Look at any rack of fitness magazines and you'll see dozens of covers telling you that you need "cardio." Go to any gym and the
trainer will insist on devoting some of your time to "cardio." You probably don't like doing it, yet you feel compelled to comply.
After all, who doesn't want a healthy heart?
Common parlance has even accepted the term "cardio" (short for cardiovascular endurance training) as synonymous with exercise
for your heart. But shouldn't exercise make the targeted body part stronger?
When you study the heart's changes as a result of cardiovascular endurance training, you find it getting weaker in some critical
capacities that simulate the changes caused by stress and aging.
Routinely forcing your body to perform the same continuous cardiovascular challenge by repeating the same movement, at the
same rate, thousands of times - without variation, without rest - is unnatural. By that, I mean our ancestors didn't regularly stress
their cardiovascular systems in this manner. They may have put this type of demand on their hearts - but rarely, and not in the
context of the daily environment of a native society in balance with its surroundings.
Yet nature designed your body to adapt to whatever environment it encounters. If you ask it to perform an activity repeatedly
and routinely, it will gradually change the systems involved to meet the challenge more effectively.
But what adaptive changes does continuous cardiovascular activity cause?
Continuous-duration exercise that taxes your endurance produces some unique challenges your body must overcome. It must not
run out of fuel, overheat, or be overwhelmed by metabolic wastes. Its primary adaptation will be to become more efficient at
light, long, continuous, low-energy output. One of the ways your body does that is by gradually rebuilding your heart, lungs,
blood vessels, and muscles to be as small as possible, while maintaining the minimum "horsepower" required to perform the activity.
You waste fuel and raw material with a Ferrari-sized engine going 20 miles per hour. Forced, continuous-endurance exercise
induces your heart and lungs to "downsize," because smaller allows you to go further ... more efficiently ... with less rest ... and
less fuel.
The Danger of "Downsizing" Your Heart's Capacity
So what's wrong with increasing durational capacity through downsizing? Instead of building heart strength, it robs your heart of
its vital reserve capacity. Your heart's reserve capacity is that portion of its maximal output that you don't use during ordinary
activity.
Let's go back to the car analogy. Say you normally drive at a speed of 40 miles per hour, but your car has the ability to reach a
top speed of 140 miles per hour. If you think of your heart as the engine, your reserve capacity is the difference between your
normal cruising speed and that top speed.
So if you downsize your heart and lungs, you have traded reserve capacity for efficiency at continuous duration. That forces
those organs to operate dangerously close to their maximal output when circumstances challenge them. This is a problem you
don't need ... especially for your heart.
Heart attacks don't occur because of a lack of endurance. They occur when there is a sudden increase in cardiac demand that
exceeds the heart's capacity. Giving up your heart's reserve capacity to adapt to unnatural bouts of continuous prolonged-
duration output only increases your risk of sudden cardiac death.
A ground-breaking study of long-distance runners showed that, after a workout, their blood levels and the oxidation of LDL (bad)
cholesterol and triglycerides increased. (High triglycerides dramatically increase your risk of heart disease.) The researchers also
found thatprolonged running disrupted the balance of blood thinners and thickeners, elevating inflammatory factors and clotting
levels - both signs of heart distress. These changes do not indicate a heart that's becoming stronger with long-duration exercise.
Exercising for long periods makes your heart adept at handling a 60-minute jog, but it accomplishes this feat by trading in its ability
to provide you with big bursts when circumstances might demand. The real key to preventing heart disease and protecting and
strengthening your heart is to induce the opposite adaptive response produced by continuous cardio and increase your heart's
reserve capacity. Bigger, fastercardiac output that's readily available is what you really need.
Recent clinical studies show us the benefit of avoiding long-duration routines and exercising in shorter bursts. Researchers from
the University of Missouri found that short bouts of exercise were more effective for lowering fat and triglyceride levels in the
blood. Another study revealed that the duration of exercise routines predicts the risk of heart disease in men. They found that
several shorter sessions of physical activity were more effective for lowering the risk of coronary heart disease.
