The article "Cardio Enthusiasts: Discover a More Effective Training Method
for Fat Loss and Heart Health!" is about fitness, it was written by Michael Geary.
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 that popular belief and become the
"hamster on the wheel" doing endless hours of boring cardio, I'd
like you to consider 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 suggetsing 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 phsyical 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 really 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 intenral 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 radiacl 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 nirtic oxide
response (which can encourage a healthy cardiovascular system),
and an increased metabolic rate response (which can assist with
weight loss).
Furthermore, staedy 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. Thnik about it that way --
Exercise that trains your heart to rapidly raise and rapidly
decrease will make your heart more capable of handling everyday
stress.
Stress can cause your blood pressure and heart rate to
increase rapildy. 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.
The important aspect of variable cylcic 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 lwoer drop-out rates
than long boring steady state cardio programs.
To summarize, 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. One of the absolute most effective
forms of variable intensity training to really reduce body fat
and bring out serious muscular definition is performing wind
sprints.
Most competitive spotrs such as football, basketball,
racquetball, tennis, hockey, etc. are naturally comprised of
highly variable stop-and-go moiton. In addition, weight training
naturally incroporates short bursts of exertion followed by
recovery periods.
High intensity interval training (varying
between high and low intensity inetrvals on any piece of cardio
equipment) is yet a second 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 really intense 20-minute
workout.
The take-away message from that 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 muscle maintenance.
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