Cardio Buffs - A Good Training System for Weight Loss and Heart Health

It is common to hear fitness professionals and health doctors prescribe low to average intensity cardiovascular exercise (cardio) to those who are trying to prevent heart illness or lose weight. Quite often, the recommendations constitute something along the lines of "do 30-60 minutes of steady tempo cardio 3-5 times per week keeping your heart rate at a moderate level". Before you just give in to this trendy belief and turn out to be the "hamster on the wheel" doing endless hours of boring cardio exercise, I'd like you to think about some current scientific research that suggests that steady pace endurance cardio work might not be all it's cracked up to be.

First, understand that our bodies are intended to execute physical motion in bursts of exertion followed by recovery, or stop-and-go movement instead of steady state movement. Modern research is telling us that bodily variability is one of the most important aspects to consider in your training. This predisposition can be seen throughout nature as all creatures demonstrate stop-and-go movement in place of steady state movement. In fact, people are the only creatures in nature that attempt to do "endurance" type physical activities. The majority of competitive sports (with the exception of endurance running or biking) are also centred on stop-and-go movement or brief bursts of exertion followed by recuperation. To examine an example of the diverse effects of endurance or steady state exercise versus stop-and-go exercise, consider the physiques of marathoners versus sprinters. Most sprinters carry a physique that is basically lean, strong, and powerful looking, whereas the typical dedicated marathoner is more often thin and weak looking. Now which would you rather look like?

Another thing to keep in mind about the benefits of physical variability is the internal effect of various forms of training on our body. Scientists have known that excessive steady state endurance training (unique for everyone, but from time to time defined as greater than 60 minutes per session most days of the week) raises free radical production in the body, can degenerate joints, reduces immune function, causes muscle wasting, and can set off a pro-inflammatory response in the body that can potentially advance to persistent diseases. On the other hand, extremely variable cyclical training has been coupled to improved anti-oxidant production in the body and an anti-inflammatory response, a more efficient nitric oxide reaction (which can encourage a strong cardiovascular system), and an improved metabolic rate reaction (that can assist with weight loss).

Additionally, steady state endurance exercise only trains the heart at a single specific heart rate range and does not teach it to react to various every day stressors. On the other hand, highly flexible cyclic exercise teaches the heart to react to and recover from a variety of demands making it less likely to crash when you need it. Consider it this way -- A work out that trains your heart to quickly increase and swiftly decrease can make your heart more capable of managing daily tension. Stress can cause your blood pressure and heart speed to escalate quickly. Steady state jogging and other stamina exercise doesn't teach your heart to be able to handle rapid changes in heart tempo or blood pressure.

The significant aspect of variable cyclic exercise that makes it better over steady state cardio is the recuperation time in between bursts of hard work. That recovery period is critically important for the body to elicit a healthy reaction to a training stimulus. An added benefit of flexible cyclic exercise is that it is much more appealing and has lesser drop-out rates than long boring steady state cardio programs.

To summarize, a few of the probable benefits of variable cyclic exercise compared to steady state endurance training are as follows: improved cardiovascular wellbeing, increased anti-oxidant defense, improved immune function, reduced possibility for joint wear and tear, reduced muscle wasting, improved lasting metabolic rate after exercise, and an increased capacity for the heart to handle life's daily stressors. There are many ways you can obtain the benefits of stop-and-go or adjustable intensity physical training. One of the absolute most successful kinds of variable intensity exercise to really reduce body fat and bring out serious muscular definition is performing wind sprints.

Most competitive sports activities such as football, basketball, racquetball, tennis, hockey, etc. are naturally comprised of highly variable stop-and-go movement. Additionally, weight training obviously incorporates small bursts of energy followed by recovery periods. Great intensity interval exercise (varying between high and low intensity intervals on any piece of cardio equipment) is yet one more exercise method that utilizes exertion and restoration periods. For example, an interval exercise session on the treadmill could look somewhat like this:

Warm-up for 3-4 minutes at a quick pace or light jog;

Interval 1 - run at 8.0 mi/hr for one minute;

Interval 2 - walk at 4.0 mi/hr for 1.5 minutes;

Interval 3 - run at 10.0 mi/hr for one minute;

Interval 4 - pace at 4.0 mi/hr for one and a half minutes;

Replicate those 4 intervals 4 times for a very intense thirty-minute workout.

The take-away message from this piece is to try to teach your body at highly variable intensity rates for the greater part of your workouts to get the most effective reaction in terms of heart fitness, fat loss, and muscle maintenance.

Article Source: http://www.free-article-info.com/ArticleDashboard

You'll find plenty of sites on the internet that provide wellbeing information. The best one that I have found that offers FREE facts can be found here.

Please Rate this Article

5 out of 54 out of 53 out of 52 out of 51 out of 5 

Not yet Rated