It’s a bit odd but I can’t find a cardiovascular health thread. The only thread that came up was an old Q&A thread about cardiovascular health and sex lol
But I really need to build up my wind again.
What’s the formula, three times a day, 30 minutes each?
For building a good cardio base, you should be doing work that hits 75-85% of your target heart rate. If you’ve been out of it for awhile and want something low impact but definitely tiring at first, high incline treadmill walks are amazing (also fantastic for losing weight while maintaining leg muscles)
Once you’re starting to feel good about things and can go for 30 minute sessions no problem, you’ll have to start targeting specific cardio categories depending on what you want. I think of them in three groups:
1. Steady State - good for distance running, cycling, long form cardio sports like euro football and other continuous play field sports
2. Anaerobic - good for sprinting, american football, basketball, and agility oriented exercise
3. Lactic - Good for the anaerobic sports above in a critical pinch. Absolutely required for fighting sports. There’s a reason boxers and MMA fighters go through a rigorous prefight training and conditioning plan that goes on for months. The dynamic and reactive nature of fighting makes even those with excellent cardio inefficient at times. Not being used to dealing with lactic response causes a severe breakdown in form (gassing out), putting you at risk for very brutal Knock Outs. Lactic Threshold can be increased with very very intense training. Lactic and anaerobic are hand in hand when it comes to fighting, so you’ll need to be pretty solid.
2 and 3 are definitely something you can experiment with to shake things up, but you should make sure you have a good baseline of cardio before going that hard consistently. Don’t wanna injure or kill yourself.
Godspeed!
