Health and Fitness

What is “good cardio”? Thats of the most frequent questions I get asked. People are always asking if some specific machine or activity is good cardio or not. Before we go into what IS good cardio, lets review WHY cardio is so important

•#1 lose fat! – want 6-pack abs? Only way is to lose fat thru cardio and nutrition.
•#2 Cardio can improve your mood and significantly reduce depression. Its been prooven by study after study, cardio can make you happier!
•#3 Perform better at school or work! Daily cardio reduces mental fatigue and gives you more energy. A recent study from the U of G showed that daily cardio reduces fatigue by 65%!
•#4 Tons of other health reasons –
oreduce risk of heart disease
oreduce blood pressure
oreduce risk of diabetes
olive longer – 2hrs longer for every 1hr of exercise

You’ve heard me say this before and I will repeat it again – cardio is much more important than lifting weights and if you only have 20min a day for fitness, you should spend the whole time doing cardio.

Its clear that there is a lot of confusion about cardio, its really quite simple. In this video I’m going to tell you how to know what is good cardio and how to tell at a glance if a piece of cardio equipment is good or not. Lets start with the basics. The purpose of cardio is to elevate your heart rate and keep it target zone for at least 20 minutes. How elevated does your heart rate need to be? Depends on your goal, your age, and your health. If you have medical conditions, ask your doctor what is appropriate for you. If you are in good health, you can use these charts from the American Heart Association:

http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4736

So if you are wondering if a particular activity is good cardio, its simple to find out. Do it for a minimum of 20 minutes then measure your heartrate (15sx4) and compare it to the above chart. If your heartrate is in the target zone, then its good cardio – simple as that! With many forms of cardio, like cycling or walking, its easy to get lazy and just lolli-gag along. Its important that you monitor your heartrate during the cardio to make sure that you are not slacking off. Just a note, walking has the lowest dropout rate of all forms of cardio – probably because its so enjoyable.

OK, now lets talk about cardio equipment. I get lots of questions asking if a particular kind of cardio equipment is good. First of all, I dont recommend buying ANY equipment. I’d much rather see you get exercise outdoors by cycling, jogging, or playing soccer, its cheaper and more enjoyable. If you have to workout in your home, I would recommend a cheap jumprope. Having said that, if you are determined to spend money on equipment for indoor use, here is how you can tell if a piece of equipment is good. First of all, good cardio equipment is very expensive and typically costs over a thousand dollars and has three main characteristics

•If the equipment elevates your heart rate into the target zone, then its good cardio – simple as that.
•adjustable speed, very impt
•sturdy = heavy, never seeen anything sturdy under 50lbs most well over a hundred
•sufficient adjustable resistance

OK, some common questions I get about cardio. Many people seem to be looking for shortcuts to cardio. What if I sprint, can I just do 1 mile? NO! You must do your cardio a MINIMUM of 20min, preferably 40-60min. What if I do interval training, can I just do 15min – NO! You must do your cardio a MINIMUM of 20min, preferably 40-60min. I get questions about interval training all the time so lets talk about that a moment. Interval training is alternating bursts of speed followed by short rests, for example in running you might sprint for 60s and walk for 30s. Studies have shown that exercising in this fashion can burn off more calories than steady cardio. If you want to do interval training:
1.you still need to do it for a min of 20min daily
2.dont rest so long that your heartrate drops below the target heart rate zone (purple)
3.Be mindful of injuries, make sure to stretch – you are much more likely to get injured sprinting than

Wow, I’m really groggy myself. Time for me to do cardio before I fall asleep.

Nutrition is losing fat and getting 6-pack abs! I cover nutrition on my website, if thats not detailed enough for you I have reviewed and recommended some excellent books:

http://scoobysworkshop.com/goodfitnessbooks.htm

For more information on home workouts, please see my free website (no advertising either):

www.scoobysworkshop.com

Limitation of Liability: Consult with your doctor before starting any exercise program! I am not a medical professional. It is your responsibility to critically evaluate this information and with the help of your physician decide if it is appropriate for you.

copyright 2006-2009 scoobysworkshop.com LLC

Duration : 0:10:37

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Build muscles in your upper body. Learn the YTWL triathlon training exercise to strengthen shoulder muscles, in this free video.

Expert: Carey Kepler
Contact: www.boundless-energy.com
Bio: Carey Kepler avidly participates in triathlons all around the country, as well as trains other triathletes.

Duration : 0:1:5

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Training tips for big triathlon! Learn the side shuffle footwork drill to add to your triathlon training program – free video.