The Secret to a "100-Year Heart" Is Millions of Years Old
Our ancestors lived in a world where their food fought back. Predators attacked without notice. Humans had to run or fight - fast
and hard. These short bursts of high-output activity fine-tuned their bodies and kept them fit.
We still have the same physiology.
How do you recreate that kind of physical challenge? The key is to create an "oxygen debt." Simply exercise at a pace you can't
sustain for more than a short period. Ask your lungs for more oxygen than they can provide. The difference between the oxygen
you need and the oxygen you get is your oxygen debt. This will cause you to pant and continue to breathe hard even after
you've stopped the exertion. (Until you replace the oxygen you're lacking).
With this type of exercises, you'll quickly start to build up reserve capacity in your heart. This is exactly what you need to prevent
heart attacks and heart disease.
Cut Your Exercise Time in Half ... and Get Better Results (Jon Herring)
For years, conventional wisdom has said that when it comes to exercise, "more is better" and long, slow workouts are best. We
were told, for example, to go out and take long "walks" to prevent heart attacks. But we now know that only vigorous activity
effectively reduces heart deaths. And that it doesn't have to take more than 15 minutes of your time each day.
Research clearly shows that the best way to improve your health, increase your fitness, and shed fat quickly is to exercise in
intervals - short bursts of intense activity followed by brief periods of recovery. As you become accustomed to the activity,
gradually increase the intensity rather than the duration.
Help Your Heart's Natural Rhythms Beat the Diseases of Aging (Al Sears, MD)
Before you force yourself to blindly do more exercise - for whatever benefits you think it will have - read what I'm going to tell
you today about Dr. Irving Dardik's discoveries. He was the first Chairman of the U.S. Olympic Committee's Sports Medicine
Council. And the exercise techniques he developed can actually reverse chronic diseases as diverse as Parkinson's, diabetes,
multiple sclerosis, and arthritis.
The story begins with the death of Dr. Dardik's friend Jack Kelly (brother of Grace Kelly). He was an Olympic oarsman and the
President of the U.S. Olympic Committee. One morning, he went out for his usual run ... and then dropped dead of sudden heart
failure.
Knowing that heart attacks often occur this way - after running or jogging, not during the workout - Dr. Dardik said, "People have
been running for thousands of years, and they didn't die like that. It must be something in the way people run now that causes
heart failure after exertion." He also noted that long-distance runners are prone to infections and chronic diseases, especially heart
disease.
Comparing the exercise practices of those runners to the habits of native people and animals, Dr. Dardik said that animals and
natives in the wild run in short bursts. Then they take a little time to rest. And they repeat this cycle of exertion and recovery.
He concluded that long-distance runners die of heart attacks because they have not trained their hearts to recover.
Based on these observations, Dr. Dardik developed his fascinating concept of viewing the heart's exertion and recovery when you
exercise as a wave - the "Heart Wave."
When you begin an exercise, your heart rate starts to climb. When you stop, it starts to come back down. If you plot these
changing rates over time - going up, then down - it does, indeed, form a wave. Inside that wave of exertion, you have smaller
waves from each heartbeat -alternating waves of exertion (systole) and recovery (diastole). Dardik was the first to see these as
"waves within waves." The illustration below will help you visualize it.
What this means is that if you mimic the natural rhythms of your heart by exercising in intervals of exertion and recovery, you will
gradually increase your heart rate variability (HRV). Simply stated, the greater your HRV, the better your overall health. The more
limited your HRV, the greater your risk of chronic disease.
In addition to increasing their heart rate variability, previously non-athletic women in Dr. Dardik's study also developed:
· greater lung volume
· lower blood pressure
· improved immune function
· lower stress and anxiety
· a greater sense of energy and well-being
And all of these changes occurred in just eight weeks.
The World's Most Powerful Workout (Craig Ballantyne )
Chances are, you don't have hours to spend at the gym each day. But you know that you need to fit exercise into your busy
schedule. So if you've had it with marathon workouts that cut into your precious time, you owe it to yourself to check out more
efficient and effective types of exercise.
Recent research has shown that you can achieve huge improvements in fitness, health, and fat loss by spending no more than
one hour in the gym each week. The secret? Interval training. In this article, I'll explain why you can use interval training to cut a
60-minute cardio workout down to only 20 minutes.
