Is Cardio BAD? Answers to your (heart & lung) burning questions!
Cardio. It’s kind of a big deal. In the 80’s and 90’s it was all the rage. Step aerobics, cardio based fitness classes, running, biking, even roller blading! If you wanted to get fit, stay “in shape” or lose weight then cardio is what everyone said you should be doing.
Then we entered the 21st century and a new idea about cardio slowly started to emerge. Ditch the cardio and hit the weights. Now, in 2023, I’m straight up hearing women say cardio is bad. Whaaat?!
It’s true! I was sitting at the salon just the other day and doing my very best eavesdropping on some women in the chair next to me while I waited for my hair to turn just the right shade of brown.
They were discussing their New Years resolutions and what they should and shouldn’t be doing to achieve them. Their take on fitness? Cardio is bad.
The worst part is, I am personally guilty of perpetuating this total myth so I want to clear a few things up.
Cardio is 100 percent, with out a doubt, absolutely NOT bad.
In fact, I would say it’s the opposite of bad. There are many benefits to performing cardio regularly including:
Lower resting heart rate
Lower blood pressure
Better recovery from physical and mental stressors
Improved cardiac output
Greater lung capacity
Better general physical fitness and work capacity
Improved mental wellbeing
Better quality of sleep
And more!
As you can see, cardio is an important component to overall health and wellbeing. So where did we go wrong and where did all of this confusion come from?
I think it all started with our culture’s focus on weight loss over everything approach to health and fitness.
Cardio will, indeed, help you to lose weight but that doesn’t necessarily translate to better health and in order to continue seeing progress you will have to add more time and/or intensity to the amount of cardio you perform in a given workout.
Much of the weight lost when strictly performing cardio comes from lean muscle tissue. Muscle is highly metabolic compared to fat and requires a more significant amount of energy to maintain so in the name of efficiency, your body favors holding on to fat over muscle tissue when calories are limited and energy expenditure is high.
Because of the relatively large time commitment required if you want to see results and the negative impact that doing lots of cardio in conjunction with a low calorie diet can have on metabolic health and long term fat loss, it just isn’t the best option of that is your goal.
Enter the 21st century and a rise in the number of women participating in strength training. This is quite possibly one of the best, in my opinion, things to happen in fitness for quite some time.
Strength training holds its own list of purported health benefits including:
Improved bone density
Improved cardiovascular health
Increased lean tissue
Healthier metabolism
Increased overall strength
Improved balance and stability
Better mobility
Increased insulin sensitivity
Lower injury risk and all cause mortality
Improved mental health and reduced anxiety
Plus, increased confidence and self esteem
Similar benefits to cardio without the lost muscle tissue and increasingly large time commitment. So strength training for the win! We all did a 180. Strength training is good. Cardio must be bad. As humans, we like to fit into nice, neat boxes with no gray area. The funny thing about life is that there is almost always a gray area.
For health purposes, if I were going to choose one over the other, it would definitely be strength training.
However, the truth of the matter is that BOTH strength training and cardio are really good for you when done appropriately. Cardio can actually compliment strength training and vise versa. You’ve just gotta find a happy medium that supports your personal health and fitness goals.
Going for fat loss? A focus on nutrition, strength training, and low intensity cardio like walking is the name of the game.
Training for an endurance event? Putting a focus on cardio with strength workouts that support your event and high quality nutrition (yes always with the nutrition) is where it’s at.
Have a specific athletic competition or pursuit you aim to complete? Your programming will likely need both strength and cardio in some capacity but each should be included strategically to allow you to successfully achieve your goal. A powerlifting competition will require much less cardio than running a marathon and a marathon runner probably won’t care much about their one rep max.
So how often/how much cardio should you do? Is it best to do cardio before or after strength training? What kind of cardio is best?
When it comes to health and fitness there are lots of principles to follow and use as guidelines in determining the best path for yourself but, in truth, the answer will always be…it depends.
To determine how much and how often to do cardio as well as what type of cardio will best support your goals an experienced coach is your best bet but a few things to consider when selecting which type of cardio is right for you include: intensity, time commitment, long term goal, other stressors, and what you will stay consistent with.
For general health and fitness, spending the majority of your cardiovascular training time between zones 2 and 4 will give you a nice balance. Check out the differences between each zone below.
Zone 1: 50-60% of your max heart rate. This is super easy cardio. Like walking to the fridge for a snack. Takes basically no effort and you could do it alllll day.
Zone 2: 60-70% of your max heart rate. This is a bit more challenging but totally manageable. You could hold a conversation with a friend or perform breathing through only your nose the entire time. Improves endurance and fat utilization. You easily recover from this and could do it every day.
Zone 3: 70-80% of your max heart rate. A challenging but doable pace. You likely won’t be having a conversation easily but you could sustain this pace for 30-60 minutes. Improves aerobic fitness. You may want to do this after your strength sessions an limit it to 2-3 times per week.
Zone 4: 80-90% of your max heart rate. This is a hard training session. Great from improving max performance capacity. Won’t be able to sustain this pace for long periods of time. Challenging strength training sessions can have your heart rate here in no time and you’ll require adequate rest between sets/training sessions.
Zone 5: 90-95% of your max heart rate. This is a max effort event. Sprints with lots of time for recovery between sets. Improves speed and power. 1-2 sessions per week max that stop when power output/speed decrease.
A quick way to find your estimated max heart rate is to take 220-(your age). For example, I am 36 so I will subtract 36 from 220 (220-36=184) to get an estimated max heart rate of 184 beats per minute. To perform zone 3 cardio, my goal would be to keep my heart rate between 70-80% of 184 (or 129-147bpm) for the majority of the session.
Decide what your long and short term goals are. Think about how you want to feel now as well as what kind of life you want to be living years from now. Choose activities and workouts that support the life you want to live and the goals you want to achieve.
There are plenty of ways to perform cardiovascular exercise so if you don’t enjoy running or have achy knees, then biking, swimming, hiking, rucking, kayaking, rowing, dancing, or a vinyasa flow yoga class may be more your style.
If you’re looking for a way to incorporate both strength and conditioning (cardio) into your routine, check out our training programs designed specifically for that reason. We have options for running, biking, and rowing and are always available to help you find quality substitutions if those don’t work for you!
Use code: HEART20 now through Feb 1, 2023 to save $20 on any of these 12-week training programs.
Looking to train for a specific event like a powerlifting meet, a marathon, or the Tactical Strength Challenge? We can help with that too! Message us here to chat about your goals!