Feel like if you have to face yet another long drawn-out cardio session again you might just scream? You aren’t alone in these sentiments. Cardio training can be dull and boring and for most people, that’s the name of their game. Each day they force themselves into the gym, ‘putting in their time’ as they go through the cardio workouts they have come to hate.
It’s time to put an end to this. Not only are these cardio sessions causing you to form a negative association with exercise in your mind but they aren’t all that effective. Just take a close look at the results you’ve seen over the last 3-4 months of doing them. Do you look leaner? Do you feel fitter? Chances are you don’t – and as such, something needs to change.
Let’s look at some information you need to know and remember regarding cardio training and introduce you to what is the most effective type of cardio you can do.
The Types Of Cardio Training
First let’s talk about the types of cardio training. There are two key forms that you can do:
· Long, slow distance cardio (LSD)
· Interval training
Long slow distance cardio basically involves what the name suggests – lots of cardio done at a slower pace. This is the type of cardio most people are doing in the gym and tend to think will yield the best possible results. You basically go in, turn on the bike, treadmill, or elliptical to a moderate pace and zone out for the next 45-60 minutes. Chances are you watch the seconds on the clock tick by the entire time.
Then you have interval training. Interval training involves alternating very intense bursts of exercise with shorter intensity exercise. So you’ll speed up and push yourself hard and shortly after, back off and give yourself some downtime to rest.
Because you are exercising so hard during the intervals, you simply can’t sustain this type of cardio long and as such, it typically only lasts for 15-30 minutes at most.
Now let’s go over how each of these impacts your body.
Issues Associated With Distance Training
When it comes to the distance training described above, you will burn some calories. Any exercise will have you burning energy so that’s the good news. And since you are going for that longer duration, there’s a good chance you’ll burn 300-500 calories per session. This will add up and it can help you lose weight.
But the bigger problem here is that often this form of cardio training will have you losing muscle mass tissue along with the small amount of body fat you also lose. The translation is that you look softer despite the fact that you actually weigh less. You’ve just reduced your lean mass, which is what gives you that fit, toned appearance.
Furthermore, as you begin burning up lean muscle mass, your metabolic rate will also slow down as well. Muscle is highly metabolically active in the body so the more of it you have, the faster you’ll burn fat overall.
Next, while you will gain some cardiovascular benefits while doing this exercise, you won’t really see much improvement. To see continual improvement, you need to be pushing the intensity level up higher than it’s currently at. You can only do this if you are speeding up the pace.
Finally, this form of cardio can also wear you down. It’ll create overuse injuries with your knees, ankles, and back, leading to great pain in the long term for many people. Plus, it can hamper your recovery ability. If you are doing five to six hours of exercise each week, it’s going to get hard to recover from. This could eventually go on to cause overtraining.
So as you can see, there are many negative issues associated with this long distance slow cardio.
The ICE Program
Which now brings us to the second type of cardio intervals, or as I like to call it, ICE. ICE stands for intense cardiovascular exercise and has you alternating between those full out minute long bouts of exercise with active rest periods.
For instance, after doing a warm-up, you might perform one minute going as hard as you can. I’m talking a 10/10 for effort here. Then once that minute is over, you’ll drop back down on the intensity so you’re at around a 7 out of 10 for the next four minutes. Then you’ll repeat the minute long bout again and following that, another 3-4 minute moderate intensity bout of exercise.
The difference between this method and conventional interval training is that rather than dropping back the intensity to a 2 or 3 out of 10 and resting for just one minute, you keep the intensity to the moderate side, resting for a longer period of time before doing that second interval again.
This helps bring greater cardiovascular benefits and will help to elevate your metabolic rate even higher so that you not only burn calories during the workout session, but continue to burn calories for hours after the workout is over as well. Science has clearly illustrated that this style of cardio will provide greater fat loss results, improve your heart function, lower stress, and can also enhance endorphin levels, causing mood boosting and feel-good benefits.
Additionally, because of the fact this cardio is intense and requires great muscular power, that also means you’ll reshape your body, burning fat while preserving lean muscle mass. This translates to you looking far fitter than you did before.
So next time you’re heading to the gym, consider the ICE method of cardio training. It’s a superior way to train, yielding you better results, taking less time, and ensuring you have a lot more fun while you train as well.
