Unless you’re a keen cardio person, cardiovascular training or conditioning is usually forgotten about. This is because some people may think it ruins strength gains, or that running is bad for you as it can cause injuries like shin splints, or the impact is bad for your knees.

But conditioning can do so much more for you than just something that is done towards the beginning of beach season to make you look a little more shredz. This blog just brushes over some key info that can help you make your cardio better.

Zones of training.

You may have seen people talk about being in zone 3 of training or when you see heart rate data on your phones or certain apps it shows up as blue green and red as examples. These are just thresholds to where your heart rate will sit. This ranges from zone 1 which is just chilling so heart rate low, to then zone 5 (the red zone) this is when you are or near max heart rate. Now instead of just looking and sounding cool they do actually tell a story. When you are in the lower zones blue or green you are able to sustain the intensity that you are working at for a long period of time. An example of this could be walking or a paddle in the pool. However, as we start going up in zones intensity and heart rate increases, meaning you would are not be able to maintain this intensity for a long period of time.

Don’t live in the red zone.

Now, being in the red zone the whole session isn’t a good thing at all, if you are in the red zone it means intensity is way to high and you will need to rest. This is where interval training comes in, you work really hard for a short period of time, get in the red zone and then you must rest enough to bring your heart rate back down again. So, your heart rate data must almost look like a wave.

If your session is in the red and orange zone for a whole hour say, this is too intense and you won’t be getting the most out of the session. It is called max effort for a reason, if you don’t rest enough, you can’t give a max effort.

Everyone is different.

Seems logical, but everyone heart is different, some people can sustain in certain zones for longer than other due to training or even genetics. A lot of the zones of training arbitrary so take caution with this.

Getting the most out of your conditioning.

As previously mentioned, you shouldn’t just see how long you spend in zone 4 and 5. There has to be logic to it. Majority of people would be better off performing steady state conditioning. This is when you spend more of your time in zone 2/3 as you are more likely to maintain this intensity for a longer period. This would then mean you would get fitter over a period of time and a vast amount of research warrants steady state long conditioning to improve fitness levels. However, if you’re stuck for time then interval training is a great alternative to this.

What adaptations are there?

There are many physiological adaptions to conditioning based training happening at the muscle and heart that means you can last for longer and work at a higher intensity. Here are just a couple adaptations that can occur.

Muscular: Your muscle are made up of fibres, these are categorised into Type I, Type II and Type IIx. Type I is the ones that are more suited to long distance and endurance. Now when you train your muscle fibres won’t change from Type II to Type I but what will happen is that your Type II fibres will act more like Type I. This is where things like running for longer time start occurring.

Heart: As your heart is a muscle it will get stronger if you train it correctly. One thing that happens is that you can have an increase in stoke volume which means your heart can pump more blood per beat. This means more oxygen is pumped around your body.

Key Take Home messages.

• Don’t gauge how good a session is by how long you spend in the red zone.

• Steady state cardio has been shown to increase fitness levels and also as you work for long periods of time you burn more calories.

• If you’re stuck for time interval training is a good way to train.

• When doing HITT or interval training, you must have adequate rest. Remember your heart rate data should look like a wave.

• Do cardio that you actually enjoy, playing sports are great.

• If you are looking to do cardio in the gym aim for kit that uses more that one body part eg Assault Bike, Cross-trainer, Ski Erg. The more muscles that work the greater demand there is for oxygen.

See you on the cardio machines!