Improve Your Cardio, Stay Safe, AND Have Fun!
While cardiovascular training may seem quite unappealing, including it in your life in one form or another is highly recommended. In fact, it can be quite enjoyable!
Key things to look out for to stay safe
Let’s first talk about how to make sure we’re safe on our journey!
One of the most common downfalls for people starting out is when they get overly motivated and excited at the beginning, and then burn themselves out or injure themselves by doing too much too quickly.
We will cover some example routines later on in this blog so that you can get yourself an idea of what’s reasonable. Just keep in mind that no matter what you do, you should always listen to your body and err on the safe and slow side of progression - there’s no rush after all, is there?
But even if we’re going at a reasonable pace, we might run into issues such as slow recovery, achy joints, or perhaps even more severe injuries. And that may simply be due to factors outside of training. Factors such as your sleep, your diet, and of course your overall health can play a huge factor in whether or not you can recover from, and adapt to the training.
Regardless of why you may be experiencing some difficulties - be it the training itself or the recovery outside of it - it boils down to you doing more than you can at that moment. So tone down the training for a bit, and look at which factors could use some improvements.
Diet: Are you getting all the nutrients you need?
Sleep: Are you sleeping enough (7-9 hours per night)? And is the sleep you get good sleep?
Health: Do you have any health conditions, stress, or past injuries that may be affecting you?
Recovery: Are you still sore from your last training session?
Training: Are you new to the exercise routine you’re doing now? It usually takes a couple of weeks for us to adapt. So things might feel like too much at first, even though they’re manageable long-term.
These are some example questions you can ask yourself to get a bit of an overview of your situation. From there you can then see what you can do. There’s no shame in doing less training if your circumstances just don’t allow for more - and without adequate recovery, doing more would really only be counterproductive.
Regarding the last point (being new to the routine), it’s still very much okay to tone things down temporarily and gradually increase them over time to where you originally wanted them to be! :)
With those rather general, but very important guidelines covered, let’s dive into some different types of cardio to help you get an idea of what might suit you!
A good diet is crucial to have alongside your training!
Different Methods of Cardio: An Overview
So many options - How do I know what’s best?
You needn’t be confused any longer! I will tell you exactly what the best choice of cardio is (for a given situation).
Because let’s face it - there is no single best choice when it comes to choosing which type of cardio you go with. People’s goals, preferences, and life circumstances simply vary too much for that to be possible! So let’s cover some of the most common types of cardio and see who they might be suited for.
For us to be able to classify them a bit more easily, I’ll put them in groups so that we can better see their similarities.
Intensive:
Running
Skipping Rope
HIIT
Rowing
Gentle:
Swimming
Walking
Elliptical
Cycling
Now do keep in mind that these classifications are only general guidelines. The level of intensity may not necessarily apply to how exhausting it is, but more so to how joint-friendly the activities are. Swimming or cycling for example can of course be performed at a fast pace, for a long duration, and be highly challenging, but the stress it will put on your joints will be minimal compared to activities like running or skipping rope.
Obviously, something being joint-friendly is very important if we’re already dealing with joint pain or injury, but it can also very much matter in other circumstances!
In essence, that’s a question of: What can you handle and recover from?
Even if right now you’re not experiencing any issues with your joints - overstressing them might lead you there. If for example, you tend to live a relatively sedentary lifestyle but then decide to start skipping rope for 10 minutes every other day, you may find yourself encountering some pain in your knees, Achilles tendons, or ankles. And that’s simply due to your body not having been used to that sort of stress and it was, as aforementioned, too much too quickly.
Now another example in which the intensity matters is if you’re doing training other than just cardio alongside it. It could very well be that you can handle skipping rope just fine and that you can handle resistance training just fine - but when you combine the two, it might end up being too much for you to recover from.
In this case, it would be better to either choose a different type of cardio (one that’s more gentle) or to adapt your training altogether to put less stress on the affected body part and gradually build up the capacity (by slowly increasing how much you do again) to be able to handle it.
If you do have to adapt your training by lowering the amount you do, then of course that will slow you down to some degree. Whereas with a different choice of cardio, you might just be able to go at the pace you want to and can reach your goals more efficiently!
