While training progress is never linear we do always want to strive to improve upon what we have done before. If we don’t do something more difficult, why would our bodies positively adapt? This becomes especially true as you progress as a trainee because the obvious adaptations, such as increased strength, slow down, and we need to start manipulating variables such as tempo, rest intervals, joint angles and sets. Unless you are a genius can you really tell me all the reps, sets and weights that you did four weeks ago? I don’t think so.
Expanding upon the previous point, a training diary is a motivational tool par excellence. Knowing that you have to beat your last session is a massive incentive for most people. Sometimes the physical progress can be hard to properly assess – the mirror hardly ever tells the truth – and using your diary as a way to see how you just keep on getting better will reaffirm everything else that you are doing to change your lifestyle and improve your physique.
DON’T BE A PUSSY
The number one muscle-building commandment in my book is ‘Thou shall not be a pussy.’
I don’t think I need to add anything more than that but I’ll conclude this section with two points that expand on the commandment.
First, ask yourself this question: Will the lion or the lamb dominate in the gym?
Second, when things get tough and you want to quit – something that happens to every single one of us, by the way – remind yourself of the old Schwarzenegger mantra that the gym should be attacked with ‘joy and fierceness’. Repeat that in your head when you start to look for a way out. I promise you’ll get an extra rep or two out!
04 THE CARDIO CONUNDRUM
Cardiovascular exercise is essential for good health, but has a lesser role in achieving better body composition. Indeed, the concept of cardio is completely misunderstood by most.
If you believe aerobic exercise and cardio are interchangeable terms, or that cardio makes you fat or causes muscle mass to disappear, then you need to read on. The benefits, application and even meaning of ‘cardio’ require us to go right back to basics because so much confusion has been created by so many so-called experts.
WHAT IT ALL MEANS
The definitions here illustrate the first problem we have to address in this cardio/aerobic debate – we are pretty much all guilty of using the term cardio training when we really mean aerobic training.
The essence of a ‘cardio workout’ is that it refers to exercise that is stimulating for our overall cardiovascular system, predominantly the heart. So it stands to reason that anything that maximally exercises the heart and vascular system can count as a cardiovascular training. If you are one of those who associate cardiovascular training as solely belonging to the world of the treadmill or stationary bike, stop for a second and ask yourself whether any other forms of exercise might also stimulate the heart.
CARDIOVASCULAR EXERCISE
AEROBIC TRAINING
Cardio training is often perceived as being within the exclusive remit of ‘aerobic exercise’. Aerobic (meaning ‘with oxygen’) training is typified by low to moderate levels of exertion, typically over a duration of 20 minutes up to many hours. As a percentage of energy used to fuel the body, fat metabolism is higher than carbohydrate/glycogen metabolism (glycolysis).
However, fewer calories per unit of time are burned than during more intense forms of training (such as anaerobic, meaning ‘without oxygen’), and overall metabolic elevation stays higher the more intense the training session.
AEROBIC CAPACITY
Specific aerobic training improves aerobic fitness and aerobic capacity. Aerobic capacity is the functional capacity of the cardiorespiratory system, which is measured by testing VO2 max, which is an individual’s maximum oxygen consumption.
VO2 max is crucially important for endurance athletes, but of minimal importance to more explosive athletes. Indeed, there is a proven inverse correlation between VO2 max and an individual’s ability to accelerate and explode as measured by a vertical jump. There is also no direct link between VO2 max and cardiovascular health. This isn’t to say that the VO2 max is useless, or that an improved cardiorespiratory capacity is not a good thing for many people, but it is clearly not the only or even the best way to exercise the heart.
CARDIOVASCULAR HEALTH
The cardiovascular system is one of the most important aspects of our health, and we should pay it constant attention. It is the heart, the veins and the blood vessels, and it takes in pulmonary, systemic and coronary circulation. It has nothing to do with aerobic capacity, which should make you wonder why aerobic training is so commonly conceived as being the only way to exercise for a healthy heart.
CARDIORESPIRATORY FITNESS
Cardiorespiratory fitness is the ability of both the respiratory and the circulatory systems to supply oxygen to skeletal muscles during physical activity. This isn’t an asset just for an exercise regime, but also for living a vigorous and fulfilling life. A large number of people seem to believe that cardiorespiratory fitness can only be achieved by aerobic training. Indulge me and let’s wonder if there are any other exercise modalities that might vigorously pump blood to skeletal muscles and train the heart …
Some people will tell you that aerobic training is a must for cardiovascular health, regardless of whether an individual weight trains or not. I have even heard medical doctors come out with this line of BS, which is quite staggering. The solution to such ignorance is to teach via experience, and one session into the delights of weight training for fat loss and body composition purposes soon sees them reverse that opinion.
In such circumstances it isn’t absolutely necessary to have them gasping for breath, heart beating so hard that our receptionist at the front desk can hear it, vomiting in the sick bucket, and collapsing in a corner of the gym for 50 minutes, but it does give a certain satisfaction as a lesson well learned! What we should all love about resistance training is that it is the most malleable training tool available to us. We can pretty much literally train for any goal that we want.
