Sunday, 15 September 2013

9 Ways To Make Cardio Slightly More Bearable


Why Do Cardio

If used correctly, cardio has a purpose. And there is always a place for it in a good fitness program.




Ah, the dreaded C-word: cardio.

It's almost as bad as that other C-word. You know, the one that makes everyone look at you wide-eyed. (Yes, I mean CrossFit.)
All joking aside, cardio really is regarded strangely in the fitness industry. Coaches seem to hate it specifically because your average, uninformed gym goers seem to love it and treat it like the only way to lose weight.
Smart trainees and educated people like you know that isn’t true, of course.
If used correctly, cardio has a purpose. And there is always a place for it in a good fitness program.
There are a few reasons you should do cardiovascular exercise of some kind, not least of which is that it’s good for cardiovascular health. Sure, you can get that from weight training, but the benefits from cardio include increases to aerobic capacity, which has a nice little bonus in terms of CV health -- it’s easier to continue working on it. And, of course, cardio is an effective tool in terms of fat loss.
Having said all that, let me just go on record and say that I hate cardio. I don’t like it, I don’t want to do it and, to be honest, I'm terrible at it. My conditioning and work capacity are both pretty decent, but neither is exceptional, especially compared to my strength levels and overall physique development.
But as much as I hate it, I need to do it, because I want to live longer and stay lean.
In an effort to help you live longer and leaner, I’ve compiled a list of my nine favorite cardio methods -- and by “favorites,” I mean the ones that I hate the least.

1. Slow-Walking on a Treadmill

I’m starting with this one because I know that a lot of other fitness professionals are going to lambaste me for it, so I figure if I put it early in the post, they might forget about it by the time they get to the comment section.
Alas, probably not. Haters gon’ hate.
I really enjoy treadmill walks for cardio. Sure, it isn’t intense by any stretch, but sometimes that is exactly what you need. Often, I feel that I’m too beat up from my five-to-six weekly weight training workouts to do any type of intense conditioning like sprints. This is especially true if my recovery is compromised because I’m in a hefty caloric deficit while dieting for a shoot.
This puts me in an awkward position: I need to get lean for the shoot, and to do that, I need to reduce calories. But reducing calories compromises recovery, limiting my ability to do conditioning, which I need to use to get lean. Yikes. The answer, as you have no doubt deduced, is slow cardio, or low-intensity, steady-state cardio (LISS).
Now, you don’t need to do cardio to diet down for a shoot, especially when you’re doing five-to-six weight training sessions per week; however, it does speed things along. It will also increase blood flow to the legs, which will speed up recovery -- very important if you’re trying to keep your intensity up.
Some LISS cardio is a nice way to enhance recovery and get a little extra caloric expenditure -- after all, as I said in a blog post, cardio is like ketchup, and adding a little in never hurts.
Now, one final complaint people often voice about LISS is that in order for it to have any real effect, you have to do it for a while, and that takes up a lot of time. Well, that part is true. For me, that’s actually a benefit -- hanging out in the gym for an extra 45 minutes keeps me away from food for an extra 45 minutes. And when you’re dieting down, that helps. I do this while listening to podcasts and audiobooks, so I don’t really consider it time wasted.
Anyway, my standard LISS workout is a 30- to 45-minute brisk walk on the mill o’ tread at 4.1 mph and an incline of 9% to 12%.

2. Hill Sprints

Definitely my favorite method of intense cardio, hill sprints are nothing short of magic. They’ll make you leaner and faster, will improve the look of your booty, and, of course, will increase your conditioning.
Chicago Bears legend Walter Payton -- who I consider to be the greatest running back of all time -- did nearly all of his conditioning with hill sprints. In fact, the hill on which he ran came to be known as “Payton’s Hill” and was recently dedicated to him.
Because hills vary so much in length and slope, it’s hard to prescribe a workout for hill sprints, so I have just one rule: run as many sprints as you can before you feel your body asking you to stop.
I have a hill near my old high school in Long Island that I use every single time I go home to visit. It’s a steep incline, and the distance from the base to the top is 34 yards -- I normally get about 12 or 13 full-out, balls-to-the-wall sprints before my hammies decide it’s quitting time.
Perhaps one day they’ll call it Roman’s Hill. That would be sweet.

