Is All Cardio The Same?

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Opening And Sponsor Thanks

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Talking to there is a method to the magnets. My name is Rob Maxwell, and I'm an exercise physiologist in personal technicalist. I'm the other Maxwell's Fitness program, and I've been in business since 1994. The purpose of this podcast is to get to the real deal of what really worked and most importantly why things worked. Thanks the name, there is a method to the magnet. Before I get started today, let me thank Jonathan and Lynn Gildan of the Gilding Group ELT Pros. They are committed to providing the highest level of customer service in home sales. Why don't you give them a shout and figure out what your home is worth? 386-451-2412. All right, what is happening, everybody? Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Hey, maybe even good night. Coach Rob here. Whatever time you are listening to this podcast, it really doesn't matter. I know for me it is late morning. I just got done doing my yearly physical. Those things are always fun. Um, so anyway, that is finished. This morning I did some zone to cardio for my exercise. That's what's in the plan for me today. And then I did some mobility work and flexibility work. But um cardio is what I did, and cardio

The Big Question About Cardio

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is what I'm going to talk about today. Is all cardiorespiratory exercise created equal? That is the question. And what's really kind of funny is if you are old enough, yeah, I don't think you have to be that old, to remember the Dear Abby column. But uh maybe you are, and maybe you're not, or maybe you remember it. But what's kind of funny is the question comes from Dear Abby, a prior student of mine in Ellen's from Kaiser who got into massage therapy, and now she's really in the fitness and asks great questions, and uh just really a sponge for more knowledge, which uh I always appreciate. So Dear Abby is getting the answer today instead of giving the advice. But Abby asked that. She wanted to know. She kind of has a suspicion as to what the answer is, but uh she wanted to know. You know, you hear everything out there with everything, right? But with cardio too, like is running better, is walking better? As she pointed out, the latest trending craze on social media has been incline walking on a treadmill. Is that better? You know, a lot of people have pedometers now, you know, in their phones or watches. So can you just get your steps and call it a day, or does it have to be continuous? Like, what's the deal, Coach Rob? She wanted to know or wanted it clarified. So that's what we're going to talk about today. Let me start by saying a little saying that I've said to people for years. I said, you know, the heart really isn't prejudice, it doesn't care what you use to elevate it. And that is still widely true, but you still have to really tune in and listen to why, because there are some caveats to that. That there are modes that are better for some things, there are intensity zones that are better better for others, there are different ways to spread it out. So there is really pros and cons to all of this. But hopefully, when you get

What Counts As True Cardio

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done listening to this podcast, you will know what is the best type and intensity of cardio for you based on your goals. Okay. So the mode of cardiorespiratory exercise, that is the mode. It's what you use to get the heart rate up. Walking, jogging, running. And really jogging is just more relaxed, controlled, slower running. That's all it is. Uh, walking or running or jogging on an incline is another mode. So treadmill. Um, indoor bike, outdoor bike, those are modes. Swimming is a mode. Um, stair climbers are a mode. Um, let's see, as my phone goes off and it shouldn't. Shame on me. I muted it really quickly there. So that's what the mode is. Now, another very important distinction I need to give is that cardiorespiratory is defined as continuous elevated heart rate. So when people sometimes ask, is pickleball, that's the latest crazen trend, of course, or tennis or other moving sports, is that cardio? I mean, based on the definition of what cardiorespiratory exercise is, the answer is no. It's not continuous and sustained. It is good exercise. You will get your heart rate up, you will burn some calories, you probably won't get enough of the stimulus continuously to get a cardiac adaptation, which is what we want. So it is important to understand that the mode does matter. So, in other words, stop and start sports, you can't really consider cardiorespiratory exercise, although they are activity and exercise for sure.

Walking Pros Cons And Best Uses

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All right. So let's look at some of these. First, let's look at walking. It's considered a low impact activity. And by the way, low impact activity means that one foot is on the ground at all times. So that's what is considered low impact. Walking is very easy to recover from. It can be done almost anywhere. It can be form it can be performed frequently or more than, I mean, much more than other modes of exercise because of its easy to do um recovery ability. So walking is also great for that. You can do multiple walks in a day and not overly strain yourself. It doesn't seem to have much interference with strength training. So what that means is because it's using low intensity, it's using very low levels of glycogen. So it's not going to eat up a lot of the glycogen that's stored in the muscles. It's not going to most likely, unless you're extremely deconditioned, use the fast twitch muscle fibers that you typically use for strength training. So it's not really going to interfere with you if your main goal is like a bodybuilder, which is hypertrophy and you want to gain muscle mass. It's not going to interfere, which is why you see a lot of bodybuilders choosing walking as their mode of cardiorespiratory exercise. It's also an excellent tool to use on your what we call zone one, zone two days, which is low-intensity cardiac exercise, to help you recover. So it can also be used as a form of what we call active recovery. So if you would define your goals as general health, you want to move daily, recovery is important for you, meaning that you really want to make sure you're recovering from other things, more vigorous exercise, or you have a high stress environment and you need something of a lower stress, then it's good for you. It is great for beginners because you can do it anywhere at any intensity. And it is great for people that can't really tolerate heavier levels of cardiorespiratory exercise. The main downside to walking is that for most people, it's not going to elevate the heart rate that high. So if you're really trying to improve your VO2 max, if you're really trying to improve aerobic function, aerobic performance, it's probably not your guy. All right. It's great, but it's not going to have a huge impact on your overall cardiorespiratory fitness. It will on your health, but not your cardiorespiratory fitness. Now, used with other things, I mean, that's how I pretty much use walking. It is an absolute great tool. Okay. Um, look, it's not very exciting, but you can do it anywhere, anytime. And by the way, I love to walk. Like, I love to walk. It's probably one of my go-tos of what I like to do. I put on a podcast, I listen to music. I absolutely love to walk. Now let's look at the second mode that was brought up by um dear Abby. Okay.

