Stuff for Sports Fans

For decades we’ve been encouraged to add up to 1 hour of cardio per day to our already busy schedules. However, not only is this recommendation unrealistic for most people, it’s altogether unnecessary and may even be downright unhealthy!

Conventional cardio, does NOT beef up our heart and lungs as we’ve been led to believe – it actually does the OPPOSITE! (especially when done excessively)

Here’s why…

Long ‘steady state’ cardio workouts forces your body to adjust and become more effective to the exuberant demands we’ve enforced on our body…and it does this by gradually reconstructing our heart, lungs, blood vessels and muscles as little as possible. The end result of this ‘downsizing’ is that we’re robbed of critical reserve capacity.

What is “Reserve Capacity?”

Reserve capacity is the capacity of your heart and lungs to withstand a sudden increase in cardiac demand. In real life there are and there will be circumstances that put our bodies under stress and require our heart and lungs to be up the task. Heart attacks don’t occur because of a lack of endurance, they occur when there is a sudden increase in demand that outperforms your heart’s capacity.

And here’s the problem…

Conventional steady state cardio does NOT build reserve capacity! Exercising for long periods might make your heart more adept at handling a 60 minute jog, but it’s at the expense of providing you with the capacity to quickly provide cardiac output when you actually need it.

More readily available cardiac output is what we genuinely need. So when we push for dandier and more outstanding endurance using conventional cardio, it actually gives rise to the opposite to what we in truth require in our day to day lives.

But there’s even more BAD NEWS…

Ground-breaking studies of long distance runners disclose that after these workouts, blood levels and oxidation of LDL (bad) cholesterol and triglycerides is markedly increased. They also found that prolonged running disrupts the remainder of blood thinners and thickeners, elevating inflammatory elements and clotting levels, both signs of heart distress.

A study published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism also found that long distance runners had scaled down bone mass and an increased danger of osteoporosis. Conventional long duration cardio may even make you age faster!

(If you’ve made the observation that a big ratio of endurance athletes have more wrinkles and age quicker than most, it’s no coincidence…)

It all has to do with the fact that long duration cardio gives rise to exuberant amounts of cardio create free radicals at an alarming rate. Unless these free radicals are ‘mopped up’ by antioxidants in our diet, (endurance athletes and heavy exercisers need to pay very particular attention to their nutrition and require a great deal of more antioxidants than the intermediate person) our immune system may become compromised and make us more susceptible to colds, flu, illness, even degenerative disease and cancer.

“What regarding burning body fat? I thought low intensity cardio and working out in the ‘fat burning zone’ was the answer?”

The myth of the ‘fat burning zone’ has been around for a while. While it’s unfeigned that a more outstanding portion of fat is burned when working out at a lower intensity, it’s the total calories burned that genuinely matters!

For example, it’s been proven that if you work out at a higher intensity using interval training (but for much less time) you’ll burn significantly more calories after the workout has finished. Up to 9 times more to be precise! In other words, each calorie your burn from interval training burns up to 9 times more body fat than a calorie burned for the duration of steady pace exercise. Therefore, interval training has MAJOR fat burning potential!

To put this in perspective, to match the results you’d get from a 12 minute interval workout, you’d have to burn off 9 times as a great deal of calories jogging! (easily 1 hour of jogging or more) Long duration steady state cardio breaks down precious muscle tissue and diminishes our fat burning ability…

Long duration, low intensity cardio training formulates high concentrations of a hormone called cortisol. Cortisol promotes exuberant muscle tissue breakdown and a lowered basal metabolic rate (the rate at which you burn calories.) This is why, over time, long duration steady state cardio may genuinely make you FATTER! Will long duration cardio burn some bodyfat? Of course! Just nowhere near as much or as expeditiously as interval training.

The Marathon Runner Versus the Sprinter

Due to the nature of their training, long distance runners oftentimes experience muscle wasting, have a low reserve capacity, and are more likely to suffer from joint and bone problems. Contrast this with a sprinter whose training focuses on short bursts of intensity, the sprinter have a tendancy to be more muscular, has a much higher reserve capacity, and has dandier bone density.

What when it comes to fitness? Interval training is vastly superior for bettering fitness!

Interval training has been demonstrated as one of the most effective means of bettering fitness. One study in peculiar (Tabata studies 1996) equated 2 groups of exercisers. In Tabata’s study, one group did a full 60 minutes of low to moderate intensity exercise 5 days per week. Group two likewise trained 5 days a week except that this group performed up to eight 20-second sprints of high-intensity cycling with a 10-second rest (pedaling at a much slower rate) in between. This was preceded by a warm up and followed by a warm down.

Total exercise time? Just 4 minutes! (No, that’s not a misprint!)

The results were extraordinary. Tabata found that athletes on the high-intensity interval training programme increased their fitness levels much more immediate than athletes on a typical endurance training regime, all this in spite of the VAST divergence in the amount of time each group expended working out.

Participants in the studies who did the 4 minute workouts not only increased their capacity to do anaerobic exercise (the type of exercise that features bursts of high intensity) but likewise their aerobic capacity (typically performed at a steady pace with the idea of constructing endurance.) Whereas group 1 showed no anaerobic fitness increase and a 10% increase in aerobic fitness, group 2 showed a 28% and 14% increase respectively…and all with only 4 minute workouts!

Unbelievable but TRUE!

Granted, the intervals used in the Tabata studies are too intense for the majority of us, which is why Body Blueprint Personal Training has designed specialized workouts that uses time frames of 12 minutes up to a greatest or most complete or best possible of 20 minutes. Not only is interval training fantastically time effective and magnificent for fat burning and fitness, it builds crucial heart and lung reserve capacity.

Some final words when it comes to traditionalisti cardio

Here’s a very indispensable question to ask: “In light of the selective information presented, may we in truth say that the humane body is designed to cope with the demands of repeated, long distance cardio training?”

Based on a great deal of studies citing the damaging effects of traditionalisti cardio on the humane body in terms wear and tear, loss of muscle tissue, the decline in heart and lung reserve capacity and more.

Despite what you may have been led to believe, the answer is a resounding NO!

Is low intensity, long duration cardio ok from time to time?

Of course! Some exercise will always be better than no exercise at all. The real problem is when steady state cardio becomes the ONLY type of cardio exercise you do on a regular basis. From a health perspective, it’s potentially damaging. And from a time perspective, it’s fantastically inefficient and time wasting.

CONCLUSION:

Incorporate interval training into your fitness program today and start out reaping the enormous health benefits.

The Truth About Cardio Picture

The Truth About Cardio Photo

The Truth About Cardio Picture

The Truth About Cardio Image