Aug 09
5
What does cardio do for you?
It doesn’t matter what gym you go to they’re there. Like a pack of greyhounds chasing a perpetually out of reach hare. Ipods swinging, gazing off into the distance, it’s the cardio crowd. They spend uncountable hours running, biking, or… ellipticaling(?). The question is, should you be too?
To answer that question, we should first talk about what exercising your cardiovascular system (aka doing cardio) does to your body.
Anytime you do an exercise, be it swimming, running, biking, hiking, or…ellipticaling your body undergoes aerobic respiration. This means your body uses oxygen to break down glucose to provide energy. The chemistry behind this process is fascinating, but I’ll skip that and get to the point: The result is that your body starts burning lots of calories fast, even upwards of 10 calories per minute! Case closed right?
Well… not entirely.
Ever wonder why all the cross country kids back in high school were all spindly sticks? Its because since your body finishes burning the glucose readily available it turns to a new source of energy… protein. The only problem is that your body’s most abundant sources of protein is your muscles. This whole process of burning glucose and then switching to muscle consumption takes about 20 -30 minutes. So while the cardio crew is burning calories at a much higher rate than those lifting weights, its coming at price in the form of loss of muscle mass.
Stepping out of the laboratory and the gym into the real world where most of us spend the majority of our time, we have to ask ourselves what’s do we want? Fast, high calorie burns, or a toned, muscular physique? What are the gains of a cardio heavy workout?
Quickly, lets summarize what introducing 30 minutes into your workout schedule will help you with:
- Keeping up with the kids
- Not embarrassing yourself at the company softball game
- Prevent “bulking up”
- Dashing up the stairs without becoming winded
- Increased lung capacity and endurance
But remember than 30 minutes on your off days is going to impact your muscle development. So if you are trying to shed some weight, excessive cardio can actually slow down your weight loss.
For maximum effect try to balance a brief but intense cardio routine with at least 3x a week weight training for maximum effect. Depending on your tastes, this can mean balancing your weight lifting workout with some time on the track (or your cardio machine of choice), or getting your ellipticalling(?) in during off days off between lifting sessions.