According to Canadian researcher Martin Gibala, Ph.D., "It only takes a few short bouts of intervals every other day to improve
fitness levels. For the Type A person that doesn't have the time for hours of exercise, this is some reassurance that they can still
improve their fitness."
If you think intervals are only for elite athletes, understand that even beginners can do them. "It is all related back to your
individual fitness; exercise at a little higher intensity and then back off," says Dr. Gibala. Interval training is based on subjective
effort. Rather than insisting that you achieve a specific heart rate or running speed, it simply requires you to work at about 80%
of your relative effort level for a short period of time ... and then back down for some recovery.
So while intervals may mean a full-out running sprint for people with high levels of fitness, intervals can also mean walking at 4.0
mph for others. It's a model of exercise that you can fit into at any fitness level.
By definition, an interval is a brief bout of intense physical activity - such as a sprint - alternated with a longer period of lighter
exercise. For example, you might exercise hard for 30 seconds, then exercise lightly for 90 seconds. That's one interval. Yet this
rudimentary formula makes interval training the world's most powerful form of exercise. In fact, interval training is equal to or
superior to traditional cardio workouts in many ways.
The Pros
The Cons
Interval training also allows us to bury myths such as the "fat-burning zone" and that "it takes 30 minutes of exercise before your
body begins to burn fat." While a lot of skeptics dismiss the potential fat-loss benefits of intervals because the workouts are so
short, Dr. Gibala points out, "The calories burned in 20 minutes of intervals are the same as in 20 minutes of steady-state exercise
at 70% of VO2max [maximum oxygen uptake]."
Another group of Canadian researchers, this time from Laval University (what's with us Canadians and intervals, anyway?), found
that 20 weeks of high-intensity interval training led to more fat loss than a traditional endurance exercise program.
As with any type of exercise, sedentary individuals should proceed with caution and consult with a doctor before beginning
interval training. (I recommend that every sedentary person over 30 years of age have a complete physical before starting any
exercise program.)
But intervals are not a heart attack waiting to happen. Since muscle fatigue is likely to be the weak link in your interval
performance, "this may actually lower the total stress on your heart," says Dr. Gibala. (Interval training has already been safely
used in cardiac rehabilitation settings.) But, as always, train conservatively.
The Workout That Keeps on Working (Al Sears, MD)
Previously, I told you how an interval exercise program prevents heart attacks. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. It's also the
most effective way to burn fat.
Check out these results...
When Mike first came to my clinic, he weighed 324 pounds. When I measured his body composition, he was 44 percent fat! I put
him in my interval program - and in six weeks, he lost 37 pounds. In 18 months, he lost 107 pounds. His body fat went down to
an amazing 6 percent ... and he still looks fantastic. The fat never returned.
So how can a 10-12-minute workout burn so much fat? Because the most important changes don't occur during exercise, they
occur afterward.
As reported in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism, a group of men and women in a Colorado
State University study exercised for two minutes and then rested for one minute. They continued these intervals for a total of 20
minutes - and continued to burn fat at an increased rate for 16 hours.
trainer will insist on devoting some of your time to "cardio." You probably don't like doing it, yet you feel compelled to comply.
After all, who doesn't want a healthy heart?
Common parlance has even accepted the term "cardio" (short for cardiovascular endurance training) as synonymous with exercise
for your heart. But shouldn't exercise make the targeted body part stronger?
When you study the heart's changes as a result of cardiovascular endurance training, you find it getting weaker in some critical
capacities that simulate the changes caused by stress and aging.
Routinely forcing your body to perform the same continuous cardiovascular challenge by repeating the same movement, at the
same rate, thousands of times - without variation, without rest - is unnatural. By that, I mean our ancestors didn't regularly stress
their cardiovascular systems in this manner. They may have put this type of demand on their hearts - but rarely, and not in the
context of the daily environment of a native society in balance with its surroundings.
Yet nature designed your body to adapt to whatever environment it encounters. If you ask it to perform an activity repeatedly
and routinely, it will gradually change the systems involved to meet the challenge more effectively.
