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Aimee's Soapbox!
August 2004: “Cardio: Get Movin' Yo!”
Ready to bust a move, Groovy Readers? This month's column looks at cardiovascular training.
Cardiovascular (or endurance) training is anything that elevates your heartrate over an extended period
of time. There are many excellent books on heartrate training available, so I won't go into much detail
here. Just realize that there are a lot of fancy gizmos and formulas that you can use to make your training
more efficient and challenging.
THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT! Please understand that the purpose of cardiovascular training is to improve your
cardiovascular system. That's it. It will keep your heart healthy and strong and help prevent nasty heart
attacks. DO NOT jump on the treadmill for hours at a time thinking that you are spot reducing your thighs
and flattening your tummy. You are improving the efficiency of your heart and lungs and your body's ability
to utilize oxygen.
To accomplish your cardiovascular training, you can choose one activity, such as running, for your workouts
or you can do a different one each day. If you are not training for a specific event, you may want to try cross
training just to keep things interesting. After all, variety is the spice of exercise as well as life.
And variety is what periodization is all about. Periodization is the training philosophy which I follow
and which advocates constant change in order to avoid the dreaded "plateau" effect. Have you ever dieted
or started an exercise program only to find that you get to a certain point and then stall out?
Periodization tries to avoid this phenomenon by creating mini-periods or microcycles throughout the year.
Each microcycle can last a week or a month or several months. Then, several microcycles can be combined to form
a macrocycle. Both the micro and the macrocycle will have a purpose or a goal. This way, you will be aiming
to achieve your short-term goals while still striving for the long-term ones.
There are three basic periodization principles for cardiovascular training:
VOLUME: Volume refers to the amount of time you spend doing your activity. You might spend 30 minutes running one day,
an hour cycling the next, and 45 minutes on a combination of machines (rower, ski machine, etc.) the next.
INTENSITY: The level at which you perform your activity is the intensity. For instance, your run might be at a slow,
easy pace. Your bike ride might be very fast and have lots of hills in it. And when you exercise on
cardio machines at the gym, you might program them for the highest level adn do them as fast as you can. For
cardiovascular workouts, intensity can refer to the speed or to the power necessary. That is, you might go
very fast to make it more intense, or you might put in lots of hills or inclines to make it more intense.
SYSTEM: The system is the way that you do your exercise. The example above in which you tried several different machines
over a 45-minute period is called a circuit. You went from machine to machine without any rest in between. There
are several different systems you can employ to add variety to your workout.
Now that you know the basic principles, you can mix and match your workouts to meet your needs. And now the person
who "runs four miles every day" knows that on some days he can run longer and slower, and on some days he can
go shorter and faster.
When you put the periodization principles together with the standard training guidelines, you have a very
sound exercise program. There are four basic cardiovascular training guidelines.
FREQUENCY: How many days per week should you exercise? Your fitness goals will determine your frequency.
If you are just beginning a program, aim for 3-4 days per week. If you are interested in competition or want to make a serious
change in yoru body and lifestyle, you need to do 5-6 days per week. I require that all my clients, professional and amateur
athletes alike, take at least one day off per week.
INTENSITY: Intensity here also refers to the level at which you perform your activity. Heartrate monitors are a great way to measure
your intensity. With a monitor, you can know exactly if you are exercising at 65% of your maximum heartrate or 95% of your maximum
heartrate. A cheaper, less objective way to measure your intensity is the Talk Test. If you are able to sing the chorus from Pirates of Penzance,
you are at the low end of the intensity scale.
DURATION: How long do you need to run or bike or swim? Again, you will match your goals with the duration.
If your purpose is to prevent heart attacks and stay reasonably healthy, you will need 30 minutes or so of
activity. If you want to run a marathon or canoe the length of the local river, you will need to put in an hour
and longer.
MODE: Mode is the activity that you choose. Any continuous, sustained movement counts as cardiovascular
training. Cycling, running, swimming, dancing, kayaking, and aerobics classes are all cardio activities. If you're
breathing heavily while you're doing it, chances are it's cardiovascular.
So what does all this mean to you? It means that you don't have to and you shouldn't do the same thing everyday. And it
means you should make the workout match the goal. Try alternating easy, medium, and hard days (where those
terms can refer to either duration or intensity). Each day, then, is its own microcycle. Each workout has a
different purpose, all helping you reach your specific fitness goals. Then you can expand that idea to make
each week or month or year easy, medium, or hard.
Coming up...
Look for cool stuff on weight training! My favorite topic! Yay!
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