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It's normal to hear fitness professionals and medical physicians prescribe subtle to average intensity aerobic training (cardio) to people who are trying to prevent heart disease or lose weight. Quite often, the suggestions constitute something along the lines of "perform 30-60 minutes of steady pace cardio 3-5 times per week keeping your heart rate at a moderate level". Before you just give in to this popular perception and turn out to be the "hamster on the wheel" doing endless hours of boring cardio exercise, I'd like you to think about some recent scientific research that suggests that steady pace stamina cardio work might not be all it's cracked up to be.
First, understand that our bodies are designed to execute physical motion in bursts of physical exertion followed by recovery, or stop-and-go movement in place of steady state movement. Modern research is suggesting that bodily variability is one of the most important aspects to think about in your training. This tendency can be seen throughout nature as all animals demonstrate stop-and-go motion in place of steady state motion. Actually, humans are the only creatures in nature that attempt to do "endurance" type physical activities. Most competitive sports activities (with the exception of endurance running or biking) are also based on stop-and-go movement or brief bursts of exertion followed by recuperation. To examine an illustration of the diverse effects of endurance or steady state training versus stop-and-go training, think about the physiques of marathoners versus sprinters. The majority of sprinters carry a body type that is basically slim, strong, and powerful looking, whereas the typical dedicated marathoner is more often thin and weak looking. Now which would you rather resemble?
Another thing to consider regarding the benefits of physical variability is the internal effect of different types of training on our body. Scientists have known that excessive steady state endurance exercise (different for everyone, but sometimes defined as greater than sixty minutes per session most days of the week) raises free radical production in the body, can degenerate joints, reduces immune function, causes muscle wasting, and can cause a pro-inflammatory reaction in the body that can potentially advance to chronic illnesses. On the other hand, highly variable cyclical training has been coupled to increased anti-oxidant production in the body and an anti-inflammatory response, a more effective nitric oxide response (which can promote a healthy cardiovascular system), and an improved metabolic rate response (which can assist with fat loss).
Furthermore, steady state endurance exercise only trains the heart at a single specific heart rate range and does not teach it to respond to various every day stressors. On the other hand, highly variable cyclic training teaches the heart to react to and recover from a mixture of demands making it less likely to fail when you need it. Consider it this way -- Exercise that trains your heart to quickly increase and swiftly decrease can make your heart more capable of handling daily tension. Tension can cause your blood pressure and heart rate to escalate quickly. Steady state jogging and other stamina training doesn't teach your heart to be able to cope with quick differences in heart rate or blood pressure.
The important aspect of variable cyclic exercise that makes it superior over steady state cardio is the recovery time in between bursts of hard work. That recuperation period is crucially important for the body to elicit a healthful response to a training stimulus. Another benefit of flexible cyclic exercise is that it is considerably more appealing and has lower drop-out rates than long boring steady state cardio systems.
To sum up, some of the potential benefits of variable cyclic exercise compared to steady state endurance training are as follows: improved cardiovascular health, augmented anti-oxidant defense, improved immune function, reduced possibility for joint damage, reduced muscle wasting, improved residual metabolic rate following work out, and an increased capacity for the heart to handle life's daily stressors. There are many ways you can reap the benefits of stop-and-go or adjustable intensity physical training. One of the absolute most successful kinds of variable intensity training to truely lower body fat and bring out serious muscular definition is performing wind sprints.
Nearly all competitive sports such as football, basketball, racquetball, tennis, hockey, etc. are obviously made up of highly unpredictable stop-and-go motion. Additionally, weight training naturally incorporates small bursts of energy followed by recovery periods. High intensity interval training (varying between high and low intensity intervals on any type of cardio equipment) is yet one more training technique that utilizes action and restoration periods. For example, an interval training session on the treadmill could look somewhat like this:
Loosen-up for three to four minutes at a quick pace or easy jog;
Interval 1 - run at 8.0 mi/hr for 1 minute;
Interval 2 - walk at 4.0 mi/hr for one and a half minutes;
Interval 3 - sprint at 10.0 mi/hr for one minute;
Interval 4 - pace at 4.0 mi/hr for 1.5 minutes;
Repeat those four intervals 4 times for a really extreme thirty-minute workout.
The take-away implication from this article is to strive to train your body at highly variable intensity rates for the majority of your workouts to get the most effective response in terms of heart health, body fat loss, and muscle maintenance.
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