What the majority of those who workout believes is that doing moderately intense cardio exercises, such as the treadmill, stationary cycling, or jogging are the best methods when it comes to losing stubborn body fat, while improving the state of their health.
There are fitness experts who vehemently disagree. The reason being that what doing moderate cardio exercises does is it increases catabolic hormone production, which breaks down muscle tissue that can lead to a lower metabolic rate.
What low intensity cardio training also fails to do is train the heart to handle the higher stress levels which are associated with an increase in blood pressure, a casualty of everyday stressful living.
These experts claim that there’s a more efficient way to exercise. So before you begin wasting hours away on the boring treadmill or elliptical machines, consider if performing these low moderate cardio exercises are doing you any good.
They are preaching that there’s an alternative way of getting into better shape, which doesn’t involve those long hours at the gym.
The Disadvantages Of Cardio
It’s common practice for most fitness professionals and doctors to prescribe low to moderate cardio or aerobic training, for those who need to lose weight or to prevent heart disease.
Most advise performing anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes of this cardio, 3 to 5 times per week, maintaining a steady heart rate at a moderate level. Before you give in to this belief and become another hamster on the wheel, consider the recent scientific research which shows this may not be the best method.
Conform To Your Body
Our bodies are designed to exert physical activity in bursts followed by recovery. It prefers a stop and go movement rather than steady constant movement.
Research suggests that physical variability becomes important when it comes to your training. This tendency of quick exertion physical activity is seen throughout nature, as most animals will demonstrate a stop and go motion, this instead of a steady state of motion.
Humans are the only species which attempts to do these long constant endurance type of physical activities.
The majority of competitive sports, other than marathons or endurance cycling, are based on these quick stop-and-go movements, displaying short bursts of exertion followed by recovering.
To examine the differences between endurance training and stop-and-go training, look at the physiques of marathon runners and sprinters. Sprinters have a physique that’s lean and muscular, while the typical marathoner is extremely thin and almost sickly looking. Which would you prefer to look like.
Exercising And Its Effects
Another issue is the internal effects that the various forms of exercises has on our bodies. Scientists prove that steady endurance based cardio exercises which lasts more than 60 minutes per session, increases free radical production in the body.
Exertion exercises will also degenerate joints, cause muscle wasting, reduces immune function, while possibly causing an inflammatory response in the body which can potentially lead to certain chronic diseases.
Variable cyclic or intense training has been associated with an increase in anti-oxidant production, a better anti-inflammatory response, improved nitric oxide response, and an increase of metabolic rate response, which accelerates weight loss.
What steady cardio training does is it trains the heart at lower heart rates, and not at the higher everyday elevated stress levels. Variable cyclic training introduces the heart to respond to and then recover from a variety of heart rates.
Know that exercise which trains the heart to rapidly increase and then decrease makes it function better. What increased stressful situations does is it causes your blood pressure and heart rate to spike rapidly.
Steady states of endurance such as brisk walking doesn’t train your heart to properly handle these rapid changes in the heart rate efficiently, this from rising blood pressure which are the casualties of everyday life.
Intense Variable Cyclic Training
One of the more important aspects of variable cyclic training is that it has a superior response when it comes to recovery, this during bursts of intense exertion. This recovery is critically important for the body to be able to elicit a healthy response.
Intense variable cyclic types of sports or exercise activities are also much more fun and interesting to do, which has lower dropout rates than jumping on the stationary bike for an hour of sweat.
The Advantages Of Cyclic Training
What’s recommended is performing quick exertion exercises instead of the mundane endurance training for the following reasons:
• There’s an increase in anti-oxidant protection
• Improved cardiovascular health and improved immune function
• A reduction of risk in joint wear and tear
• Reduces muscle burnout
• Increases residual metabolic rates following the intense exercise, and
• There’s an increased capacity for the heart to handle stress more efficiently
The majority of competitive team sports, such as, football, basketball, hockey, and others such as racquetball, tennis, etc. all employs highly variable stop-and-go motion. Weight training also naturally incorporates short bursts of exertion, this followed by a recovery period.
Combining Cardio With Intense Exertion
Try incorporating a high intense interval training program on traditional cardio machines such as the treadmill, for instance:
• Warm-up for five minutes, a brisk walk or a light jog
• Interval 1 – run at 8 miles per hour for 1 minute
• Interval 2 – walk at 4 miles per hour for 2 minutes
• Interval 3 – run at 10 miles per hour for 1 minute
• Interval 4 – walk at 4 miles per hour for 2 minutes
Repeat this interval training 4 times for an intense 20-minute workout.
There are advantages and methods of training your body at highly variable intense rates for the majority of your workouts, this to get the maximum beneficial response from your body when it comes to better heart health, fat reduction, and a stronger leaner body.