So if you are gearing up for a power-lifting world record with long slow sessions of triples and a work-to-rest ratio of 10 seconds to seven minutes, then yes, you would certainly benefit from some form of ‘cardio training’, although this should not be traditional aerobic work but rather some brief modified strongman sessions on the super yoke, farmer’s walk and prowler.
On the other hand, the type of training that most people want, the type that adds a sculpted look to the body, very often involves minimal rest periods and a constantly elevated heart rate, all of which are cardio healthy.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU
It means that there are innumerable exercise options open to you if you want to build cardiovascular health. A bit of (hard) aerobic training can be good, and so can some (hard) weight training. Coasting on a stationary bike will have negligible effect, as will weight training the way most people seem to do it in a commercial gym. Sitting yourself down in some fancy machine and lifting a weight for 12 reps that you could actually lift for 100 reps, and then resting five minutes while you text your friends and stare into space, simply does not cut it.
It isn’t all that complicated. You just have to work hard! However, if push comes to shove, is there an optimal form of training for cardiovascular health?
The answer to that is a definite affirmative, and it lies squarely in the realm of resistance training. If you are lucky enough to have access to modified strongman training equipment or can train in a gym where super-setting large compound movements is feasible, then you have the ideal cardiovascular training modality.
If you still need convincing, allow me to throw a little bit of science into the mix. There are countless studies proving that left ventricular function of the heart is one of the key predictors of cardiovascular health, and guess what sort of person these studies say have the best ejection fraction and diastolic function? Yes, individuals who regularly practise vigorous resistance training!
Your Honour, I rest my case.
If you want a fantastic bang-for-your-buck routine then try this very simple workout and tell me your heart is not working overtime. This is certainly not your bog-standard cardio training programme, and if you are reasonably well trained and can generate a good degree of force then this will smash you up beyond belief. And your cardiovascular system will benefit from the workout of your life!
Workout A* Exercise Sets Reps Tempo Rest
A1 Deadlift 4 10 max 4010 10 secs
A2 Standing barbell shoulder press 4 10 max 3010 10 secs
A3 Shoulder-width pull-up 4 (add weight if necessary) 10 max 3010 10 secs
A4 Back squat 4 10 max 4010 2–4 mins
*If you feel this circuit in your lower back then a great alternative is to substitute a regular barbell with a Watson trap bar to shift the emphasis onto the quadriceps.
THE LIES SOME TRAINERS TELL ABOUT ‘CARDIO’
Twenty-five years ago, when I was still a teenage boy, I would let a lot of things bother me. Righteous indignation was a common occurrence, and my father used to constantly liken me to a coiled spring. I’ve mellowed a fair bit since then, but every now and again I allow the red mist to descend and I’ll take vehement umbrage at sub-educational idiocy. The politics of imbeciles and training opinions of morons who masquerade as fitness professionals are my two most emotive bêtes noires.
A little while ago my slow burn was sparked into fire by a headline I read on social media by some bandwagon-jumping clown. This joker had hitched his colours to the anti-cardio mast and decided to preach that running will make you fatter and that if you exercise near anything electric you are wasting your time.
I am not exaggerating in the slightest.
I am not a huge fan of cardio training, and especially some forms of running, as an optimal body composition tool, but to suggest that if I go for a run I’ll get fatter flies in the face of sense and experience.
The fool who writes a headline like ‘Run Yourself Fatter’ is trying to grab your attention, but what he fails to realise is that most people pick up on just 10 per cent of any message, so no matter what else he may have written most people will only recall the headline.
Mistakes such as these are often compounded by the fallacious argument, one I have heard so often from a certain type of personal trainer, that all you need to do is go to the gym and observe those who weight train and those who do cardio training to see who is the leanest, because it will be the weight trainers who win.
I am willing to bet that I have been in more hardcore weight-training gyms than 99.99 per cent of all personal trainers, and in my experience the fat bastards all tend to congregate around the bench-press platforms and avoid cardio like the plague. And then when they want to lean up, they jump on a treadmill.
This does not mean that these chaps (it’s almost always the guys, by the way) are porky because they like to bench press and avoid any form of cardiovascular training; causality is not so simple. But to the eye of the layman, who can observe the lean cardio bunnies and the squidgy weight-lifters, it makes no sense whatsoever and serves to undermine otherwise sensible messages.
Being constructive, let’s address where cardio training sits in the pantheon of exercise modalities. It does have a place, and if you do it you won’t lose all your muscle! You may have noticed that those who say you will shrink from cardio tend to have very little muscle mass of their own anyway.
Nor will cardio make you fat. Now this shocking revelation is out of the way I am going to list a number of points that you can use to help form your own way of dealing with the cardio conundrum.
14 COMMON SENSE CARDIO TRAINING RULES
01 Cardio is not the best way to get lean if you have limited exercise time. Intensive weight training will always win out if you can only get to the gym three times a week and have zero other opportunities to train.
