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 Cardio is a must for those seeking to improve their fitness. But what type of cardio should you be doing? Is running better than cycling? Should you be doing running and cycling? How fast should you be going? These are all fairly common questions from beginners and all are actually fairly easy to answer.
There are a whole host of reasons why people do cardio. For some, it‘s ‘to get fit‘, others its marathon running, others still weight loss. Depending on what your goal is, adjust the cardio regime to suit accordingly. Decide what your priority is when exercising and focus your efforts on attaining this goal. Knowing where you want to be and how to go about getting there will yield much faster progress and better results. Cardio machines are generally not as good as the real thing. You will benefit much more in terms of cardio from pounding the pavement around your neighbourhood than breezing it on a treadmill watching TV for twenty minutes. Machines can help alleviate the stresses on joints and bones but in terms of cardio, hopping on your bike, rather than an exercise bike will generally be more beneficial. Plus, it's much less boring! Adjust to what you are aiming for. Marathon running for example, means gradually increasing the amount of running you do until you are able run the full distance. Then, it's a matter of practice until your speed is up to scratch and you’re winning races and medals. Generally, three practice sessions a week is what is recommended when training for a marathon. 
Weight loss is slightly different. What the aim is here is to ensure that 'burned' calories are slightly greater than consumed calories, thereby causing a healthy weight loss. If you are starting out from an obese perspective, it's better to start with moderate exercise such as fast walking. As you progress, try aim for at least twenty minutes a day of cardio. This ensures that you have a daily cardio session during which calories are 'burned'. Experts advise doing cardio first thing in the morning since this is forcing your body to use fat reserves. It also means that calories consumed during the day are diverted to repairing muscles rather than being stored as fat. Cardio can take many different forms here - walking, running, cycling, swimming, skipping or jump rope. Adjust your intensity levels to keep your heart rate elevated - the recommended level is 60-85% of your maximum heart rate. To roughly calculate your maximum heart rate, subtract your age from 220, and then calculate 60-80% of this figure. Fitness is a broad category to fall into. For most, it means being able to do a moderate amount of exercise without collapsing in a heap. Having high levels of fitness allows us to function well in daily life, coping with modern work pressures and easing stress levels. High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) has become popular recently and it involves doing cardio at a higher intensity for a short period of time followed by more moderate exercise for a recuperating period of time. For example, do 1 minute of sprinting followed by 2 minutes of running. Repeat ten times. HIIT forces the body to adjust to varying levels of exercise intensity rather than growing accustomed to your normal fitness regime. Circuit training is also another form of fitness training and involves exercising differing muscles with different exercises for the duration of the session. There might be 2 minutes of running, 2 minutes of skipping, 2 minutes of punch bag, 2 minutes of cycling followed by 2 minutes of fast walking. This routine would be done 2 or 3 times during a session and is a really great way to vary your exercise routine rather than clock watching for 30 minutes on a treadmill. So depending on what you are aiming for when you don that sweat band in the morning, try and adjust your cardio routine to suit accordingly. Exercising correctly greatly aids the progress you are trying to achieve and allows you reach your goals quicker. If you find running incredibly boring, this is probably not the exercise for you. Try cycling or swimming instead. In all cases, have fun and enjoy! |
