Want to lose weight? Go for a run, or jump on a piece of cardio equipment. It’s easy, right? Everyday people join gyms to lose weight, and spend all their time in the cardio area. And just as they join a host of other people cancel their memberships because they didn’t lose weight. But that’s because they didn’t workout enough, or put enough effort in. Or because exercise isn’t for them. Most people look for the simplest solution. They have been told cardio is good for weight loss, so they do cardio for weight loss. Tell people the truth, that cardio is beneficial for weight loss during the initial phase of exercise and has little benefit thereafter, and that what they need to bring in is resistance training to increase metabolic rate and they switch off. That requires skill acquisition and time. So, not great for weight loss in the long term then. But surely it has benefit if you are training for sports? Cardiovascular fitness is very specific. I can be a great swimmer yet have terrible fitness when it comes to running. Equally I could be great at 1km yet gassed in a 3km. There is some carry over into other sports, within reason. Running isn’t going to make you a great cyclist, for instance. But you can see how running would benefit a tennis or rugby player. Why, then, do we put so much emphasis on cardio? Well you can blame a couple of Frenchmen for that! And we’ll be talking about that on Wednesday, which if you want to read about it you can subscribe at the bottom of the home page |