Hot answers tagged cardio
20
You have lots of good info offered already. Here are some of my suggestions.
You say you are 47 y.o., out of shape and fat around the middle with shortness of breath on exertion - check with your doctor before starting on an exercise program and you’ll have better success. Your doctor will help you track improvements in your test results as you get ...
15
First, let's understand that running is a form of conditioning, which can be done either aerobically or anaerobically. There are several ways to condition, and some are compatible with weightlifting and some do work against it. The first point I want to make is that you do have a mistaken supposition: that running will burn muscle. The two articles ...
14
You seem adamant about only doing cardio, but I really think you should consider lifting some weights. Strength training is great for your back, knees and general posture. It will also get your ticker going just fine on its own -- but by all means, add some cardio if you must.
Weight loss is mainly done in the kitchen, you'll simply have to eat less ...
12
Strength training and cardio provide a potent mixture to burn fat. The problem with strength training alone is that it burns fewer calories than you would during cardio. For example, an hour of intense strength training will burn between 270 calories and 450 calories while you exercise (depending on how heavy the weight is). Running at 6 mph for an hour ...
12
In a sense, yes it does. It's not a permanent increase, you simply keep on burning more calories than your resting rate until your body returns to baseline. The type of exercise (the shorter, higher intensity workouts are better) also influences how long this occurs.
In this study : ...
11
If you're going to use those machines, use them after you use weights or perform any sort of skilled exercise.
You do not want to be fatigued before you use weights.
I suggest a targeted warm up consisting of bodyweight exercises involving the muscles you will workout (ie. bodyweight squats, jumping jacks etc) before moving onto weights.
Get the exercises ...
10
The short answer to your question, “What is different in my body from a year ago?" Just about everything!
More mitochondria? - Yes, esp. if your training includes aerobic or endurance exercise. According to Dudley's research,
"an increase in the intensity of training brings about the greatest adaptive response in the mitochondria."
Are they more ...
10
The answer is going to be pretty much the same for all three sports, in that you need to do a fitness/threshold test, and then use that to compute training paces.
For swimming, I recommend the 3x300. Warm up completely, then you swim 3 different 300 meter swims, with :30 seconds rest in between. You want to try to keep them as close in time as possible, ...
9
Once And For All Time: Protein Shakes Are Not Magical
We get a lot of protein shake questions. What should I put in it? and when should I drink it? and will my spleen explode if there's ice in it? The mysteries of protein shakes are many, and the science is weak.
Protein Shakes Are Just Protein...In Shake Form
Here's the deal: don't overcomplicate ...
9
Cardio training doesn't necessarily lead to muscle loss, but generally, training time is limited, and if you're preparing for a marathon, you don't have the time to spend in the gym, and your body will be busy adapting to the stresses of long distance running, which are different than the adaptations needed for sprinting 100m, dunking a basketball, or moving ...
8
Sadly I don't have access to the journal to verify, but Copacabana Runners is citing the journals Medicine and Science in Sports & Exercise and Sports Medicine, that reviewed over 60 detraining studies.
They found the following physiological effects after 2-4 weeks of detraining:
VO2 max: down 4-10%
Blood volume: down 5-10%
Heart rate: ...
8
Because your legs are the biggest muscle groups in your body and have the greatest potential for burning calories, you need to find a exercise that primarily involves them. Walking lunges would be a good one, doesn't require much space. Although, if you're planning on doing a lot of walking I would avoid this as you can get quite sore from DOMS.
If I were ...
8
It sounds like you've got a few things going on here, and I would suggest seeing a physiotherapist to get a personalized assessment and treatment prescription. What I'll say here is only a guess, so take it with a grain of salt.
The calf muscles are major players in skipping. When they contract, you foot goes into a plantar-flexed position, helping to power ...
8
When my wife was on bed rest when she was pregnant with our daughter I asked if it precluded sex. The rhetorical question I got back was:
Does it get her heart rate up?
The answer is, yes it is a form of cardio workout. The question then becomes a matter of the quality of cardio. In other words, how high does your heart rate go? You want to be in ...
8
What it sounds like you are asking is how can you improve cardiovascular health most efficiently with the use of activity.
First off, heart health is mainly achieved through dietary adjustments but regular activity plays a vital role as well.
