The Types of Cardio Training
There are different types of cardio training that are intentionally geared towards addressing the peculiarities of the populace. Not all body types are the same, & not all bodies function the same way either. You have to consider your goals & your physical capacity to perform these exercises in choosing the type of cardio exercise that you might want to do.
1. Low Intensity & Long Duration Cardio – This is the least demanding of all aerobic work and usually involves walking, jogging & cycling among others. This type of cardio involves slow, continuous, easy steps that can be done over an extended time period. Usual exercise time goes more than 30 minutes. Obese people usually have a harder time moving around LI/LD should be appropriate for them because it does not require them to make complicated & rapid movements. To check whether you are coping well with the exercise, you can do the talk test while doing the cardio. If you find it easy to talk even while doing the exercise then you have found your niche.
2. Medium Intensity, Medium Duration – After the body has adjusted & coped with the LI/LD it should be able to easily ease into the program with the nest level of difficulty. MI/MD should be done in sets of no more than 40 minutes as it involves a more cardio work that can increase the maximum heart rate of up to 70%.
3. High Intensity, Short Duration – This type of level demand readiness from the body in order to cope with the rigor of the cardio exercise. The HI/SD cardio can be done anywhere from 5-15 minutes depending on the exerciser’s fitness & endurance at 80-85% of his maximum heart rate.
4. Aerobic Interval Training – This involves doing cardio exercise from a high intensity level & then moving to a lower intensity & then back again. For example, you can do 3 minutes of running alternated with 1 minute of walking & repeated 4 or 5 times.
5. Anaerobic Interval Training – Anaerobic Interval training involves doing high intensity cardio for a period of time & then resting or doing low intensity work for the same duration. An example is sprinting for 30 seconds, walking for 30 seconds, sprinting again for 30 seconds & so on until the cycle is repeated 5 times. It aims to reach 85-100% of the maximum heart rate.
6. Fartlek Training – Fartlek training is a Swedish technique that incorporates all the aforementioned cardio types into a single session. This means that you can run for 5 minutes, walk for 5 minutes, sprint for 30 seconds, walk slowly for 2 minutes & then run again for another two minutes. The Fartlek technique is a great way to trick your metabolism into working harder at burning fat and it also is an interesting & different way of doing an otherwise boring routine.
7. Cardio Circuit Training - a type of cardio exercise where the individual completes one set of exercise & immediately proceed to the next set in rapid succession & with hardly any rest. You can do this exercise with or without the use of equipments, in which case of course the motions will have to vary. In the gym, you can plan out your entire session by including different exercises that target different parts of your body like leg curls or pulldowns. When going from set to set, it is important that one of the key characteristics of cardio circuit training is its emphasis on continuously doing your exercises with only 30-60 second pauses in between.
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