We have covered nutrition and calories. This post we are going to get into cardio: should you be doing it, how much you should be doing, when to do it and what kind of cardio would work best for you. I wrote a blog post earlier this year talking about the best cardio for weight loss, which many people found super helpful. But you are not all here for weight loss and this will cover similar concepts in a different way.
Cardio has so many benefits beyond increasing the amount of calories you use in a day. It improves the function of your heart and lungs, which improves the quality and length of your life. This increases your capacity for work which will allow for better strength training sessions. The increased blood flow will allow for improved transport of hormones throughout the body leading to quicker recovery and muscle growth. Cardio can also improve blood pressure and cholesterol levels which is valuable especially when bulking. Higher calorie diets put you at risk of high blood pressure and high consumption of saturated fats can increase your cholesterol levels.
Cardio will improve sleep quality, which is going to do great things for your overall health, including improving muscle recovery. Muscles need to recover to grow. The improvements in circulation that occur from cardiovascular activity will also increase the removal of lactic acid from your muscles, reducing soreness. You will also find it easier to manage body fat levels whether you are in a cut or a bulk. Studies have found that cardio can help improve mood, reduce stress and symptoms of depression. Whether your motivations are body composition, longevity or just feeling better, cardio has its place in everyone's workout program.
To experience the benefits of cardio, doing it more often is going to be better than doing excessive amounts in one go and then not doing anything until the next time. This reduces your risk of injury but also allows you to get more out of your cardio sessions.
The Heart and Stroke Foundations recommends 150 minutes per week of moderate intensity aerobic activity. You are more than welcome to do 2.5 hours straight instead of 5 days of 30 minutes. However, can you honestly say your level of effort you put into the first 30 minutes can be maintained throughout the 2.5 hour session? If you answered yes, that just means you aren’t putting in enough effort into your cardio to challenge yourself.
This is not to suggest that you shouldn’t do cardio if it doesn’t challenge you. Maintaining your cardiovascular health is very important. But when working towards a specific goal, what gets challenged gets improved.
The best cardio for you specifically, is cardio that you will do and can do regularly.
During my undergrad we did a lab where among other things, I learned that I am capable of running at an incline for over an hour straight. Would I ever do that regularly? Absolutely not. I don’t enjoy running and neither do my knees.
My cardio of choice is an incline walk. I can read while I do it so it feels productive, it is low impact so it doesn’t take away from my workouts and there are so many variables to play with to keep increasing the level of intensity that I get from it.
You are more than welcome to have a variety of options for your cardio. I recommend picking one and focusing on progressing that, similar to your workouts. I like the simplicity of tracking one, some people struggle to find even one form of cardio they don’t hate. However, if you enjoy various types of cardio or if you only have access to certain types depending on the day, include various types into your workouts. You can progress them individually or you can pick a metric that is consistent with all of them and progress that way. If you need help with this, let me know.
Regardless of the type you choose, to see progress you want to continue to challenge your body with it. Start at an intensity that feels around a 7 or 8 out of 10. You could have a conversation with someone, but they could hear that you are exercising.
If you have limited time to spend in the gym, start with 5-10 minutes and focus on increasing the amount of challenge you get within that 5-10 minutes. You can do this by increasing the incline, speed, RPM, distance, whatever works for the type you choose. In a perfect world, this would be done daily. In the real world, aim for at least 3 times a week. It is better to do it consistently than to do crazy amounts occasionally. Remember, the goal isn’t rapid results you won’t maintain, but healthy habits you can take with you for life. This is also where some variety can be helpful too. Maybe you don’t have access to the gym at work but you could go for a walk or a bike ride at home, even if it’s not perfectly tracked, something is better than nothing.
If you haven't set an endurance goal, it's better to do your cardio at the end of your workout. Starting your workout pre-fatigued can take away from the intensity you're able to put into your exercises. This will reduce the amount of strength and body composition improvements that could be made. Adjusting the intensity of a workout is generally easier than altering cardio efforts due to its more consistent variables. Have you ever found yourself rushing through your final set, compromising form, range of motion, or skipping reps due to fatigue? In my experience, maintaining intensity throughout all the variables of resistance training requires more mental effort compared to sustaining a set level of intensity during the last few minutes of cardio.
Cardio is a great way to increase the daily activity portion of your TDEE which we discussed last week. If you are looking to lose fat, think of this as a way of increasing your deficit without changing your set target for calories in. If you are looking to gain muscle, you may find you can fit a few more calories into your day, depending on the amount you are doing. But it will also help keep your body fat levels in check. Please do not trust the accuracy of any activity trackers. The amount of calories you will burn from adding in cardio is not going to be very much.
Hope you found this to be helpful! If you have any questions, please reach out.
Have a great week!
Paige
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