Cardio Capacity

I’ve often seen it written that relative to how long it takes to build muscle or lose fat, it doesn’t take all that long a period of time to build up one’s cardiovascular conditioning.

First off, do the majority of you agree with this??

Second, is cardiovascular capacity best built by continuing to increase the duration of one’s training, or does there come a point where increasing intensity is best?

Good Morning

Yes, to both. Berardi’s article answers these questions.

How’s the campaign?

My personal experience with running is that after taking some time off, I feel like a 50-year old, life-long smoker during my first week back. Pretty quickly after that my runs feel much better, and I sustain my pace for while.

I only really improve with a combination of long and short distance. If I’m training for 1 mile, I need to do some long runs (5+ miles) as well as some 400-800 meter speedwork.

Tim

Building up is important. Tony Cecchine sites that he can get a wrestler of his to go from 20-30 Hindu squats to 100-150 in about three weeks.

I think the best thing for you to do would be to get a steer and carry it on your shoulders everyday till it’s a bull. This is just one of many bear-like activities you could try.

[quote]Robert Monti wrote:
Good Morning

Yes, to both. Berardi’s article answers these questions.

How’s the campaign?
[/quote]

Which Berardi articles? The project is all about nutrition.

The campaign holds strong, as always. It’s hard to lose at something you imagined in the first place.

“Cardiovascular conditioning” is an extremely nebulous issue and I disagree that Berardi or anyone else whom I can think of has has produced anything authoritative on the subject. I actually think Berardi’s article was good, because it provides a practical strategy for progression, but it doesn’t answer the question at hand.

The problem is that most people associate steady state exercise with the heart and lungs when, in fact, the most important adaptations that occur in response to this type of training are peripheral; i.e. an increase in the ability of the muscle cells to derive energy from oxidative processes.

There is a cardic component also, but it is not what most people think it is. There is some left ventricle hypertrophy and a corresponding increase in cardiac output, but steady-state exercise primarily just trains your muscles to do steady-state exercise.

So, if the question is how to best improve the efficiency of the cardiovascular system without regard for the peripheral adaptations to steady-state exercise, I submit that no-one can answer this question. Nobody has isolated the cardiovascular component and discovered the exact mechanism by which improvement occurs.

On the other hand, if you’re asking how best to improve your capacity for steady-state exercise without regard to where in your body the adaptions are ocurring, most endurance athletes will tell you that volume is the most important thing. Intense workouts are also an important feature of most athletes’ programs, particularly during competition periods, but the volume of low intensity work or ‘mileage’ is almost universally the backbone of the program.

[quote]Zell959 wrote:
Robert Monti wrote:
Good Morning

Yes, to both. Berardi’s article answers these questions.

How’s the campaign?

Which Berardi articles? The project is all about nutrition.

The campaign holds strong, as always. It’s hard to lose at something you imagined in the first place.[/quote]

Cardio Pogressions. Check the archives.

INteresting.

[quote]Zell959 wrote:
I’ve often seen it written that relative to how long it takes to build muscle or lose fat, it doesn’t take all that long a period of time to build up one’s cardiovascular conditioning.

First off, do the majority of you agree with this??

Second, is cardiovascular capacity best built by continuing to increase the duration of one’s training, or does there come a point where increasing intensity is best?

[/quote]

First—

Yes and no.

I think people just set the bar lower with CV training, mostly because there aren’t a lot of clearly established standards for people who aren’t distance athletes (i.e., for people who weigh more than 160 pounds). It’s REALLY easy to see an improvement in work capacity in a workout or in cardio circuits, but if you pick a cardio ‘event’–a set circuit, a 400m sprint, a mile run, etc.–it’ll work just like anything else–you make quick progress to begin with and slower progress as you go along.

Too simple a question. Do you want to run a faster 400? A faster mile? Row a faster 2k? 5k? Complete a given cardio circuit faster? There are different ways to pursue each of these goals. If you really care about one of them, and it’s a sport (e.g., sprinting, rowing, distance running), the thing to do is to find a coach or a reliable resource oriented towards athletes of that sport and do what is says to do. If you don’t care about it that much or if you’re cardio isn’t equivalent to a sport, just practice variety and hammer it hard: Jack up total volume one day, jack up intensity the next, reduce rest periods on a third day, perform the cardio fatigued or pre-exhausted on the fourth.

Or, if you want the one-sentence answer:

Get a stopwatch, and will yourself go faster next time.

I think all good exercise is cardio by nature if you really want to feel your heart beat, do dead lifts then immediately do pull ups . It makes your heart pump hard, but it seems relatively you don?t breathe as heavy. If you want to max your breathing out I like HIIT. I also on occasion do a lighter work out that I do for an Hour or more. When I do the long work out I am careful not to fatigue one or more muscle groups. An example would be run slowly, shadow box, kick, punch do some calisthenics and repeat avoiding fatigue but expending energy. I am sure I will get some criticisms .which I am looking forward to

Most people’s cardio requirements are pretty low, and it doesn’t take long to get into ok cardio shape.