But what adaptive changes does continuous cardiovascular activity cause?
Continuous-duration exercise that taxes your endurance produces some unique challenges your body must overcome. It must not
run out of fuel, overheat, or be overwhelmed by metabolic wastes. Its primary adaptation will be to become more efficient at
light, long, continuous, low-energy output. One of the ways your body does that is by gradually rebuilding your heart, lungs,
blood vessels, and muscles to be as small as possible, while maintaining the minimum "horsepower" required to perform the activity.
You waste fuel and raw material with a Ferrari-sized engine going 20 miles per hour. Forced, continuous-endurance exercise
induces your heart and lungs to "downsize," because smaller allows you to go further ... more efficiently ... with less rest ... and
less fuel.
The Danger of "Downsizing" Your Heart's Capacity
So what's wrong with increasing durational capacity through downsizing? Instead of building heart strength, it robs your heart of
its vital reserve capacity. Your heart's reserve capacity is that portion of its maximal output that you don't use during ordinary
activity.
Let's go back to the car analogy. Say you normally drive at a speed of 40 miles per hour, but your car has the ability to reach a
top speed of 140 miles per hour. If you think of your heart as the engine, your reserve capacity is the difference between your
normal cruising speed and that top speed.
So if you downsize your heart and lungs, you have traded reserve capacity for efficiency at continuous duration. That forces
those organs to operate dangerously close to their maximal output when circumstances challenge them. This is a problem you
don't need ... especially for your heart.
Heart attacks don't occur because of a lack of endurance. They occur when there is a sudden increase in cardiac demand that
exceeds the heart's capacity. Giving up your heart's reserve capacity to adapt to unnatural bouts of continuous prolonged-
duration output only increases your risk of sudden cardiac death.
A ground-breaking study of long-distance runners showed that, after a workout, their blood levels and the oxidation of LDL (bad)
cholesterol and triglycerides increased. (High triglycerides dramatically increase your risk of heart disease.) The researchers also
found thatprolonged running disrupted the balance of blood thinners and thickeners, elevating inflammatory factors and clotting
levels - both signs of heart distress. These changes do not indicate a heart that's becoming stronger with long-duration exercise.
Exercising for long periods makes your heart adept at handling a 60-minute jog, but it accomplishes this feat by trading in its ability
to provide you with big bursts when circumstances might demand. The real key to preventing heart disease and protecting and
strengthening your heart is to induce the opposite adaptive response produced by continuous cardio and increase your heart's
reserve capacity. Bigger, fastercardiac output that's readily available is what you really need.
Recent clinical studies show us the benefit of avoiding long-duration routines and exercising in shorter bursts. Researchers from
the University of Missouri found that short bouts of exercise were more effective for lowering fat and triglyceride levels in the
blood. Another study revealed that the duration of exercise routines predicts the risk of heart disease in men. They found that
several shorter sessions of physical activity were more effective for lowering the risk of coronary heart disease.
The Secret to a "100-Year Heart" Is Millions of Years Old
Our ancestors lived in a world where their food fought back. Predators attacked without notice. Humans had to run or fight - fast
and hard. These short bursts of high-output activity fine-tuned their bodies and kept them fit.
We still have the same physiology.
How do you recreate that kind of physical challenge? The key is to create an "oxygen debt." Simply exercise at a pace you can't
sustain for more than a short period. Ask your lungs for more oxygen than they can provide. The difference between the oxygen
you need and the oxygen you get is your oxygen debt. This will cause you to pant and continue to breathe hard even after
you've stopped the exertion. (Until you replace the oxygen you're lacking).
With this type of exercises, you'll quickly start to build up reserve capacity in your heart. This is exactly what you need to prevent
heart attacks and heart disease.
Cut Your Exercise Time in Half ... and Get Better Results (Jon Herring)
For years, conventional wisdom has said that when it comes to exercise, "more is better" and long, slow workouts are best. We
were told, for example, to go out and take long "walks" to prevent heart attacks. But we now know that only vigorous activity
effectively reduces heart deaths. And that it doesn't have to take more than 15 minutes of your time each day.
