I’ve signed up for monthly masterclasses through Darby Training Systems and just had my second one this past Wednesday. This month’s topic was Cardiorespiratory Fitness (CRF) and HIIT training and I wanted to share the parts that jumped out at me the most in a nice summarized blog entry:
1) Why is Cardio Important? The top 4 leading causes of death worldwide are all related to cardiorespiratory fitness (heart disease, stroke, COPD, and lower respiratory infections), and cardiorespiratory fitness is the number 1 indicator on how long you will live. Even if you are one of my strength clients, or only interested in bodybuilding, I still program in cardio a couple times a week because I care about you guys as a whole – I’d rather you be a little grumpy at me for asking you to go for a run when all you want to do is squat 😛 It’s also why I don’t get upset if you didn’t have a chance to get a lift in, but you went for a bike ride instead. As much as I care about your specific goals, your overall health is my top priority
2) “Fit” versus Bigger Bodied? We want to recognize that people live in different sized bodies, and the fitness industry has perpetuated smaller=fitter/more healthy. This isn’t the case. Someone with a larger body but better CRF is healthier and most likely going to live longer than someone who is smaller with poorer cardio. The science says, no matter what the size of your body is, improvements in your CRF will reduce all-cause mortality. This is another reason why I don’t talk to you guys about your weight, BMI, and things like that unless it is something you’ve brought up as a goal and is important to you. I just weighed myself at 149.8lbs and it’s false to say I am less healthy than when I was at 110lbs simply because I’m 40lbs heavier. Now that’s not to say that if you feel you are overweight and you want to lose weight that that won’t make a difference, as it is definitely easier on your joints and body systems to be within a certain weight range for your height and age. The main point here is smaller doesn’t equal fitter by default.
3) How can we see if we’re improving? DTS likes to use World Fitness Level which uses a quick survey to give you your current age and what your metabolic age is. It’s a really good indicator of where we are starting at, and then retesting down the road to see if we are improving. It only takes 2 minutes to fill out, and I gave it a try. I was very happy to see that my Vo2 max and metabolic age are statistically better than the average for people 32 years old. The second picture indicated Heart Rate Recovery (HRR) as a great tool for tracking improvements. I’ve talked to a few of you guys before about your heart rates – it’s not how high it goes during a workout or how low it stays when you exercise, but how quickly it comes back down. What you want to be looking at after cardio is laying down on your back and seeing how quickly your heart rate returns to a resting/recovery state. If you’ve been laying down for 1-2 minutes and it’s still high or not coming down, this is a problem. If your heart rate shoots up to 180bpm on the bike but when you jump off and lay down it drops back down to 80bpm, THAT’s what we’re looking for – the ability for your body to output when it needs to, and return to a relaxed state afterwards.
4) Things you can do to improve your CRF? Getting in at least 15-20 minutes a day of higher intensity training is key. This could be a bike ride, a cardio class, a metcon, or simply running up and down the stairs 10 times at home. Watching your favourite show, start doing jumping jacks on a commercial break and do them until the next commercial break – that’s about 9-11 minutes right there depending on the show! There are so many ways to get it in, and it’s so important. If you have a podcast you love to listen to, or are relaxing to an audio book, listen to it and relax while going for a little jog, or bike ride, or walking up and down the stairs for a chapter. I PROMISE you, you will feel better after doing it and knowing that such a small time commitment can make such a difference in the long run.
I hope this was helpful!
Sincerely,
Sam
fitbusiness.ca 