Cardio and Conditioning: Why you should be doing both! – Guest Post by Chris Hedley

Preface

First, let me preface this by saying:

1. I am not a “leading industry expert”
2. This is not “Gospel Truth” when it comes to Cardio & Conditioning
3. This is not a case study.

Now that is out of the way, let me tell you what this post IS. This is the current summary, to date, of my opinions on the topics of Cardio & Conditioning, which is “the best”, what we should be doing and what we should avoid.

So where does your definition of each fall? Is cardio only for the “cardio bunnies”?

Forever a slave to the treadmill, 5 days a week chasing the carrot of progress, while all the lean, mean, jacked guys and gals are smashing it up with super high intensity killer finishers at the end of their workouts, looking sleek and ripped all day long?

If that is the case, I think you need to reassess your situation and understanding of the terms.

Let’s take a quick look at what the internet generally spits out when you search “Cardio” and “Conditioning”

Cardio

Any Exercise that raises your heart rateuses large muscle movement over a sustained period of time keeping your heart rate to at least 50% of its maximum level.

Recommend performing a minimum of 30 minutes of moderate-intensity cardio activity on most, if not all, days of the week.

Broadly defined by the American College of Sports Medicine:”cardio, or cardiovascular exercise, is any activity that increases heart rate and respiration while using large muscle groups repetitively and rhythmically.

The root word “card,” or “heart,” provides a clue as to why this type of exercise is so important. By providing training that progressively challenges your most vital internal life support network, cardio can improve both the function and the performance of your heart, lungs and circulatory system.

Types of Cardio

High Impact

High-impact cardio activities, jogging and running still attract and retain large numbers of exercise enthusiasts. High-impact activity involves having both feet off the ground at some point during the exercise, and therefore includes jumping rope, high-impact aerobic dance etc.

Low Impact

Activity during which one foot is kept on the ground at all times. Just because it’s low impact doesn’t necessarily mean it’s lower intensity. This type of cardio is still a weight-bearing activity, meaning that it is good for maintaining healthy bones in addition to conditioning the heart and lungs. Walking & hiking are good examples of this type of cardio work.

No Impact

Exercise/training such as Swimming or water aerobics increase your heart rate and burn calories effectively. Bicycling can also be considered a no-impact workout, as the frame and tires of your bike support most of your body weight. Both aquatic exercise and cycling eliminate much of the pounding and jarring associated with land-based activity, making them ideal choices for arthritic conditions and injury rehabilitation.

Conditioning

Broadly Speaking, conditioning is the “specific act of improving a specific quality or trait”. Think Pavlov’s Dogs for “Psychological Conditioning”

Physical Conditioning is not too different. In most cases it is the act of improving a specific, often more fitness focused, attribute related to the task at hand.

For Example

A firefighter’s conditioning may involve dragging a heavy load over a set distance, sprinting back to a certain point and repeating. This could be made even more demanding by adding a time cap in order to better simulate the urgency of when this situation could appear on the job.

A Marathon runner’s conditioning could be something like 5-6 mile repeats, aiming to hold the same pace each time (or as closely as possible) to better manage their energy levels on the longer runs.

An element of strength training may also be in place to improve power production and injury resilience. The more this action is repeated, the more conditioned to this action you will become, thus making the task easier.

By now I hope you are starting to see that conditioning is a bigger picture, specific approach to your GENERAL PHYSICAL PREPAREDNESS. G.P.P also roughly translates into “I want to be fitter/healthier”

So, when looking around the vastness of the internet, we are confronted with many conflicting opinions, clashing heads, gospel truths, science backed studies.

This is both a  blessing and a curse. YES: we have a tonne of freely available information RIGHT AT OUR FINGERTIPS to help us progress on our journeys yet, through what I can only assume is a combination of Human Nature & Aspiration, we follow the top dogs. The Big Hitters. The Gigantors of the fitness world, the guys and girls on the magazines and in the photoshoots…And what advice to we generally see? Avoid Cardio! “Cardio makes all your gainz disappear”– Jerry Gym Bro. Now I have several problems with this…but I’ll get to those in a Moment.

First let me ask you a question. Are you a specialist athlete?

What I mean by this is, do your goals in the immediate future equate to you being:

1. On stage competing in a bodybuilding / physique show
2. Pulling massive weight in a powerlifting or Oly Lifting Comp,
3. Training for a photoshoot or other physique oriented goal?

If you answered yes to any of those then, unless your curiosity holds, you can stop reading now….Still Here? Awesome!

So, for anyone who has overall Health & Fitness as their focus and isn’t too focused on competing…stick around a little longer. You and Me are different to the top dogs on the covers of the magazines and the “Professional Athletes”.

The obvious is the title. We are not “Professional athletes”. We do not have a need to sacrifice huge aspects of our life for the sake of our job, quite the opposite in fact. The majority of people training in the gym, regardless of their chosen training style, are aiming for something along the lines of” Feeling” fitter and healthier. i.e.

1. Burning a few extra pounds.
2. Feeling more confident.
3. Looking better naked.
4. Getting rid of aches and pains and moving pain free.

So essentially about 90% of the people you see training are mostly aiming to improve their current life, enhance lifestyle and enjoy themselves.

So unless your aim is to step on stage in the next 6 weeks, you need both cardio & conditioning.