Research clearly shows that the best way to improve your health, increase your fitness, and shed fat quickly is to exercise in
intervals - short bursts of intense activity followed by brief periods of recovery. As you become accustomed to the activity,
gradually increase the intensity rather than the duration.
Help Your Heart's Natural Rhythms Beat the Diseases of Aging (Al Sears, MD)
Before you force yourself to blindly do more exercise - for whatever benefits you think it will have - read what I'm going to tell
you today about Dr. Irving Dardik's discoveries. He was the first Chairman of the U.S. Olympic Committee's Sports Medicine
Council. And the exercise techniques he developed can actually reverse chronic diseases as diverse as Parkinson's, diabetes,
multiple sclerosis, and arthritis.
The story begins with the death of Dr. Dardik's friend Jack Kelly (brother of Grace Kelly). He was an Olympic oarsman and the
President of the U.S. Olympic Committee. One morning, he went out for his usual run ... and then dropped dead of sudden heart
failure.
Knowing that heart attacks often occur this way - after running or jogging, not during the workout - Dr. Dardik said, "People have
been running for thousands of years, and they didn't die like that. It must be something in the way people run now that causes
heart failure after exertion." He also noted that long-distance runners are prone to infections and chronic diseases, especially heart
disease.
Comparing the exercise practices of those runners to the habits of native people and animals, Dr. Dardik said that animals and
natives in the wild run in short bursts. Then they take a little time to rest. And they repeat this cycle of exertion and recovery.
He concluded that long-distance runners die of heart attacks because they have not trained their hearts to recover.
Based on these observations, Dr. Dardik developed his fascinating concept of viewing the heart's exertion and recovery when you
exercise as a wave - the "Heart Wave."
When you begin an exercise, your heart rate starts to climb. When you stop, it starts to come back down. If you plot these
changing rates over time - going up, then down - it does, indeed, form a wave. Inside that wave of exertion, you have smaller
waves from each heartbeat -alternating waves of exertion (systole) and recovery (diastole). Dardik was the first to see these as
"waves within waves." The illustration below will help you visualize it.
What this means is that if you mimic the natural rhythms of your heart by exercising in intervals of exertion and recovery, you will
gradually increase your heart rate variability (HRV). Simply stated, the greater your HRV, the better your overall health. The more
limited your HRV, the greater your risk of chronic disease.
In addition to increasing their heart rate variability, previously non-athletic women in Dr. Dardik's study also developed:
· greater lung volume
· lower blood pressure
· improved immune function
· lower stress and anxiety
· a greater sense of energy and well-being
And all of these changes occurred in just eight weeks.
The World's Most Powerful Workout (Craig Ballantyne )
Chances are, you don't have hours to spend at the gym each day. But you know that you need to fit exercise into your busy
schedule. So if you've had it with marathon workouts that cut into your precious time, you owe it to yourself to check out more
efficient and effective types of exercise.
Recent research has shown that you can achieve huge improvements in fitness, health, and fat loss by spending no more than
one hour in the gym each week. The secret? Interval training. In this article, I'll explain why you can use interval training to cut a
60-minute cardio workout down to only 20 minutes.
According to Canadian researcher Martin Gibala, Ph.D., "It only takes a few short bouts of intervals every other day to improve
fitness levels. For the Type A person that doesn't have the time for hours of exercise, this is some reassurance that they can still
improve their fitness."
If you think intervals are only for elite athletes, understand that even beginners can do them. "It is all related back to your
individual fitness; exercise at a little higher intensity and then back off," says Dr. Gibala. Interval training is based on subjective
effort. Rather than insisting that you achieve a specific heart rate or running speed, it simply requires you to work at about 80%
of your relative effort level for a short period of time ... and then back down for some recovery.
So while intervals may mean a full-out running sprint for people with high levels of fitness, intervals can also mean walking at 4.0
mph for others. It's a model of exercise that you can fit into at any fitness level.
By definition, an interval is a brief bout of intense physical activity - such as a sprint - alternated with a longer period of lighter
exercise. For example, you might exercise hard for 30 seconds, then exercise lightly for 90 seconds. That's one interval. Yet this
rudimentary formula makes interval training the world's most powerful form of exercise. In fact, interval training is equal to or
superior to traditional cardio workouts in many ways.
