Your Heart Can Take A Beating

Here's the skinny on cardio and cardio equipment. Sometimes people don't differentiate well between the cardiovascular system and the skeletal muscles. They think conditioning one is conditioning the other. That isn't generally true. Skeletal muscles need short bursts (4 seconds to 20 minutes) of intense muscle training to be conditioned. Cardio conditioning happens with longer bursts (greater than 20 minutes) of cardio training.

FIT TRUE RESOURCES

Both cardio and skeletal muscles thrive best with variety in their training. The kinds of variety are different, but the need for variety is the same. Note the differences in a sprinter's body and a marathon runner's body. Marathon runners tend to be very skinny and have less muscle tone. They incidentally don't have great muscle strength either. Even in their legs. Sprinters by contrast carry more muscle, have more strength, better muscle tone, and are more fit. Including their heart and lungs. On top of their cardio work, which involves no or little distance running and lots of sprints, they also do a great deal of resistance training.

"Doing cardio" is about conditioning the cardiovascular system. Which means getting the heart rate up and the lungs working. Equipment doesn't matter. One piece of equipment is not necessarily superior to another. How you get your heart rate up and lungs working is not as important as actually doing it. In fact, here's what I recommend as the best pieces of cardio equipment. That's right, running shoes. With these you can run, walk, jog, sprint, skip, leap, hop, do jump rope, and jumping jacks.

FIT TRUE RESOURCES


Some people prefer to go a little more high-tech and that's OK too. Just about anything will do. Any tread mill, bike (either real or stationary), rowing machine or whatever. Take your pick and get your heart rate up.

Bottom line points: 1. Cardio exercise is for conditioning the heart and lungs. If those two body parts are working then you are doing cardio. If they are not working hard you are not doing cardio. 2. Doing cardio is not the same as resistance training and both have benefits that the other can not provide. 3. Like resistance training variety will yeild the best results. If you want to run a marathon then run a marathon but if you want to be tone, strong, and cardio fit as well then combine good resistance training with some sprint work and we'll see you on the beach.