Stationary bike: 3 minutes total maintaining 90 rotations per minute. First minute at a difficulty setting of 4, on a 1-15 scale, second minute at a difficulty setting of 6, and the third minute back at 4.

Treadmill: Three minutes in total at 6 miles per hour. One minute at a 5 percent incline, one minute at a 7 percent incline and one minute at a 5 percent incline.

Sim cycle: for those readers that are not familiar, this is done while sitting on a balance ball and the sim cycle is a hand crank "bicycle". Picture a miniature bicycle with no wheels and no handle bars, just the pedals.

Jump rope: when was the last time I jumped rope? Let's see, that would be just about never. The requirement here was 2 consecutive minutes. In reality this took at least 7+ minutes due to basic rope jumping incompetence. However, by week four, 2 minutes in about 4 minutes time was doable.

Pushups with a 20 pound medicine ball: one hand on the ground the other on the ball. Push up then roll the ball to the other hand. Repeat 20 times.

Stair stepper: On a difficulty level of 6 the goal is to climb 30, yes thirty, flights of stairs in less than three minutes. First week time was 2 minutes and 53 seconds.

Bridge knee tuck on balance ball: don't make me explain. Trust me when I tell you that it is hard, works the core and is the END of the interval training session.

Of all of these it always seemed that jump rope gave me the most trouble. So I asked the trainer, "What are the benefits of this torture?" She rattled of a number of benefits of jumping rope without ever taking a breath – here are three:

1. The textbooks say that jumping rope can burn up to 1000 calories per hour. Since there is no way that I'll ever be able to jump rope for an hour, my benefit of jump rope training comes in knowing that if I simply jump for 10 minutes I can burn off part of that last burrito I really enjoyed.

2. Learning how to jump rope is not hard. Advanced physics is. Over time I have learned to coordinate the whole jump, rotate rope, repeat thing. My suggestion: don't jump too high or you'll wear yourself out. It's not a high jump competition; it's exercising with a jump rope.

3. Jump ropes are the most portable, affordable, go anywhere, pack in anything cardio exercise you can get. Think about it. A treadmill - $1000. A jump rope - $2.00. Where else can you get a full cardio workout for just $2.00? Don't have the $2.00? Cut up your clothesline.

Truth be told I find interval training really difficult and unpleasurable. Maybe that's why I called it torture in the opening sentence. That said I, through this training I have discovered the benefits of jump rope and have come to appreciate the cardio and other health benefits of this simple, portable, effective form of exercise.