To optimize your time & effort spent in a gym & make your workouts more result oriented, following are the guidelines for cardiovascular workouts:
• Ideal Duration of a cardio workout is 45 minutes to an Hour. This is to avoid a loss of lean tissue (Muscle) in the body.
• The duration must be made challenging to the body. This means that the moment you find an hour easy to finish…instead of elongating the duration, you must either increase speed or inclination.
• Cardio training should always start with a 5 min warm-up period which entails doing the activity at a very low intensity to prepare the mind & body for the activity by increasing core temperature of the body thus making the muscles loose supple & pliable. This in turn will eliminate the risk of injury. After the warm up, gradually increase the intensity of the workout.
• All healthy people with no history of heart disease, hypertension, Irregular heartbeats or asthma must try & maintain a heart rate at 70 – 80% of MHR (maximum Heart Rate). MHR is calculated by subtracting your age from 220. (220 – Age).
• At the same time one must not push yourself to a point where you can not talk. This is called as a simple ‘Talk test’. If you reach a point during your workout where you have difficulty talking then you should either lower the speed and or inclination immediately but do not come to an abrupt halt.
• Cardio training must always end with a 3 – 5 minute cool down period during which you lower the intensity down to minimal levels before stopping. This is done to prevent pooling of the blood in the lower extremities that could happen with prolonged activity using the legs (this would avoid bouts of giddiness & also fainting spells). From the point of view of safety…the cool down is even more essential than the warm up & must never be skipped.)
• Cardiovascular training should ideally be done thrice a week with the other three days devoted to Strength training to achieve peak fitness. It is imperative to the health of the body to get 1 day during the week as complete rest.
• There is absolutely no reason to think that a person derives a better cardiovascular workout via the treadmills instead of the other cardio machines such as Elliptical cross trainers or bikes. All these machines are different pathways to the same goal. If you find the treadmills are busy…then please do not waste your time waiting for them & instead get on to the cross trainers or bikes whichever are free. You will derive the same cardiovascular training effect on any of the cardio machines provided.
