Two of the most important health and fitness issues people face today are cardiovascular health and endurance levels. In addition to strength training, everyone should do exercises that target the health of their heart and lungs. To do this you must exercise in a different manner than strength training alone. You never hear of anyone dying of a large bicep or quadriceps muscle, but Heart Disease has been among the top 3 killers in the United States.
You can’t approach a cardio exercise as if you were doing an all out weight training exercise. You are not trying to stimulate muscular hypertrophy, power or any of the millions of variable changes in the use of your body’s muscles. Cardiovascular Training is just that, training your heart and lungs to be more efficient at transporting oxygen to the tissues and carbon dioxide out of the body. In other words, if you are doing a cardio exercise and it’s making your legs burn like your doing an intense set of leg presses, you are working too hard. You may have the setting too high (tension on a stationary bike or the hill incline level on a treadmill for example), or you may just be moving too fast. The goal is to raise the pulse to a certain level, not to over-stimulate the skeletal muscles. Cardio is simply the means of stimulating a positive response from the heart and lungs and as a bonus, the metabolism will rise.
It’s a physiological fact that the body is most efficient at burning fat for fuel (that’s body fat and dietary fat) and the higher you raise your heart rate, the less the body looks for fat and more it looks for carbohydrates. The reason for this is simple. Metabolic breakdown of glucose/glycogen is much easier for the body than it is to breakdown fatty acids. Both processes yield the same byproduct (ATP) but glucose/glycogen metabolism is much faster. A quick fun fact: there is three times more ATP (conservatively, the longer the fatty acid chain the more the ATP) with fatty acid metabolism then glucose/glycogen metabolism. Now this brings us to heart rate. You can’t do an efficient cardiovascular exercise without factoring in your heart rate.
I am going to come out and say it now: basic heart rate testing (220 minus your age) WAS NEVER MENT TO BE THE ULTIMATE ANSWER! The more accurate equation takes your RESTING HEART RATE into consideration. Here is the equation (aka: Karvonen Formula) for those of you that don’t know it.
220 minus your age = Max Heart RateMax
Heart Rate – Resting Heart Rate = Heart Rate Reserve
Heart Rate Reserve *60% to 80% = Add your Resting Heart Rate back to this total
Below is an example of the Karvonen formula for a 23 year old person with a resting heart rate of 65 beats per minute (*to get your resting heart rate, take your pulse for one full minute or if you have a Heart Rate Monitor, Polar or otherwise, use that):
220 - 23 (age) = 197
197 - 65 (resting heart rate) = 132
132 * 65% (low end of heart rate) OR 85% (high end) = 85.8 OR 112.2
85.8 + 65 (resting heart rate) = 150
112.2 + 65 (rhr) = 177
The target heart rate zone for this person would be 150 to 177Why is this important? Well, if you take 2 23y/o and one has a Resting Heart Rate of 65 and the other at 75, but you give them both a heart rate range of 128 (65%) to 167 (85%) you are now short changing your client who has a lower heart rate and thus a more fit heart and you are going to over stress the other who’s heart is not so fit. So, the lesson is to know your resting heart rate!
Resistance training strengthens the skeletal muscles and connective tissues, yet it only has a small impact on the cardiovascular fitness of your body. In order to exercise and strengthen the heart and lungs (which has the added benefit of raising your resting metabolic rate and helps the body burn more calories) you must elevate the heart rate within your target range and maintain it there consistently for a certain amount of time. Cardiovascular training differs from resistance training in both the execution and the intensity level. With resistance training, a medium to high intensity level is desirable for superior results. With cardio, your level of intensity is dependant on what you are looking to get out of it, since certain heart rate levels elicit different effects on your cardiovascular system. Now this is a very simplistic way of explaining it, but if you can maintain your heart rate within 60-70% of your Max then you will be working more for you Aerobic Base (this is the heart rate range where your body is efficient in an Aerobic Zone). The inverse of that is if you train within 70, 80 and sometimes 90% of your Max heart rate you are working to increase your Anaerobic Threshold (this is the zone where your body will become metabolically fatigued) Both zones are equally important to the body, but if you have a certain activity you are training for, you must train within the parameters and a little beyond for that given activity.
With that being said, if you are training for you Aerobic Base you should essentially raise your heart rate to the 60-70% range and maintain that level for a minimum of 12 minutes. Why 12 minutes? Because 12 minutes is the minimum amount of time you need to derive cardiovascular benefit. This is based on years of clinical research from the ACSM and the Cooper Institute. Now, the Cooper Institute says that you don’t need anymore than 15 minutes, but there is a warm up period that comes with any activity. That time is usually about 6-12 minutes. When you get your heart rate up and your lungs activated to maintain that condition for a while, you strengthen your heart muscles and raise the endurance levels of your body. This increases your VO2 Max (the maximum amount of oxygen your lungs can hold at any given time) which compliments the strength you build through resistance training. The great thing about both resistance training and cardio workouts is that they have a combined and essentially, “synergistic” positive impact on your body and health. Since a portion of the benefit that comes from a properly targeted cardio workout is directed toward the metabolism (and therefore toward fat burning) you want to plan the intensity level of your workout to maximize the outcome. A properly performed cardio routine does not only burn calories and fat, it also boosts the metabolic rate for up to 24 hours after the workout (this is typical with an Anaerobic workout).
One last thing that must be addressed before we leave you: TESTING. All of the information above is fine and great, but if you are truly serious (I am assuming you are if you are reading this) about your cardiovascular training you should have a VO2 Max test done. This will tell you where your Aerobic Base is, what your Anaerobic Threshold is and what your VO2 Max is. Most universities have the capabilities to test and if you ask the right people you can have yours done. There is a machine that test all of the above plus your Resting Metabolic Rate and will tell you how much Fat and Carbohydrates you are burning at rest and when active at your various zones. It is truly remarkable. The company that sells the machine and does the training for it is called New Leaf (www.newleaffitness.com). They have a function on the site that will allow you to find a testing site near you.
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