Any activity can improve the health of your heart provided you are reaching the right intensity. Indicators we use ...
8
First things first: get your diet in order. If you are not eating the right things to help you lose fat (fat, not just weight), no amount of gym work will overcome those calories. Once you get your diet working, then look at what you can do.
Weight lifting is a powerful way to burn a lot of Calories, particularly if you focus on strength. Conditioning is ...
8
Getting out of bed is a muscle-building exercise for someone recovering from a coma. Tabatas and other High Intensity Interval Training, or jogging, or walking, or anything can build muscle, if the person doing it is unadapted to the activity. So yes, "cardio" exercise is an effective muscle builder, for a limited amount of time, in some circumstances.
1. ...
8
This is a complex question, and no one has the complete answer, but a recent study compared the metabolic rate of a hunter gatherer culture still in existence with the metabolism of sedentary westerners and found that "daily energy expenditure of traditional Hadza foragers was no different than that of Westerners". Similarly, a study found that the ...
7
There are countless possibilities that use no/minimal equipment:
Jogging, sprinting, intervals, etc
Stair climbing
Jump rope
Burpees (this one will surprise you: try to get through 50 as fast as you can)
Tuck jumps
Squat jumps
Shadow boxing
Power yoga
Best of all: any timed circuit/interval workout. check out the Crossfit Bodyweight Workouts PDF for a ...
7
Theoretically you can loose weight with doing just one exercise. However, if you want to loose more weight, you have to raise the number of calories you've burned. You can do this by exercising under higher loads or working out longer.
But fitness machines often fail at mimicking the natural increase in loads: on an elliptical trainer, when you increase the ...
7
If you don't want to buy equipment, you may want to consider reading up on so-called prison workouts. You can do a lot of exercising using nothing more than a small room and a bench, and it won't cost you much, if anything.
7
Yes, you can overtrain from doing an excessive amount of exercise even cardio. Overtraining "is a physical, behavioral, and emotional condition that occurs when the volume and intensity of an individual's exercise exceeds their recovery capacity". You can get injured and you can show signs of emotional and behavioral changes from overtraining.
Everybody is ...
7
Whoever said "You're doing it wrong!" is wrong.
"Cardio" is a very broad term and it's hard to do it wrong. You can train in the cardio range at a variety of intensities and in a variety of ways. If you goal is fat loss, it doesn't really matter how you perform you cardio as long as you are burning more calories than you are taking in. If train at a ...
7
You'll get some better search responses with the word "Conditioning", which is really what you are after. High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) such as Tabata style training (20s full speed, 10s relative rest) is the best way to optimize conditioning work. Obviously there are a few other ways to do conditioning as well.
Prowler let's you adjust the ...
7
I've used this illustration in a previous answer, and it really does a good job of demonstrating the idea:
The things we care about on the illustration (in relation to your question) are the sarcoplasm and the myofibril. The myofibril is the part of the muscle that actually does the contraction, where the sarcoplasm is the part of the muscle that stores ...
6
A pound of muscle burns more calories at rest than a pound of fat. This fact alone should tell you that weight lifting is a two-edged sword: not only do you burn calories while you're performing the exercises, but you're also increasing your muscle mass which will burn more calories at rest.
Yes, you need to add exercises to your workout. You need to lift ...
6
Yes. Your target heart rate is based on a percentage of your maximum heart rate. The formula is:
(((220 - Age) - RHR) * 0.7) + RHR
This formula will figure for 70% of your maximum based on the Karvonen Method. Your Resting Heart Rate (RHR) should be averaged over a few days (3-5). You should take it upon waking, before getting out of bed, and count total ...
6
I can give an advice in case of weight loss training.
It is considered better to do a light warm up before a workout, just to get Your blood pumping, and energy going, and the cardio after the workout.
Main reasoning behind this is once again - carb levels in Your body are way less than in the begining of the workout. Therefore, You have less carbs to ...
6
There are four major strokes in swimming:
Freestyle,
Backstroke,
Breaststroke,
Butterfly stroke
Of these, freestyle is the fastest and most efficient swimming style. In my own experience the butterfly stroke is by far the hardest to maintain for long distances. How you fill in your workout depends on two factors, how well can you swim and how hard do you ...
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