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Before you start wasting hours upon hours on those boring treadmills,
stationary bikes, and elliptical machines, let's examine if low-moderate
intensity, long duration cardio exercise is really doing your body any good, or
if it is mostly a waste of time. I hope you will concede upon finishing this
article that there is a better way to get in great shape, and it doesn't have to
involve endless hours on boring cardio machines.
It is common to hear fitness professionals and medical doctors prescribe low
to moderate intensity aerobic training (cardio) to people who are trying to
prevent heart disease or lose weight. Most often, the recommendations constitute
something along the lines of "perform 30-60 minutes of steady pace cardio 3-5
times per week maintaining your heart rate at a moderate level". Before you just
give in to this popular belief and become the "hamster on the wheel" doing
endless hours of boring cardio, I'd like you to consider some recent scientific
research that indicates that steady pace endurance cardio work may not be all
it's cracked up to be.
First, realize that our bodies are designed to perform physical activity in
bursts of exertion followed by recovery, or stop-and-go movement instead of
steady state movement. Recent research is suggesting that physical variability
is one of the most important aspects to consider in your training. This tendency
can be seen throughout nature as all animals demonstrate stop-and-go motion
instead of steady state motion. In fact, humans are the only creatures in nature
that attempt to do "endurance" type physical activities.
Most competitive sports (with the exception of endurance running or cycling)
are also based on stop-and-go movement or short bursts of exertion followed by
recovery. To examine an example of the different effects of endurance or steady
state training versus stop-and-go training, consider the physiques of
marathoners versus sprinters. Most sprinters carry a physique that is very lean,
muscular, and powerful looking, while the typical dedicated marathoner is more
often emaciated and sickly looking. Now which would you rather resemble?
Another factor to keep in mind regarding the benefits of physical variability
is the internal effect of various forms of exercise on our body. Scientists have
known that excessive steady state endurance exercise (different for everyone,
but sometimes defined as greater than 60 minutes per session most days of the
week) increases free radical production in the body, can degenerate joints,
reduces immune function, causes muscle wasting, and can cause a pro-inflammatory
response in the body that can potentially lead to chronic diseases. On the other
hand, highly variable cyclic training has been linked to increased anti-oxidant
production in the body and an anti-inflammatory response, a more efficient
nitric oxide response (which can encourage a healthy cardiovascular system), and
an increased metabolic rate response (which can assist with weight loss).
Furthermore, steady state endurance training only trains the heart at one
specific heart rate range and doesn't train it to respond to various every day
stressors. On the other hand, highly variable cyclic training teaches the heart
to respond to and recover from a variety of demands making it less likely to
fail when you need it. Think about it this way -- Exercise that trains your
heart to rapidly increase and rapidly decrease will make your heart more capable
of handling everyday stress. Stress can cause your blood pressure and heart rate
to increase rapidly. Steady state jogging and other endurance training does not
train your heart to be able to handle rapid changes in heart rate or blood
pressure.
For example, lets say you jog trying to maintain the same pace for a good
45-minute run. As long as you didn't encounter any big hills along the way, you
probably maintained approximately the same heart rate the entire time - let's
say it was 135 beats/minute. Now, let's contrast that with a much more effective
workout of doing 20 minutes of alternating all-out wind sprints with walking for
a minute or two in between sprints to recover. With this more effective workout,
you're rapidly changing your heart rate up and down on a much larger scale,
forcing it to grow stronger to be able to handle varied demands. Your heart rate
would probably alternate from 110-115 during the recovery walks all the way up
to 160 bpm or more during the sprints. This doesn't mean that sprints are the
only way to take advantage of this style of training. Any style of training that
incorporates highly variable intensity will give you these improved results.
The important aspect of variable cyclic training that makes it superior over
steady state cardio is the recovery period in between bursts of exertion. That
recovery period is crucially important for the body to elicit a healthy response
to an exercise stimulus. Another benefit of variable cyclic training is that it
is much more interesting and has lower drop-out rates than long boring steady
state cardio programs.
To summarize, some of the potential benefits of variable cyclic training
compared to steady state endurance training are as follows: improved
cardiovascular health, increased anti-oxidant protection, improved immune
function, reduced risk for joint wear and tear, reduced muscle wasting,
increased residual metabolic rate following exercise, and an increased capacity
for the heart to handle life's every day stressors. There are many ways you can
reap the benefits of stop-and-go or variable intensity physical training.
In addition to the previously mentioned wind sprints, most competitive sports
such as football, basketball, racquetball, tennis, hockey, etc. are naturally
comprised of highly variable stop-and-go motion. In addition, weight training
naturally incorporates short bursts of exertion followed by recovery periods.
High intensity interval training (varying between high and low intensity
intervals on any piece of cardio equipment) is yet another training method that
utilizes exertion and recovery periods. For example, an interval training
session on the treadmill could look something like this:
Warm-up for 3-4 minutes at a fast walk or light jog;
Interval 1 - run at
8.0 mi/hr for 1 minute;
Interval 2 - walk at 4.0 mi/hr for 1.5
minutes;
Interval 3 - run at 10.0 mi/hr for 1 minute;
Interval 4 - walk at
4.0 mi/hr for 1.5 minutes;
Repeat those 4 intervals 4 times for a very
intense 20-minute workout.
The take-away message from this article is to try to train your body at
highly variable intensity rates for the majority of your workouts to get the
most beneficial response in terms of heart health, fat loss, and a strong, lean
body.
Visit http://truthaboutabs.com/freenewsletter.html to receive a free copy of the innovative ebook, Training & Nutrition Secrets
for a Lean-Body, as well as your own free personalized metabolic rate
calculator.
Michael Geary is a nationally dual certified personal trainer and author of
the internationally-selling The Truth about Six Pack Abs ©2004-2006. Also be
sure to visit my blog http://truthaboutabs.blogspot.com for more valuable fat loss tips.
Article Source: http://www.articledashboard.com
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