Let's see if low-moderate intensity, long-duration cardio exercise is indeed beneficial to your body, or if it is mostly a waste of time before you start wasting hours upon hours on those monotonous treadmills, stationary bikes, and elliptical machines. After reading this post, I hope you'll agree that there's a better way to get in shape than spending hours on end on dull cardio equipment. People who are seeking to prevent heart disease or lose weight frequently hear fitness professionals and doctors recommend low to moderate-intensity aerobic workouts (cardio). The most common advice is to "do 30-60 minutes of steady-state cardio 3-5 times a week while keeping a healthy weight." Most of the time, the advice is something along the lines of "do 30-60 minutes of steady-pace cardio 3-5 times a week while maintaining a moderate heart rate."
Physical variability appears to be one of the most significant factors to consider in your training, according to recent studies. This propensity can be noticed in nature since all animals move in a stop-and-go pattern rather than in a stable condition. Humans are the only creatures in the world who strive to engage in "endurance" physical exercises. Except for endurance running and cycling, most competitive sports rely on stop-and-go action or short bursts of intensity followed by recovery. Consider the physiques of marathoners against sprinters as an example of the different benefits of endurance or steady-state training versus stop-and-go training. The normal sprinter's physique is lean, muscular, and powerful-looking, whereas the typical marathoner's physique is malnourished and sickly-looking.
Which of the two do you think you're more like? The internal effect of varied forms of exercise on our bodies is another issue to consider when considering the benefits of the physical variety. Excessive steady-state endurance exercise (different for everyone, but sometimes defined as more than 60 minutes per session most days of the week) increases free radical production in the body, can degenerate joints, reduce immune function, cause muscle wasting, and can trigger a pro-inflammatory response in the body that can lead to chronic diseases, according to scientists. High-variable cyclic training, on the other hand, has been related to enhanced anti-oxidant production and an anti-inflammatory reaction in the body, as well as a more effective nitric oxide response (which can help maintain a healthy cardiovascular system) and an increased metabolic rate response (which can assist with weight loss). Furthermore, steady-state endurance training only prepares the heart to respond to a single heart rate range, not to a variety of everyday stimuli. Highly variable cycle exercise, on the other hand, educates the heart to adapt to and recover from a wide range of stresses, making it less likely to fail when you need it most. Consider this: Exercise that trains your heart to rapidly accelerate and reduce can improve your heart's ability to handle everyday stress. Blood pressure and heart rate can quickly rise as a result of stress. Continuous running and other endurance exercises do not prepare your heart to tolerate quick fluctuations in heart rate or blood pressure. Assume you're jogging and want to run for 45 minutes at the same speed. Assuming you didn't encounter any major hills along the route, your heart rate was probably constant throughout — say, 135 beats per minute. Let's compare that to a 20-minute workout consisting of alternating all-out wind sprints with a minute or two of recovery walking in between sprints, which is far more effective.
You're fast-moving your heart rate up and down on a much greater scale with this more effective workout, causing it to get stronger to be able to handle a variety of demands. During the recovery walks, your heart rate would probably range from 110-115 bpm to 160 bpm or higher during the sprints. This isn't to say that sprinting is the only way to benefit from this type of training. These increased results can be obtained through any type of training that combines highly varied intensity. The recovery period in between bursts of exercise is a key feature of varied cycle training that distinguishes it from steady-state cardio. That recuperation interval is critical for the body to respond to an exercise stimulus in a healthy way. Another advantage of varied cycle training is that it is far more engaging and has a lower drop-out rate than long, monotonous steady-state cardio regimens.
The benefits of variable cyclic training over steady-state endurance training include improved cardiovascular health, increased anti-oxidant protection, and reduced risk of joint wear and tear. Increased residual metabolic rate following exercise could also lead to an increased heart's capacity to handle everyday stressors. Stop-and-go or varied intensity physical training can be beneficial in a variety of ways. Aside from wind sprints, most competitive sports, such as football, basketball, racquetball, tennis, hockey, and so on, are naturally made up of highly variable stop-and-go motion. Furthermore, weight training comprises short bursts of work followed by rest intervals. Another training strategy that incorporates exertion and rest times is high-intensity interval training (changing between high and low-intensity intervals on any piece of cardio equipment). An interval training session on the treadmill, for example, would look like this: Warm up for 3-4 minutes at a quick walk or light jog; Interval 1 – run at 8.0 mi/hr for 1 minute; Interval 2 – walk at 4.0 mi/hr for 1.5 minutes; Interval 3 – run at 10.0 mi/hr for 1 minute; Interval 4 – walk at 4.0 mi/hr for 1.5 minutes;
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