3. Jump Rope

If you watched Rocky when you were a kid, you grew up wanting to be a boxer -- or, at least, wanting to jump rope like one.
Note: studies show that playing this song while jumping rope burns 11% more calories.
Hopefully, that desire has lasted into adulthood, and you’re somewhat proficient on a rope. If you are, you should use that awesome tool, because jumping rope burns more calories per minute than nearly any other physical activity.
There’s really nothing else I can say that is going to be as interesting or impressive as that Rocky video, so let’s just move on to the workouts.
There are two ways I like to use a rope for cardio:
- Do as many jumps as you can in a 30-minute period.
- Intervals of 1 minute on, 1 minute off, for a 10-minute period (done at a faster pace).

4. Kettlebell Swings

I’ve written about kettlebells before, and while I am not really a kettlebell guy, over the past few months, I have been using them a lot more frequently, particularly for pressing and conditioning.
When it comes to conditioning and cardio, KBs are hard to beat in terms of their versatility.
A good swing is all hip hinge and power, and since mine isn’t pretty enough to film, here’s a video of Neghar Fonooni doing swings with a 48 kilogram ‘bell:
For my swing workouts, I normally just do this:
- Set a timer for 10 minutes.
- Do as many swings as you can in 10 minutes, split into as few sets as possible.
- Terminate any set when form degrades.
- Record the reps you did on your best set (usually anywhere between first and fifth set).
- Record the total number of reps that you did for the entire workout.
- The next time you perform this workout, try to beat the total number of reps that you do, as well as the number of reps you did on your best set.
Like Neghar in the video above, I have been doing this with a 48 kilogram kettlebell, but I have no idea what that equals in pounds because I’m American and fear the metric system (that’s a joke, but please don’t ruin it by doing the maths and posting it in the comments section).

5. Battling Ropes

Basically, long ropes that you use to… battle. Sort of. This is a hard one to describe, so here’s a video of my boy Jason Ferruggia doing his thang.
My favourite way to do this is 30 seconds on, 30 seconds off. Simple but effective.

6. Stair Sprints

Stair sprints are one of my absolute favorite ways to do cardio in NYC. Generally, the streets are too crowded for sprints, and it’s too cold to run hills in the winter, so I like to stay indoors. And when I want to do some indoor cardio, I do sprints in the stairwell. Most people take the elevator, of course, so there are very few people on the stairs.There are five floors in my apartment building, which means that there are eight short flights of stairs (two for each level, with a small landing that allows the stairs to turn). This is pretty much the perfect distance for sprints -- enough to make it worth it, but not so much that you’ll lose speed.
I usually do these in an ascending/descending pyramid, for a total of eight sets.
Set 1: Sprint to the top of the stairs and come back.
Set 2: Sprint to the top of the stairs and come back twice (no rest between).
Set 3: Sprint to the top of the stairs and come back three times (no rest between).
Set 4: Sprint to the top of the stairs and come back four times (no rest between).
Set 5: Sprint to the top of the stairs and come back four times (no rest between).
Set 6: Sprint to the top of the stairs and come back three times (no rest between).
Set 7: Sprint to the top of the stairs and come back twice (no rest between).
Set 8: Sprint to the top of the stairs and come back.
Rest 30-60 seconds as needed between sets, but, as noted, do not rest between sprints up and down the stairs. That “rest” will come on your way down. I generally recommend resting an extra minute between sets five and six, especially for beginners.
This is a lot of fun, and a great change of pace from most types of sprinting.

