🏋️‍♂️ Best low-impact cardio workout that'll save your knees

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Here’s what’s going on today:

• Using the gym as a type of therapy

• The best leg workout to never skip

• Low-impact cardio workouts to save your knees

Fitness

Clear Your Head

While we often extoll the physical benefits of working out across an entire universe of possible fitness modalities, another virtue of training includes a panoply of mental health benefits.

Two-time Figure Olympia champion Erin Stern knows how important exercise can be to mental health. In the article below, she lists 10 ways exercise can act as a form of therapy.

The confidence and strength that resistance training provides may be the best-known mental benefit of hitting the iron. Focusing on solid goals and habits may also provide you with some needed cerebral relief during stressful periods in life. Find out how serious training can potentially benefit your mental health with these tips.

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Workout Tips

Lower-Body Dominance

It’s time to stop thinking about leg day as something you usually skip in the middle of the week between hitting arms and chest. Buff arms and chicken legs litter the internet’s universe of memes, and BarBend doesn’t want you to become just another GIF statistic.

Fear not — pro bodybuilding coach Joe Bennett has the “perfect” leg workout to get you out of your small-limbed doldrums and ready to slap on a swimsuit. Known as the “Hypertrophy Coach,” Bennett put together the ideal program for chiseled legs, and all you have to do is step up and follow it. People skip leg training for two reasons: it’s hard, and they usually wear pants anyway, so why waste time training them?

It’s time to embrace the difficulty of leg day and be proud of those bulging quads and meaty hamstrings.

Cardio

Low-Impact, High-Value

Your summer blockbuster selections this year will feature the dueling workout choices of Low-Impact and Total-Body Armageddon. If the strain of trying to remember which movie starred Bruce Willis and which starred Ben Affleck is hurting your brain (or, wait, were they in the same one?), you might be in the right age group to focus on these low-impact cardio workouts to totally smoke your lungs without doing damage to your body.

Low-impact workouts extend far beyond soothing water aerobics and breathing exercises. Depending on your access to equipment, kettlebells or spin bikes can get you fishing your trout in your own personal lake of sweat in no time. Find out how to move your body pain-free while smashing yourself with all the cardio you can handle.

Everything Else

So Many Ways to Sweat, so Little Time

• If you want to beat the biggest, strongest dudes in your gym at something and have them turn green with envy, break out some pistol squats and challenge them to a one-legged squatting contest for the ages.

• Recumbent bikes are more than just a place to de-cramp between squats. Ergonomic and comfortable, they can let you get your cardio without any new aches and pains. Learn about all the benefits here.

• The Echelon Row is an affordable entry point for home gym ERG rowers. Read our full review.