The Pros
- "Very intense exercise-training is extremely potent and time efficient," writes Dr. Ed Coyle in the Journal of Applied
Physiology. With intervals, the average person can achieve similar fitness levels as with traditional endurance training, but in
70% less exercise time. - You only need to do intervals every other day, so you have more days off. This is great news for men and women who
want to spend more of their free time with their family or pursuing other interests. - Dr. Coyle suggests that intervals probably have "the same health benefits as regular aerobic exercise" (e.g., reduced
cholesterol, reduced triglycerides, and improved insulin sensitivity). - Intervals are equally as effective as traditional endurance exercise at increasing muscle enzymes that may help prevent
Type 2 diabetes. - Interval training results in greater fat loss than traditional exercise programs.
- Time flies. Not only will you be able to reduce your training time, but the actual exercise component will zip by because of
the alternating periods of intensity.
The Cons
- Discomfort. Intervals are no walk in the park. While you don't have to exercise at 100% intensity in order to see results,
you will have to leave your "workout comfort zone" in order to achieve the benefits of high-intensity training. - Your legs will feel like jelly at the end of the workout. So don't schedule an interval training session immediately prior to a
full day of walking the floor at a trade show. - You will need to do an extended warm-up if you plan on running sprints for your interval training session.
- Explosive running can lead to injury if you are not prepared. If you run your intervals, try doing them up a hill. That should
reduce the risk of injury. - Most people do interval training incorrectly. Because most people are set in a slow, steady frame of mind, they end up
exercising too hard during the recovery interval period. If you do that, you are not going to be able to work as hard during
the real interval. So make sure you exercise only lightly during the recovery period.
Interval training also allows us to bury myths such as the "fat-burning zone" and that "it takes 30 minutes of exercise before your
body begins to burn fat." While a lot of skeptics dismiss the potential fat-loss benefits of intervals because the workouts are so
short, Dr. Gibala points out, "The calories burned in 20 minutes of intervals are the same as in 20 minutes of steady-state exercise
at 70% of VO2max [maximum oxygen uptake]."
Another group of Canadian researchers, this time from Laval University (what's with us Canadians and intervals, anyway?), found
that 20 weeks of high-intensity interval training led to more fat loss than a traditional endurance exercise program.
As with any type of exercise, sedentary individuals should proceed with caution and consult with a doctor before beginning
interval training. (I recommend that every sedentary person over 30 years of age have a complete physical before starting any
exercise program.)
But intervals are not a heart attack waiting to happen. Since muscle fatigue is likely to be the weak link in your interval
performance, "this may actually lower the total stress on your heart," says Dr. Gibala. (Interval training has already been safely
used in cardiac rehabilitation settings.) But, as always, train conservatively.
The Workout That Keeps on Working (Al Sears, MD)
Previously, I told you how an interval exercise program prevents heart attacks. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. It's also the
most effective way to burn fat.
Check out these results...
When Mike first came to my clinic, he weighed 324 pounds. When I measured his body composition, he was 44 percent fat! I put
him in my interval program - and in six weeks, he lost 37 pounds. In 18 months, he lost 107 pounds. His body fat went down to
an amazing 6 percent ... and he still looks fantastic. The fat never returned.
So how can a 10-12-minute workout burn so much fat? Because the most important changes don't occur during exercise, they
occur afterward.
As reported in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism, a group of men and women in a Colorado
State University study exercised for two minutes and then rested for one minute. They continued these intervals for a total of 20
minutes - and continued to burn fat at an increased rate for 16 hours.
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| OTHER ARTICLES ABOUT AEROBICS AND INTERVALS - Page One |
Fitness...
A Look at "Cardio" From Your Heart's Perspective (Al Sears, MD)
| "I feel about exercise the same way that I feel about a few other things: that there is nothing wrong with it if it is done in private by consenting adults." - Anna Quindlen |
Why You Are Genetically Programmed for Exercise (Al Sears, MD)
Our lifestyle may have little in common with that of our caveman ancestors, but our genetic coding is still the same. If you think
about this fact, it leads to a simple conclusion: Since evolution designed us for a physically challenging world, the "expectation" of
physical activity is encoded in our genes.
