Cardiorespiratory training (Cardio for short) has many health benefits and just 10-20 minutes a day can:
Give you a stronger heart
Reduce the risk of heart disease
Lowers cholesterol levels (so you can eat more bacon…just kidding!)
lower blood pressure
Improve mental alertness
Improve your sleep (yes, sleep!)
Improve your tolerance for stress and stupid people at work
Reduce your risk of getting Diabetes
·…and 50 other benefits that are too good to be true!
While it’s such a beneficial form of training, it can be difficult to figure out what you should be doing and what all the options are available to you. Well, imagination is the limit, but let me outline a few different modes of training for you to put in your toolbox.
1. Let’s start with the basics: Walking! While walking may not technically be defined as a true cardio workout, no one can deny the benefits of walking; after all, as humans, it is what we must do. Walking is an excellent way to start doing physical activity and best of all; you can go at your own pace. A good goal to aim for is 20-40 minutes, 3-4 times a week.
Here are some extra tips just for you! Want to engage your rear end even more while walking? Then take short, quick steps instead of long strides to get your glutes working. Also, walking is a time to relax. Forget about the problems of the day and enjoy your surroundings.
2. Steady State Training: This is where you choose your favorite equipment (treadmill, bike, skates, your own feet) and simply work at a steady pace with a low to moderate intensity for a period of time. Since this isn’t high intensity, you can usually do it for longer and it’s great for beginners who aren’t ready for high intensity exercise or just don’t like it.
3. Interval Aerobic Training: This is not high intensity training, but rather uses intervals of mild intensity followed by periods of low intensity recovery. For aerobic intervals, I would alternate runs with recovery periods (walking, light jogging, etc.) rather than sprint/recovery runs as seen in ANAEROBICS intervals This type of training generally burns more calories and is more interesting than constant cardio.
4. Anaerobic interval training: You may know this as HIIT or High Intensity Interval Training and here you alternate between short (15-60 second) sessions of high intensity work followed by recovery periods. The relationship between work and rest depends on you and depends on your goals. If you’re training for sport, you’ll want to mimic the workload of your particular sport. For example, for hockey you might work at a high intensity for 15 seconds, then walk or jog for 30 seconds.
5. Training against boredom: OK, so I made up that name. I don’t have a patent on it yet, so feel free to use the term loosely. This is also known as multi-mode training and is simply using different equipment throughout the series of exercises so you don’t get bored. For example, you could start by doing 10 minutes on an elliptical machine followed by 10 minutes on a bike, and then 10 minutes on… well, whatever. If you don’t have the equipment handy, go to the park with the kids and play 10 minutes of frisbee, 10 minutes on the seesaw, and 10 minutes realizing how much fun you’re having…it all works!
6. fartlek: I put this up because I love saying the word; Fartlek, Fartlek, Fartlek!! This is a Swedish term meaning “speed game”. It has elements of interval training but is not structured in terms of the relationship between work and rest. Here you can use any combination of your work/rest timing. An example would be selecting 2, 4, and 6 minute exercise extremes on various pieces of equipment by changing their intensity and duration in a random order. You can configure it like this:
Session 1: treadmill (2 minutes), elliptical bike (4 minutes), bicycle (6 minutes)
Session 2: elliptical trainer (6 minutes), bicycle (4 minutes), treadmill (2 minutes)
Session 3: bike (4 minutes), treadmill (4 minutes), cycle ergometer (4 minutes)
For the 2 minute duration, I would work hard (a 15 on the scale of perceived exertion – see the scale at the bottom of this page for reference); the 4-minute duration works fairly hard (a 13 on the effort scale) and for the 6-minute duration, use a light intensity (11-12 on the effort scale). Fartlek is fun because it adds variety and you can customize it however you want.
7. Split Routine Workout: If you’re short on time, this is the way to go. If you don’t have time to do a 30-40 minute cardio session in one go, you can break it up into 2 or more sessions throughout the day, maybe 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes after work. You still get great benefits from this type of training and some people say they can work at a higher intensity when the sessions are shorter rather than long duration.
Now answering questions from the audience: Yes, you over there, do you have your hand raised?
Q: What do I do if I have been doing cardio for a long time and I stop losing weight?
A: If you find that you hit a plateau, the key is progress. To keep improving, then you need to keep overloading your body. Let’s say you go jogging for 20 minutes a day 3 times a week. That’s a total of 60 minutes per week. A good progression ladder to use is to increase your workload by 10% per week every week or two. So that means your first progression would be 66 minutes per week (or 22 minutes per day/3 times per week) after a week or 2, then you’ll progress up to 72 minutes per week, then 79…86… 94 and so on until all you do is run all day forever and ever very similar to Forrest Gump. (but don’t you really do that right?)
So, I leave you with one final word… Fartlek 🙂
BORG scale Rate of perceived exertion
- 6 – 20% effort
- 7 – 30% effort – Very, very light (Rest)
- 8 – 40% effort
- 9 – 50% effort – Very light – smooth running
- 10 – 55% effort
- 11 – 60% effort – Fairly light
- 12 – 65% effort
- 13 – 70% effort – Somewhat hard – steady pace
- 14 – 75% effort
- 15 – 80% effort – Hard
- 16 – 85% effort
- 17 – 90% effort – Very hard
- 18 – 95% effort
- 19 – 100% effort – Very, very hard
- 20 – Exhaustion