Cardio is amazing.
It helps you lose fat.
It lowers your blood pressure.
It improves your insulin sensitivity.
It can reduce your risk of dementia.
It can improve your mood.
And guys, it can even increase your work capacity so you can train harder for longer. = gainz
Seriously, it is amazing.
Better yet, it’s also easy and convenient. You can do it almost anywhere without the need for equipment, and it doesn’t matter how little experience you have with exercise, you can find some form of cardio you can do without hiring a trainer.
But…..
It can be boring. 45 minutes of nonstop running on the treadmill 4 days per week in a world of 140 character tweets sounds like a daunting task to most.
It can also lead to nagging injuries from overuse. The same motion repeated over and over and over again with subpar form, no matter how innocuous it may seem, can do just as much harm as good. Ankles, knees, hips, and lower backs can take a beating.
It can be lonely. Everyone needs some “quiet time,” and cardio definitely provides that. In fact, that’s why so many enjoy cardio. However, for every person that uses cardio as an escape from reality, there’s someone else that needs a sense of community and responsibility from their exercise regimen. That’s why if you exercise with a friend, someone that depends on you and makes it socially enjoyable, you’re more likely to stick it out than when exercising alone.
It can lead you to ignore the benefits of resistance training like increased strength, more muscle, increased bone density, and injury prevention. All of these are critical for anyone looking to lose weight, move better, and become healthier.
And that’s where cross-training comes in.
Some call it circuits. Some call it stations. Some call it a boot camp.
However, when you call it any of those things, you assume it can only be done in a class setting.
That’s not true.
I call it cross-training. It’s how I design my individual cardio workouts so they aren’t boring, aren’t as likely to lead to overuse injuries, can be done with a small group of friends or alone, depending on how social you’re feeling that day, and can incorporate resistance training if needed. And best of all, the workouts are easy to create, as the variety is almost endless.
So how is it different from traditional cardio?
Only the mode.
In a nutshell, cardio training is nothing more than training our body to extract and use oxygen as efficiently and effectively as possible. A body that can do that is a healthy, happy body. From a physiological perspective, that means we’re training our heart, our respiratory muscles, our skeletal muscles, and the enzymes and proteins involved in the aerobic and anaerobic systems. Hence, it’s numerous, wide-ranging benefits.
Obviously, we aren’t physiologically required to use a treadmill, elliptical, or bike for 45 minutes if we want to get the benefits of cardio workouts. We just need to maintain an exercise intensity that keeps our heart rate in the range we want irrespective of the mode of exercise we use.
So, with cross-training, we use a variety of modes of exercise so that we:
- Keep things fun and interesting, and thus minimize boredom.
- Reduce the wear and tear on our joints by not doing the same movement over and over and over again.
- Can have a few friends joins us if we want.
- Have the ability to incorporate resistance training easily if we so choose.
Instead of spending 45 minutes on a treadmill, we can:
- Pick 3 exercises and spend 15 minutes performing each one. A tri-set like running, rowing, and biking uses different movements and muscles so the wear and tear are minimized.
- Pick 6-8 exercises and perform 30 seconds to a 1 minute of work with each exercise in a circuit format and stop once the clock hits 45 minutes.
- Perform a 45 minute run on Monday, spin on Tuesday, 45 minutes of rowing on Wednesday, and hop on the elliptical for 45 minutes on Thursday.
- Do something like we do in SPORT where we combine resistance training with traditional forms of cardio. Perform a tri-set of pushups, TRX rows, and 400m runs on the treadmill for a set time or set numbers of rounds. Then perform a tri-set of goblet squats, dumbbell overhead presses, and 400m rows for a set time or set number of rounds. Your choices are endless.
We all need cardio. We just all don’t need the same mode of cardio!
Need some inspiration?
Check out this lady’s dramatic 1lb weight losstransformation. Or, read about how this guy dropped 150lbs in 15 months. You can also read about one of our member’s journey here. Or, you can read how this Ageless couple lost weight, and kept it off. And if those still haven’t inspired you, read about an Ageless member that came back from cancer, and managed to lose weight despite having a ruined a metabolism from treatment.