In ancient times, if you were slow or out of shape, the consequences were swift and severe. In many cases, you ended up as
another creature's dinner. Today, the penalties are similar, but take longer to play out. In our world, a lack of exercise brings
diseases that often take years instead of seconds - but they end your life just the same.
Yet our modern habit of inactivity continues to rise. A recent study from the University of South Carolina found that more than
30 percent of kids between the ages of 12 and 19 failed tests that measured their heart and lung health. Ten thousand years
ago, these children would have had little chance of surviving to adulthood. Now we can protect them from the horror of
predation. But what other miseries await them?
If you don't push your heart and lungs toward their limits, you lose your reserve capacity. And loss of reserve capacity means a
much greater risk of heart attack, stroke, infection, and disease. Just because we have the technology to avoid the rigors of
hunting, the threat of predators, and most physical labor, doesn't mean our bodies don't still need to be challenged.
You can restore these challenges without turning back progress. I design my conditioning programs with this goal. You can
choose any exercise that is tough enough on your lungs to make you have to stop and pant for breath. One exercise I like is
jumping rope for a very intense short burst - as fast as you can for just one minute. Then take a couple of minutes to focus on
your recovery, and do it again.
For further examples of exercise routines connected to these articles go to our Hints & Tips section (page 3)
| These articles appear courtesy of Early to Rise, the Internet's most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com/. |
Another Reason to Avoid Aerobics (Craig Ballantyne)
Doing long-duration aerobic exercise ("cardio") for weight loss is inefficient and often ineffective. (For a longer discussion of the
harmful effects aerobics can have on you, read the article, "The Aerobics Craze - a Monumental Mistake.") But that may not
be the worst thing about it.
According to Alwyn Cosgrove, a personal trainer in Santa Clarita, CA, "Research has shown that aerobic exercise programs result in
injury - in fact, one study found a 50 to 90 percent injury rate in the initial six weeks of training." And yet, the typical weight-loss
cardio program for an overweight person almost always includes thousands of repetitions... which almost inevitably leads to
overuse injuries
According to Cosgrove, "A superior system would be to use strength training to prepare the muscles for more exercise. By
reducing the rest periods between sets of strength exercises, you can still achieve the same calorie-burning and
cardiovascular-boosting benefits."
A bodyweight circuit of squats, push-ups, and step-ups will help strengthen the muscle groups of the entire body. Do a set of 10
repetitions for each, resting as little as possible between exercises. Once you have finished the circuit, rest one minute, and then
repeat two more times.
Doing long-duration aerobic exercise ("cardio") for weight loss is inefficient and often ineffective. (For a longer discussion of the
harmful effects aerobics can have on you, read the article, "The Aerobics Craze - a Monumental Mistake.") But that may not
be the worst thing about it.
According to Alwyn Cosgrove, a personal trainer in Santa Clarita, CA, "Research has shown that aerobic exercise programs result in
injury - in fact, one study found a 50 to 90 percent injury rate in the initial six weeks of training." And yet, the typical weight-loss
cardio program for an overweight person almost always includes thousands of repetitions... which almost inevitably leads to
overuse injuries
According to Cosgrove, "A superior system would be to use strength training to prepare the muscles for more exercise. By
reducing the rest periods between sets of strength exercises, you can still achieve the same calorie-burning and
cardiovascular-boosting benefits."
A bodyweight circuit of squats, push-ups, and step-ups will help strengthen the muscle groups of the entire body. Do a set of 10
repetitions for each, resting as little as possible between exercises. Once you have finished the circuit, rest one minute, and then
repeat two more times.
| (See complementary article in Health section "Two Fitness Disasters Threatening Your Health" click here) |
| OTHER ARTICLES ABOUT AEROBICS AND INTERVALS - Page Two |
| © Copyright 2008 - Active Recovery - All Rights Reserved. The Gaia Centre for Holistic Therapy, 17 Frederick Street, Loughborough, Leicestershire, LE11 3BH email: info@gaiaholistics.co.uk Tel: 01509 551513 |
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