02 Cardio is a great fat-loss tool for those of you who can only make the gym three to four times a week (for weight training), but have time to exercise at home and/or outdoors on other occasions. My attitude is, why waste good gym time by doing cardio?
03 Long bouts of cardio training can be counterproductive. I don’t believe for a second it will make you fatter, but it will negatively impact your cortisol levels, make recovery harder, and be harmful for those of you wanting improved muscle mass or just so-called tone and shape. Basically, extended endurance-style cardio performed repeatedly will make you look ‘stringy’, and without decent quality muscle you run the risk of becoming the dreaded ‘skinny fat’.
04 Aerobic work plateaus after six to eight weeks of training. This means that there is limited value in doing traditional aerobic-style training as a means of continuously improving your fitness. Here is a hint: You can exercise your heart (the true meaning of cardio work as opposed to aerobic training), elevate your metabolism and improve aerobic fitness without an over-emphasis on cardio. In fact, you don’t necessarily need any ‘traditional cardio’ at all. Also, if you do want to do cardio for fat loss and/or fitness, then mixing it up a lot will help prevent your body entering a more efficient, less metabolism-boosting mode. Different machines, different paces, uphill, downhill – the options at your disposal are endless and infinitely better for both mind and body than mindlessly trudging away at the same level.
05 You will hear some people harp on about the oxidative stress and elevated cortisol issues that come with performing cardio. I say if it makes you feel good, and you are otherwise healthy, then a little bit will not hurt you. But this doesn’t mean two hours a day, every day, on the treadmill. Hard cardio, be it interval training or steady state, should be done judiciously, but a couple of 30-minute sessions a week will usually only serve to benefit a fat-loss programme, and if you enjoy and feel good when taking a nice long walk then go for it. The positives will far outweigh the negatives. Just don’t fool yourself into thinking this is a replacement for the more effective forms of fat-loss training.
06 If you are seeking to maximise muscle mass then 30 minutes of fast walking three times per week may be useful, but is probably not essential if you are weight training hard and with sufficient volume and frequency. A few fast walks on top of four times per week weight training will not really hinder your recovery process unless you have the testosterone levels of a neutered hamster.
07 If you are seeking to maximise muscle mass while getting leaner at the same time then I’d advise a 6:1 ratio of weight training to fast walking. This is a very personal thing, though, and really has a lot to do with your own recovery levels, any calorie deficit, and the type of resistance training protocols you adhere to. If you have limited gym time then you may benefit, for very brief periods when you are focusing on fat loss, in learning a lesson from bodybuilding and adding an extra cardio session three to six times per week separate from your weight training.
08 You must always adapt the training tool to the goal. I do not really like interval training as cardio for those who are primarily concerned with muscle growth or muscle retention. I think the energy demands, both physical and mental, of hard weight training are too great to add interval training on top. If a lean and athletic body is your goal then adding interval training can be a huge benefit, and for most regular people with non-physique competing goals this would be my preferred cardio of choice (after point 14).
09 There is a correct time to perform cardio. If you are going to do all your training in just one session, always perform cardio after your weight training, as the other way around will hinder your lifting performance and limit the fat-burning effectiveness of the cardio: many more fatty acids will be freed up into the bloodstream for energy after weight training than before.
10 Some folk will tell you that you shouldn’t perform any cardio training on machines that use electricity as they produce electro-magnetic stress (EMS) that can raise cortisol and induce insulin resistance. And it gets worse, as you shouldn’t even be near something as seemingly innocuous as an
iPod while training, as it will similarly restrict your fat-loss efforts. I’ve seen the EMS and hormonal fluctuations study on this and I don’t dispute a very mild effect, but let’s get a grip. If you are training for the Olympics, then ditch the electrical machines while training. But if not, don’t worry about it. The bottom line is that if listening to your iPod inspires you to push harder then by all means go for it.
11 I think the stationary bike is almost as much a waste of time as the recumbent bike! A treadmill, a rowing machine, a versa climber or a punching bag and boxing pads would be my preferred gym tools. All allow for versatile training modalities, and you can cruise or go hard depending upon the circumstances.
12 The best form of steady-state or relatively undemanding cardio training is a brisk walk in the great outdoors. If you haven’t tried it for a while I urge you to do so. It will make you feel more alive. It is my personal favourite.
13 If you are a cardio junkie and you are trying to cut down but miss the endorphin rush or runner’s high, learn how to weight train using high volume and minimal rest between sets. Find a gym that will be quiet enough to allow a massive giant set circuit – full-body or body-part split, either is good depending upon your goals – and knock yourself out.
14 The absolute best form of fat-burning, fitness-enhancing cardio training isn’t really what most people consider to be cardio at all. If I were to supplement any type of fat loss and/or conditioning regime with extra training sessions above and beyond a tough resistance training regime it would be by adding in modified strongman training. The beautiful thing about this training modality is that it elevates the metabolism and keeps it elevated for up to 36 hours; it allows you to train in a truly functional and primal manner that traditional cardio on machines can never do; there is minimal impact and repetition in comparison to running; it is so much easier on soft tissue; and it is so challenging and so much fun!
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