Whether you’re a gym newbie or advanced lifter understanding what cardio you should be doing and exactly how much can be a bit of a puzzle! In this post we are going to cover the different types of cardiovascular training, you can include as part of your gym routine, and the best to suit your health & fitness goals.
So I want to start by saying generally speaking its great to cover all cardio training methods, this way you can work on improving your overall heart health by working your engine at different HR (Heart rate) levels. Getting your heart pumping at 150-190bpm during a HIIT (High intensity interval training) session and then taking it down to 100-140bpm for a incline walk both have so many health benefits, but the main one I want to focus on is the effect these both have on your Systolic blood pressure (Working HR) and Diastolic blood pressure (Resting HR). Getting your heart used to working a higher HR will help significantly help in bringing down your systolic blood pressure, while consistently, for a continuous amount of time working your heart rate at a lower (but still beneficial) HR level will help to reduce your Diastolic blood pressure! A reduction in both of these has direct links to decreased chances of heart disease, certain cancers, strokes etc.. so long story short cardio is massively important in keeping you healthy, So stop dreading that spin class on a Monday morning or long Sunday strolls.. EMBRACE THEM🤪
Moving onto the big question .. What cardio should YOU being doing! My response is it depends on what your goal is, generally speaking we should all be doing some forms of cardio but the amounts and types become more specific when we talk about what your gym targets are. For example: If I have a client who’s looking to reduce weight/body fat for their holiday to Greece I would recommend starting with 1-2x cardio sessions a week for the first part of their body recomposition, splitting it into 1x HIIT session and 1x LISS (Low intensity steady state) session; then as their holiday gets closer this would be increase to 2x HIIT sessions and 2x LISS sessions. Another example would be: If I have someone who’s in a bulking phase, wanting to put on muscle and currently in a calorie surplus I may recommend maintaining 1x HIIT session a week, 2x LISS cardio sessions and aiming for a step goal of 10,000 per day, this way they still improve general health, while putting on lead muscle and reducing the amount of body fat that’s gained. So the first thing to do is address the goal and then work out the amount/types of cardio to do; as always we recommend following a gym exercise plan and our ’5 week gym workout plans’ all include cardio routines, all of these are tailored to the gym goal e.g Weigh loss, Fat loss, Strength gain and Muscle development.
My final bit of advice is stop looking at cardio training as a chore, find different types that you actually enjoy and make it fun, this way you will continuously sustain the routine long term and that’s when you’ll start seeing the benefits/results. The more you do the mentally easier it will become , you’ll get a continuous spike of endorphins which will not just help with your physical health but mental health too; trust me you’ll soon start to love the process.🤩