If however, those limitations don’t apply to you and you need to save time, more intensive types of cardio could have the upper hand! After all, you are doing more work in less time that way - more calories burned and more of a challenge for your cardiovascular system. This does not mean that you need to choose a different exercise, though. The one you are doing might be scalable after all - such as swimming or cycling at a faster pace, with fewer or no breaks in between!
A rower/ergometer is a very effective piece of cardio equipment!
Now that we have a bit of an idea of what might suit us, let’s dive into 3 very common and practical types!
Swimming, Walking, and Running :)
Swimming
Are you recovering from an injury, have achy joints, or just love being in the water? Swimming might just be the perfect choice for you!
Due to being so extraordinarily low-impact and yet challenging, swimming is a highly valuable method for strengthening weak joints and surrounding tissues. This holds true for pretty much all the joints in our bodies, as swimming brings movement and strengthening to our whole body. On top of that, and because of it, swimming is a fantastic option for cardiovascular training. It is interesting both due to its technical aspect, especially with the consideration of multiple strokes, but also because it is sufficiently difficult to give us a good workout!
All swimming styles will be able to give you those benefits, so feel free to choose whichever one suits you best - the four primary styles to choose from are:
Breaststroke
Freestyle
Backstroke
Butterfly
Remember, you don’t always have to just stick to one stroke. Alternating can help keep things interesting and will stimulate your body in different ways.
In case you’re not a big fan of swimming, or you just don’t have access to it, let’s cover some more terrestrial options, too.
Walking
In terms of accessibility, walking might even beat swimming! Not because it’s more gentle, but simply because we don’t need to have a body of water to do it. This ease of access can make it a very attractive choice to help us be more active and improve our overall health!
There are multiple types of walking, such as:
Power Walking
Hiking
Nordic Walking
Stroll Walking
Marathon Walking
While they all differ in technique, environment, pace, and muscle engagement, the intensity will typically be in the low to moderate range. This is neither inherently good nor bad, it’s just something to be aware of. Walking is a gentle and low-impact activity.
Due to walking being accessible, gentle, and bringing along plenty of mental health benefits when done outdoors, it’s often the perfect choice of activity to add on top of our already existing training routine. It won’t interfere much with our recovery, it helps us relieve some stress, and it helps us improve our cardiovascular activity all at once.
While the low intensity is one of its strengths, it can also be the reason why it might not be the right choice. If we really want to focus on improving our cardio, particularly at higher levels of intensity, we may be better off with an activity such as swimming, or as we will talk about now, running!
Running
Now running is certainly not the most gentle option of cardio there is, but that can be perfectly fine as long as our bodies are prepared for it and our training accounts for the necessary recovery!
Running, just like walking, can be adjusted by changing your pace, the environment you run in, and the duration of your run. For running, however, both the intensity baseline and ceiling are considerably higher than with walking. And while we will talk more about the different methods to keep your training interesting and fun, just know that the primary distinctions are steady-state and interval training.
Steady-State: Keeping the same pace for a prolonged period of time - this tends to be on the lower intensity side of things, such as jogging.
Interval Training: Switching between different paces on a timed or otherwise determined basis - this often includes higher intensity activities such as sprinting.
Example Training Structure
First things first - any sort of plan I will provide for you here or mention should only be used as a guideline, as it does not take your individual needs and situation into account! Listen to your body and follow the guidance of the first chapter of this blog.
All of these ideas could be implemented alongside the cardio routine, use the guidance within this blog and the endurance training section within this blog (https://www.hybridcalisthenics.com/blog/customize-the-routine) to help you program it responsibly!
With that out of the way, let’s first go over some example progressions you could use, to get an idea of what a reasonable rate of progression could be!
It’s always a good idea to keep track of your training, whether it’s in a notebook or on your phone.
Swimming
In regards to swimming, we could measure by time swum as our metric of progression, but as it can be a bit difficult to keep track of the time while you’re swimming, we’ll be using distance instead! I’ve put together a little bit of an example plan but it comes with a lot of little disclaimers and extra bits of information to make sure everything is clear.
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Some light mobility work, particularly for hips and shoulders + a bit of gentle activity, such as light swimming or walking for about 5-10 minutes.
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Seeing as our main focus is to improve our cardio - only rest as much as you need to, aim to keep it below 3 minutes, keep it consistent throughout a session and time your rest so that you can in future try to shorten it to challenge yourself further.
