This days talking about cardio opens the door to discusion and will surely bring people on the opposite extremes of the topic, from the ones convinced it’s a complete loss of time and it destroys muscle to the ones considering it the best of physical activities and tha adore running (or swimming or peddaling) for hours and miles with no end.
Added to it’s incidence on health and physical conditioning, cardio is closely associated with fat loss and on this both sides don’t stop their differences.
It is important to understant that cardio doesn’t have one single way or method, existig mainly two ways to perform it: steady state and intervals.
Steady state is the one commonly associated with the term cardio: running 40 to 60 minutes at a moderate intensity that allows us to continue for loger periods of time and is commonly associated with lots of fat burned.
By intervals we understand working out alternating between periods of high intensity and periods of low or moderate intensity that allow us to recover and repeat the greater effort portions. HIIT intervals (High Intensity Interval Training) are particularily popular and effective.
Steady state cardio is commonly the most used mainly due to it being easier to perform and also cause traditionally it is associated with the largest fat burn without having to go to higher training effort. It increases our aerobic and cardiovascular capabilities and endurance.
Interval training can be sustained for much shorter periods of time due to the higher level of exhaustion produced by the higher intensities in training. HIIT in particular demand really intense effort which can be uncomfortable or intimidating for some and for a number of people impossible to perform due to health, physical or even psychological reasons. The main advantages from this type of training is the combination of high calorie burn in a shorter time and , more importantly even, the metabolic changes it produces.
Steady state cardio require longer sesions to burn a high number of calories and eventually our organism adapts to this, making it progresively less efficient to burn fat, requiring longer sesions in order to try and keep the same rate of fat loss. It also produces less metabolic changes and can even prompt loss of muscle mass, using it as fuel as glicogen depletes in longer sessions, which could reduce our base metabolic rate and therefore our passive burn of calories.
High intensity intervals allow us to better manage our time by demanding shorter sessions and produce metabolic changes that increase the passive burn of calories throughout the day, it helps peserve our muscle mass and improves our health, cardiovascular and aerobic capabilities.
Considering all this, is there space for steady state cardio in physical conditioning and fat loss? The answer is yes.
For starters, we can’t perform HIIT training 5 or 6 days a week, the higher intensity ofit require longer rest and recovery time, overusing them would expose us to overtraining syndrome, stress injuries and weakened immune system. We should use the longer stedy state sessions in beween which would allow us to stay active and even help with the recovery process. This propmt us to take the best from both worlds.
For those with health problems, injuries or conditions that prevent them to perform high intensity intervals, steady state cardio is an invaluable tool in training and the metabolic changes may be introduced via resistance training when possible.
If your goal is to run a marathon (for instance) no amount of HIIT can replace your long distance training, they can be a complement helping to increase your speed and improving your plan. Long distance running plans usually include interval and higher speed work sessions.
Finally the most important thing about a training plan is that we stick to it. If someone hates high intensity training or simply can’t let go of the long quiet runs by the sea and the added value they get from them they shouldn’t take a HIIT based training plan they wil soon abandon.
Let’s take the knowledg about the advantages on both types of training and let’s apply it to get the best results. And let’s also have fun at it.
La Forja 