Expert: Carey Kepler
Contact: www.boundless-energy.com
Bio: Carey Kepler avidly participates in triathlons all around the country, as well as trains other triathletes.

Duration : 0:1:26

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Strength building exercises for triathlon competition. Learn the split squat as part of your triathlon training program, in this free video.

Expert: Carey Kepler
Contact: www.boundless-energy.com
Bio: Carey Kepler avidly participates in triathlons all around the country, as well as trains other triathletes.

Duration : 0:1:10

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Technorati Tags: Bike, biking, fitness, free, program, running, swimming, tip, training, triathlon, workout

http://www.theandysan.com

Due to popular demand, I’ve decided to do a 3-part mini-series on how I lost over 20 lbs in 2 months without starving myself to death.

The second video will cover my workout routine as well as give you guys a quick back-story on what was going on in my life after I made the decision to lose weight.

When I started working out again, it was the dead of winter so I couldn’t do much outside beyond shoveling snow, which definitely helped me lose a couple of pounds. During this time, I stuck to using the treadmill in the basement that had been collecting dust.

Originally, my daily treadmill workout consisted of a 20-30 minute routine where I’d start off at 3 MPH at a 3% incline and then increased the speed every 5-6 minutes and then went back down to 3 MPH when it got to be too much to maintain. I then tried increasing the intervals as well as the overall length of the workout to 30-45 minutes, but I soon realized that simply increasing my workload wouldn’t help me lose more weight. In fact, I happened to be gaining a little bit of weight during that time.

Instead of chalking up my weight gain to muscle gain or some other BS, I decided to change up my routine in order to shock my body into losing the weight.

I then changed my routine to the following: 5 minute warm-up at 3 MPH, 1 minute at 6 MPH, 2 minutes at 3 MPH, 1 minute at 8 MPH (later 9 MPH), 2 minutes at 3 MPH, and so on until I’ve been working out for 20-25 minutes. This kind of routine is commonly known as interval training, and it really kick-started my weight loss and I began to notice that my endurance was increasing as well.

I used to do situps as well, but I found those to be largely ineffective since in order to lose the gut, you’d need to do cardio routines and have an overall good state of health. Even if I did situps until I was blue in the face, nobody would be able to see any changes because even if I had rockin’ ab muscles, they would be covered by fat.

Since the weather’s nice, I’m doing pretty much all of my workouts outside now. I would either run up and down my street for 1.5 miles or go on a long bike ride around town (by long, I mean at least 10 miles round-trip).

I remember back when I left UU around May 2007 and moved to Coldwater, I weighted around 230 lbs. This is definitely the heaviest that I ever been, and the heaviest that I ever will be! Besides blaming myself, I blame my weight mostly on poor eating, late-night eating, and not too much physical activity. Granted, I did go out on walks with my friend Dan and whoever else wanted to come along, as well as solo bike rides and stuff like that, but I was simply eating too many empty calories for it to make much of a difference. Not to mention that I was a pretty depressed guy at the time (just read some of my blog entries from late 2006-mid 2007 to get an idea of what was going on).

Anywho, when I moved from UU to Coldwater, there wasn’t much of anything to do there so I decided to walk around town every day. I then progressed to taking bike rides around town to going to the Wal-Mart in Celina and back every day. As a result, I lose 15 lbs in just a month’s time!

I know that there’s a large group of people who think that running is a more effective means of cardio training than biking, and it is when you compare the calories lost/distance, but I find riding my bike much more enjoyable than running because I can be outside longer and actually enjoy the scenery more than I could while I’m running. Also, biking is much kinder on my back and knees so I don’t feel like crap the next day.

Even though I’m not rockin’ the six-pack yet, I’m still the slimmest I’ve been in years and I couldn’t be happier! For a guy like me who’s 5′10″ (that’s 70 inches total or 175 cm for my international audience), being over 200 lbs is considered heavy. At the time, I didn’t think I was heavy (I knew I wasn’t slim, but I didn’t think I was fat), but now that I lost all that weight, I look back at some of my earlier videos and I can see that I was indeed overweight.

In the next and final video in this 3-part mini-series, I will go over my dieting routine. Hope to see you there!

TheAndySan

Duration : 0:5:24

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Technorati Tags: bicycle, biking, cardio, cycling, diet, interval, intervallic, lose, meps, navy, running, theandysan, training, treadmill, us, weight, workout

Try this Quick Fat Burning Cardio Workout using an Exercise Bike with Tabata Intervals.

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