, that’s what I have. I love it. but the cheapest option, in my opinion, and also maybe the crappiest, would be Craigslist, Airdyne search. Like, I know that it’s not. possible. But I mean, just, they just, I mean, it’s not the, you can’t like pull the trigger on it, but I would, I would look into that because I see these deals pop up all the time and all these different garage gym groups of people getting, and I’m talking about the old, like Schwinn Airdyne style bikes.
They just pop up from people getting rid of them. They are hard to grab a, but you can typically snag them for like 100 bucks or 200 bucks or something like that. So it really low cost. And it will definitely improve your conditioning. So I mean, cause I have both of those. I have an old Airdyne and then I have, the concept to bike Ergon.
Then if you want to buy one, I think the rogue echo is next in line for [00:04:00] not super cheap, but not overly expensive. I think as far as bikes are concerned, be, I think it’s around a $750 price range. So that one’s an option as well.
Joe Courtney: Yeah. that’s definitely up there on the list. So I’d say like for the, what would you put your cat that for the, like used airlines?
I’d probably say 200 would be my cap.
Jerred Moon: 200. Yeah, that’s exactly what I would say.
Joe Courtney: Somebody posted just recently that they were about to pull the trigger on, like use one for like 400, and I was like, no, that’s not worth it at all. You might as well just go new.
Jerred Moon: Yeah, you can get a spin bike. And that’s the thing, like, yeah, I mean, I dunno, like that price difference, you know, if I’m like.
Because there’s a quality issue, like if you spend 400 bucks on an old Airdyne and you could have spent 700 ish on one from rogue. Yeah. Like we’re getting close to twice as expensive, but the road one will never break. Like you’re going to be fine. But if you’re spending 400 or above for a used one that could possibly break and might need maintenance.
You’re probably can be irritated. So
Joe Courtney: yeah, so I got, I got an a S a Schwinn back in San [00:05:00] Diego for about one 75 is what I paid the secondhand from my old CrossFit gym, and I was getting rid of theirs. It was great. I loved it for awhile, but after about a year and a half, I broke it because I was just going too hard on it or something happened, but it broke and I stopped.
I stopped using it. But you know, I didn’t really care cause I was only paid one 75 for it. So I still got a year and a half of use out of it and it was fine. And we were planning on eventually upgraded anyway. But that’s just one example of why you go a little bit cheaper. Yeah.
Jerred Moon: And mine is starting to make some really funny noises like so I think a break is in my future, if I wasn’t using the.
ERG, the concept to biker so much, I probably would have broken the Airdyne already, but
Joe Courtney: I have tips on how to break it.
Jerred Moon: It’s getting close. It’s getting real close. All right, let’s go to the second part of this question. hopefully that, those are some good recommendations, but Craigslist really or Facebook marketplace are great, to look for used equipment as well.
So he also said, I also. Watch the AMA on zone two verse high intensity today, and I’m curious, since I cannot run [00:06:00] in zone two, my heart rate always goes up to one 75 to one 80 no matter what pace I run at, should I be walking to lower my heart rate? Then jog more to keep it in zone two do you want to go first?
Joe Courtney: I’ll let you. Okay. More of a zone stuff.
Jerred Moon: Yeah, I think so. First off, if you can’t run in zone two, that’s okay. Like it’s not, it’s not a problem. You know, it’s, that’s more of like an advanced athlete thing. That’s like, that’d be like coming to ask me like, Hey, I can’t, I can’t back squat 500 pounds. Would it be okay to steal back squat?
You know? Yes. You’re just gonna do it slightly different than.
Sorry, having some technical difficulties here with the video. so anyway, you, you would, just walk. So whatever is zoned to for you is what you would do. so that, that would be a walk. Now I do recommend, like when we talk about Zen to Murph and things like that. Doing a combination of what you’re talking about.
So what, that’s [00:07:00] 50 seconds walk, 10 seconds, jog or 30 seconds a walk, 30 seconds, jog, switching back and forth, whatever it takes to keep you in zone two. I know when I do zone to Murph, which is where we do the entire Merv work, I would try and saying, stay in zone two. I can run the first one in zone two, but the second one I have to do what I’m talking to.
I have to go back and forth between hitting zone two and not in zone two. So that’s my 2 cents on that.
Joe Courtney: Yeah. it’s, most people can’t run in zone two for very long, even, so I have like a very low resting heart rate and I’m wind stays down pretty low. We just did. I just tested out a workout where we’re in zone two for a long time and, It lasted about three minutes, lasts about three minutes for, I had to stop and walk and I walked for that 30 seconds, then I could jog again. So it’s intermixed back and forth like that. And something that we mentioned, we were talking about zone training is that you’re, it’s better to stay at the bottom level of it because you’re raising your floor.
We’re not trying to reach higher intensities. Raise your ceiling direction, just raising your floor so [00:08:00] that. Your heart rate isn’t that sensitive to when you actually start doing activities?
Jerred Moon: Yeah, I think people get too focused on the amount of work that’s being completed. If all we ever had you do was zone two, that would be problematic.
Like if it was just like, yeah, we do zone two every day, then I think, I mean, I would, it would be good for your fitness, but ultimately it would, It’d be really boring training and you wouldn’t progress as quickly as, mixing everything together, how we do. So I think doing occasional zone two is going to be really good for you, and you will eventually over time, raise that floor that Joe is talking about so you can run and still be in zone two.
So something to keep in mind. All right, that’s it for this week’s ask me anything if you guys, Are watching on YouTube. Go ahead and like subscribe, leave a comment and look at my, you can see my goofy like. What ever the hell is going on with my camera. That’s, that’s fun place. See if you’re listening, a five star review and positive comment would be awesome, but if you also, if you want to ask the question and go to garage mathlete.com/ama and we will get it [00:09:00] answered.
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