Side note: You don’t have to increase how far you’re swimming every week, you can also just try to swim the same distance with less rest (as illustrated in week 4) - decide for yourself and feel free to switch it up at times.
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Regardless of which pace you choose, try to keep it consistent so that you can accurately compare your progression - you can of course have sessions/weeks where you do change up your pace, just make sure to keep track of it.
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While being able to swim in general is a prerequisite to being able to use it for cardio, your technique doesn’t have to be perfect for our purposes. Though I do recommend trying to improve your technique, as it will allow you to swim with less unnecessary stress on your structures and also likely make the experience more enjoyable for you!
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Being in the water will cool you down, but that’s not what I mean - I’m talking about cooling down after your training via some lower-intensity activity afterwards.
Is it necessary? In my opinion, not really, but it does seem to help some people with feeling less sore and better recovered the next sessions so I’d say just give it a try for yourself and choose based on that.
Example:
To keep things interesting, you can have some sessions where you try to swim as far as possible without a break, or you can spend some time learning different strokes!
Walking
In regards to walking, a plan could be very simple. Simply start with whatever you’re comfortable with at the moment, whether that’s a 5-minute or a 20-minute walk, and do that 3 times a week. Then just increase the time of your walks by about 5 minutes each week and voilà :)
The walks are to be performed without any breaks, and at a consistent pace - both within and throughout multiple sessions.
Example:
And this can simply keep going for as long as your body, your schedule, and your goals allow it!
In case you want to spice things up with a challenge, you could opt to get yourself to go on a walk every day, slowly increasing the duration over time as well - and while I would usually advise against doing the same activity every single day, walking tends to be gentle enough for it not to be a problem. But again, in case you were to run into any issues with that, adapt as needed!
Running
In regards to running, we can relatively easily work with time or distance, so either is a very valid option. I feel timing our runs is even more accessible, so let’s roll with that! Additionally, we can work with interval training or steady-state training. As the example plans so far have been focused on giving beginners an idea of how quickly to progress, we’ll do the same here and begin with interval training, as it helps us ease into the activity!
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Begin with a light jog rather than trying to sprint your way through. The aim is to make it all the way throughout the session with a consistent running speed while feeling adequately challenged.
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Simply walk for around 5-10 minutes to get you feeling ready, start with a gentle walk and let it become more brisk towards the end.
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Just like for swimming, this is very much optional, but simply walk for around 5-10 minutes at the end of your session if you feel it benefits you!
As we really are focusing on a beginner level, I chose a gentle progression that focuses on gradually increasing our capacity to run - in theory, you can follow this rate of progression all the way through until you reach an uninterrupted 20-minute run, which would take about 38 weeks.
That is, of course, a very long time and a very cautious approach, if you feel up for it you can also aim to increase your running intervals by more than 30 seconds per week. A minute or even two minutes (then it would only be about 10 weeks to reach 20 minutes of running with no breaks - alternatively you could gradually aim to increase the overall time per session too) could very much be reasonable, so just keep that in mind and see how it goes, progress at the rate that suits you! In case you’d like to check out a different and more fast-paced program of progression - check out the “Couch To 5k”, it’s online for free :)
Example:
(R = Running, W = Walking)
In case we’d like a more free-form but also more advanced approach, we could consider utilising Fartlek!
Fartlek training simply means to alter our pace, as we essentially did with our interval running plan above, but in a more free and self-determined manner. This could mean going from jogging for 3 minutes to sprinting for 30 seconds, or for 50 metres, or until that tree over there! Using landmarks of sorts is a fun way to challenge yourself while also giving you a sense of comparison for the next run you do on that route. Any pace is allowed, only stopping is what you want to try to avoid until you’re done with your session.
If we wanted to challenge ourselves further, we could also essentially combine hiking with running by going on a Trail Run! That means that instead of on a treadmill, sidewalk, track, or other levelled surfaces, we’re running on a trail of sorts. That can be through a forest, on a beach, up a mountain - you name it! Do keep in mind that this really can be significantly more challenging than your standard type of runs, on your cardiovascular system, joints, tendons, and muscles. So make sure you’re ready for it, and ease into it as you need to.
I hope that with all of that in mind, you feel competent and safe and that you can enthusiastically look forward to your own cardio journey!