Given most people don’t compete in anything, you can quickly see that GPP is the thing most training programs should be trying to give participants.

Andrew Read: Read Performance Training

So, as I said above, unless you are currently training to be a competitive athlete you need to spend some time “base building”. Even those of you training with competitive aspirations should revisit a base building phase every few months, just to make sure everything is in check and you are still getting fitter…not just more specialised.

The vast majority of us got into Fitness for its namesake. We wanted to get fitter. Improve our health, prolong life, make day to day tasks easier & ensure we don’t feel old before our time by getting stronger.

So why “X” amount of time down the line, do so many of us get “obsessed” with the big trends and take it to the Nth degree?

We started off may be overweight, or just a little unhappy with our physique. We went running, a few gym classes or sessions in the gym and we saw improvements. We liked these improvements, so we did more of the stuff that got them in the first place. But then maybe the results slowed (Bye Bye beginner gains).

At this point, I believe this is where the divide occurs in most people’s fitness journey. You cut fitness in half. You make the age-old choice…Cardio OR Lifting.

1. You choose Cardio, and slowly, you are pulled into the gravity of “Planet Fitness” mentality. Lifting makes you bigger, heavier, stresses your organs, makes it hard for your heart to work effectively. Muscle isn’t healthier, it puts too much stress on your body. Only Meatheads and Lunks Lift weights. You can only get trim and slim with 5 days a week running or treadmill sessions for at least an hour.
2. You Choose Lifting. Only Lifting. You’re a die-hard gym rat, ever-questing to get more and more shredded. Bigger and Bigger. No Cardio, that’s pointless. Muscle atrophy. All my precious muscle will be eaten up by my body fuelling these “cardio bunny” activities. My Body Fat is to low, so I would only have muscle to burn as fuel…so it would be pointless really.

Read those two statements a couple of times. Back to back and alone. Really analyse them.

• Now, tell me how believable they sound?
• Were you convinced by either argument?

Hopefully you answered No. If you did, well done. You understand that “FITNESS” and “HEALTH” are not single pronged spears…they have many points &edges. Lots of different ways to approach the overall goal of fitter & healthier.

As the title of this article suggests, I am telling you that I (and many others) believe that we need BOTH cardio and conditioning exercise to truly get all round health and fitness.

There is absolutely no point in being the biggest or most ripped guy in the gym if you can’t run for a bus or chase your kids around the garden.

Equally, there is no point in having the quickest 1 mile run time or the most consistent 10k, if you struggle to carry some heavy bags along the street, load boxes into the car or help a friend/family member move a sofa up a flight of stairs…

Use your Slower, Longer Sessions for building your Aerobic Base

This is the baseline that your cardiovascular & aerobic systems can work at for a consistent pace.

The best way to approach this is with more traditional “cardio”. 30 to 60 minutes of Longer, Steady state running / rowing / biking / swimming.

Get good at carrying yourself and moving for a longer duration of time without stopping. If you can achieve this you are most certainly getting fitter and improving your cardiovascular health.

But how do I progress with this? Just run (etc.) further?

While that is one way to improve, that is also a common road to simple overuse injuries.

Instead I would recommend making your Cardio sessions more “trackable”.

• Record your Distance over 30 – 60 minutes at a steady pace. This is now your training distance for this “block”.
• Using your choice of interval methods (look them up, there are quite a few) aim to cover this “training distance” slowly improving your time.
• Every  8-10 weeks, re-test your 30-60-minute steady state, again recording your distance.

Use your Higher Intensity, shorter/sharper sessions for mental toughness and performance under fatigue.

• Create  yourself or Use some “finisher” style HIIT sessions to tag on to the end of some of your Strength sessions
• Record your performance in these sessions and monitor them. These are your baseline “conditioning sessions”. These will show how you perform a set task while under fatigue.
• On non-strength training days, you can implement some slightly more “random” WOD style workouts. Again, to see how you perform a specific task without an “obvious” build up / lead to.
• Keep a log of these and repeat them on a nonspecific / randomised schedule. Monitor performance each time. Ideally your times or scores should be getting better thanks to your use of Cardio, Strength Training & Conditioning “Finishers”.

The ideas above are, in my opinion, what make athletes like

• Tri-Athletes
• CrossFitters
• Strongmen
• Pentathlon athletes

so very well rounded and adaptable when presented with a broad variety of tasks.

This should be very relatable to most general trainees as we just want to get “Better and Fitter” not necessarily specialised in a specific, competitive event.

Even for the competitive among us, if you have a very broad & general fitness base, you will likely perform much better when you begin to become slightly more specialised in your competitive endeavour.

So, if the goal is “General Health & Fitness” don’t neglect your Cardio. Don’t demonise either form of training that can effectively build your aerobic and muscular engine.

• Use them both. Utilise them, apply them, cycle them.
• A bigger engine is often a more powerful engine.
• Fitter | Stronger |Better. One step at a time.

References

• Andrew Read – Your GPP is Broken
• K Black – Tactical Barbell
• Frogman Project
• Definition of cardio
• What is body conditioning? 
• What exactly is strength and conditioning?

About The Author

Chris Hedley is the owner and coach at Circular Roots Coaching. He prides himself on trying to help focused people find their “Better”. Be it health, greater strength and endurance or just feeling more confident and capable. You can find out more about him here.