7. Sled Work

Pushing and pulling sleds serves two specific purposes:
- Helping you get lean while building your conditioning.
- Making you look like a beast.
Very few things look more badass than pushing a sled loaded with a few hundred pounds, or, if you don’t have a sled, pushing your car around the parking lot.
Sleds have risen in popularity, and for good reason. Few conditioning exercises give you such a full-body challenge. While the standard exercises are pushes, if you have rope attachments, you can do pulls and drags as well. In addition to that, there are ways to use sleds for variations of traditional exercises like chest presses and rows -- these allow you to get the benefit of the concentric while eliminating the eccentric. Overall, this allows you to recover faster.
Here’s a beginner sled workout:
- Load a sled up with the equivalent of your body weight.
- Push it as far as you can. If you’re in a gym, push till the end of the lane; if you’re outside, push until you hit the end of the parking lot/road/etc.
- Rest 45 seconds. Push back to the starting point.
- Repeat for a total of three pushes in each direction.
Many people experience something called “prowler flu” or sled flu, which essentially means you might puke. Happens to the best of us, I’m afraid.

8. Sex

Sometimes, it’s a marathon; other times, it's a sprint. No matter how you do it or how long it takes, sex is probably the most fun way you can break a sweat. Except laser tag. Nothing beats laser tag -- that sh*t is boss.

9. Barbell Complexes

Complexes, for those who do not know, are exercises done back-to-back with the same piece of equipment, generally without putting it down. They can be done with any piece of equipment, but I almost always choose a barbell, as that allows me to do a number of exercises that I enjoy.
I wrote an entire article on how to make complexes even more potent, so there’s no need to rehash it in this piece.
However, in the interest of making this post more awesome, here is the complex I default to most time:
- Hang Clean
- Front Squat
- Push Press
- Bent Over Row
- Romanian Deadlift
Each of the exercises is for 8 reps, and you transition from one to another without resting. Perform 5 total complexes, resting 120 seconds between each.
If you’ve never done complexes before, be fairly conservative with the weight -- dudes don’t generally need to go above 95 pounds.

The Cardio Method That Sucks the Most: Jogging. Or Joging. Or Yogging.

This is a new fad where you run for an extended period of time. I first heard about this from my Ron. Please see below:
Now, look, I hate jogging. Running for an extended period of time seems like just about the worst f*cking thing on the planet, second only to being forced to read Twilight again. Or, even worse, being forced to listen toTwilight on audiobook while jogging. 
Long, boring cardio like jogging is, for most people, unnecessary. Further to that, if it’s done too often, it can lead to some catabolism (when the body doesn't properly rest for long periods of time, as in prolonged vigorous exercise, and muscle tissue continues to break down without repair). Jogging is what we call moderate-intensity, steady-state cardio (MISS). This is a strange inverse-Goldilocks situation in which the extremes on either end (high and low intensity) are kind of awesome for their respective purposes, and the one in the middle, instead of being just right is actually way wrong.
For most people.
There are people, however, who can benefit from doing MISS cardio at least somewhat regularly. If you ever need to run or maintain an activity for an extended period of time, then MISS has a place in your training. For example, if you are training for a Tough Mudder or some other relatively steady duration contest, you should do some yogging.
The main reason for this is simply that if you don’t use it, you’ll lose it --it being your muscular endurance. 
I learned this the hard way: After doing HIIT exclusively for three years, I decided to run a charity 5K. I thought I would breeze through and perhaps even win. Embarrassingly, though, I had to stop every half mile or so because the muscles in my legs (particularly my hip flexors) just didn’t have the endurance for any distance above 200 yards or so. It was ridiculous. As a result, at least once every two weeks, I go for a brisk jog of about a mile. In the summer, I try to hit a three-mile run once a month or so. Keeps you honest.
That said, if you never plan on running again, skip it. Either way, this should be something you do for general fitness, not as your primary means of fat loss.

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