To be an excellent distance runners/swimmer/cyclist you need years and years of super high volume. It’s one of the reasons the African’s beat our ass on the world level- they’ve done 100+ mile weeks since they were 14, while our guys don’t get to that high of a volume until after highschool usually.

Most people want to be able to run ‘ok’ like a 20 min 5k or a 6 min mile, in addition to being able to lift something respectable. If you wanted to run respectable times, you’d need a lot more effort to get down sub 17 or 5 or what have you.

[quote]pittbulll wrote:
I think all good exercise is cardio by nature if you really want to feel your heart beat, do dead lifts then immediately do pull ups . It makes your heart pump hard, but it seems relatively you don?t breathe as heavy. If you want to max your breathing out I like HIIT. I also on occasion do a lighter work out that I do for an Hour or more. When I do the long work out I am careful not to fatigue one or more muscle groups. An example would be run slowly, shadow box, kick, punch do some calisthenics and repeat avoiding fatigue but expending energy. I am sure I will get some criticisms .which I am looking forward to [/quote]

I believe that your bpm rising whilst doing squats and weight bearing exercise is nothing to do with cardio conditioning?

Anybody know what it’s really called?

[quote]Robert Monti wrote:
Building up is important. Tony Cecchine sites that he can get a wrestler of his to go from 20-30 Hindu squats to 100-150 in about three weeks.

I think the best thing for you to do would be to get a steer and carry it on your shoulders everyday till it’s a bull. This is just one of many bear-like activities you could try. [/quote]

Tony Cecchine…LOL

[quote]craigspud101 wrote:
pittbulll wrote:
I think all good exercise is cardio by nature if you really want to feel your heart beat, do dead lifts then immediately do pull ups . It makes your heart pump hard, but it seems relatively you don?t breathe as heavy. If you want to max your breathing out I like HIIT. I also on occasion do a lighter work out that I do for an Hour or more. When I do the long work out I am careful not to fatigue one or more muscle groups. An example would be run slowly, shadow box, kick, punch do some calisthenics and repeat avoiding fatigue but expending energy. I am sure I will get some criticisms .which I am looking forward to

I believe that your bpm rising whilst doing squats and weight bearing exercise is nothing to do with cardio conditioning?

Anybody know what it’s really called?[/quote]

BPM ? Thanks

[quote]pittbulll wrote:
craigspud101 wrote:
pittbulll wrote:
I think all good exercise is cardio by nature if you really want to feel your heart beat, do dead lifts then immediately do pull ups . It makes your heart pump hard, but it seems relatively you don?t breathe as heavy. If you want to max your breathing out I like HIIT. I also on occasion do a lighter work out that I do for an Hour or more. When I do the long work out I am careful not to fatigue one or more muscle groups. An example would be run slowly, shadow box, kick, punch do some calisthenics and repeat avoiding fatigue but expending energy. I am sure I will get some criticisms .which I am looking forward to

I believe that your bpm rising whilst doing squats and weight bearing exercise is nothing to do with cardio conditioning?

Anybody know what it’s really called?

BPM ? Thanks [/quote]

[heart]beats per minute

[quote]consumer wrote:
pittbulll wrote:
craigspud101 wrote:
pittbulll wrote:
I think all good exercise is cardio by nature if you really want to feel your heart beat, do dead lifts then immediately do pull ups . It makes your heart pump hard, but it seems relatively you don?t breathe as heavy. If you want to max your breathing out I like HIIT. I also on occasion do a lighter work out that I do for an Hour or more. When I do the long work out I am careful not to fatigue one or more muscle groups. An example would be run slowly, shadow box, kick, punch do some calisthenics and repeat avoiding fatigue but expending energy. I am sure I will get some criticisms .which I am looking forward to

I believe that your bpm rising whilst doing squats and weight bearing exercise is nothing to do with cardio conditioning?

Anybody know what it’s really called?

BPM ? Thanks

[heart]beats per minute [/quote]

I consider that part of my cardio training.

The increase in heart rate during high load bearing exercise is due to feed forward control from certain parts of the brain (thalmus, I think, but I don’t want to look it up). This occurs as a response to occlusion of blood flow to an extremity by the contracting tissues. The brain, in an attempt to force blood past the occlusion, jacks up systolic blood pressure and heart rate.

As previously stated, endurance training adaptation is mostly peripheral (specific to the tissues in question), and is highly adaptable for 6-8 weeks. Almost no improvement in VO2 Max (your ‘cardio’ component) occurs until after this, and is then only about 10-20% trainable.

[quote]beta wrote:
The increase in heart rate during high load bearing exercise is due to feed forward control from certain parts of the brain (thalmus, I think, but I don’t want to look it up). This occurs as a response to occlusion of blood flow to an extremity by the contracting tissues. The brain, in an attempt to force blood past the occlusion, jacks up systolic blood pressure and heart rate.

As previously stated, endurance training adaptation is mostly peripheral (specific to the tissues in question), and is highly adaptable for 6-8 weeks. Almost no improvement in VO2 Max (your ‘cardio’ component) occurs until after this, and is then only about 10-20% trainable.[/quote]

I do not quite understand. Are we talking endurance or cardio? Thanks