Incline Walking Done The Smart Way

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Incline treadmill walking. So not running, but incline treadmill walking. All right. What's great about it? It will increase your intensity, so therefore, your heart rate without having to run. So you can still do it as a low impact activity. So it's very friendly on the joints. It absolutely will elevate your heart rate far higher than regular walking will. I mean, you can elevate your heart rate really high with an inclined walk on a treadmill or hills, bridges, whatever you want to do. It's definitely going to increase your muscular demand. So you're now going to use more of the muscles you might have been afraid to use if you were trying to preserve them for strength training. You're definitely going to use more quads, more glutes, more hamstrings when you walk. So you're you are going to improve your muscular endurance on that. It's great to get more muscle activity for your glutes, your calves, your quads, your hamstrings. So if you're really trying to increase the hardness there, so you're going to get a little hypertrophy of the slow twitch muscle fibers, it's a great activity for that. It's really easy to control. That's one of the things I like about it, is you can go up and down very easily. So let's say you like doing interval training. In other words, you don't just like doing steady rate or sustained aerobic activity. You'd rather kind of go up and down because it works better for you mentally or whatever. And that could be lower intensity or high intensity. Like not all interval training has to be high intensity. It could just be up, down, up, down. It really controls it well. Like you'll find that you're able to elevate it. And then as soon as you bring it back to flat or 0%, the heart rate almost drops immediately. So it's a really great way to control it, probably a lot easier than when you are running. It is certainly lower impact than running. So easier on the joints. If your goal is to improve your aerobic fitness, not just your health, but its fitness. If your goal is to burn more fat because you're trying to burn more calories, it's absolutely going to do that. It's a great tool for people that like to be ambulatory, so they like to do their cardio on their feet, but they don't want to run, then it's great for you. And you are going to get a fantastic cardiorespiratory stimulus. All right. So one thing we need to keep in mind with it is that more incline isn't always better. Sometimes when you crank up the incline really high, what happens is it really becomes non-sustainable. Number one, that's kind of obvious. But also, you start using a lot more of the musculature that you're trying to save at the expense of just getting your heart rate up into moderate zone. So more isn't necessarily better. You don't really want to turn it, turn it into or tune. You don't want to turn it into another strength training workout. So if you elevate it too high, you will. All right. Now let's look at the next mode.

Stair Machines For Harder Conditioning

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The old stair climber machine. You know, I used to love this stair climber. I love the old-fashioned stairmaster stepper. I think those were the best. Personally, that's my bias. I still like the newer ones, but not like the older ones. But anyway, step mills are like a real stair, like a real stairwell. You probably have seen them. Then there's steppers, which is the one I'm referring to, that are more like um a lot more quick in the steps. Those are great. So, whatever. If you like a stairmaster, that is fine. What are the benefits to a stairmaster? They definitely will give you a higher cardiovascular demand than walking. They probably are a lot more closer to incline walking. You're definitely going to get a little bit more quad involvement on a stairmaster than you would on a treadmill because it's going to be a little more hamstrings on the treadmill. So that is good if that's what you really want. Like let's say you run a lot and you're looking for a cross-training mode that's going to develop the opposing muscle groups. The stairmaster is great for that, or step mill. It's absolutely a great conditioning stimulus for your cardiovascular health and fitness. It's also high intensity or can be high intensity without having to run. Now it's actually considered non-impact because your feet, the step mill is a little bit different than that. It's that would be considered more low impact because one foot is stepping up and down. But traditional steppers is more what we would call non-impact because technically your foot never leaves the pedal. So it's definitely easier on the joints for most people than running. And by the way, I'm not bashing running. I, you know, I love to run, but for some people, the high impact of the foot hitting the ground at a higher, faster, more frequent rate can cause some problems for them. All right. So the Stairmaster is great for that. It's probably, again, not the greatest mode. If you're trying to preserve muscle, then you would really, really focus on lower intensity cardio, such as walking. All right.

Running Gains Tradeoffs And Recovery

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Now let's talk about running. You know, running is one of the best ways anybody can improve their cardiovascular system. And I'm saying that because you can do it anywhere, you know, I mean, almost anywhere. I mean, shoot, New York City, people are running in the streets all the time. Central Park. I mean, you can do it on country roads, you can do it in cities. I mean, you can do it on a treadmill. So it's great for that. It really is. So you're gonna get the cardiovascular demand that you're going to get with the high incline walking or moderate incline walking on a treadmill or the stairmaster. So you're gonna get all that, but also you can just do it with your own body anywhere. So running is great. It's great for health, it is great for your cardiovascular fitness, trying to improve your VO2 max. I'm not saying it's the best because there is no best. Matter of fact, the the mode that we're not going to do around here, at least not in Daytona Beach, Florida, the mode that has shown the most VO2 max improvement has been cross-country skiing. So there you go. So running isn't the best for that, although cross-country skiing is not that accessible for most people. But you are going to be able to stimulate your heart rate enough because you do have to have some higher levels of intensity to improve your cardiovascular fitness. I need to continue to repeat that. You can improve your health with walking, but it is going to be hard to improve your cardiorespiratory fitness without higher intensity forms of cardio, which running absolutely does that. Now, you have one of the highest energy expenditures per minute than any other forms of exercise. So, for example, like most people might burn three to four calories on a flat walk, and they're going to burn between 10 or per minute, per minute, three to four calories per minute on a flat walk versus say 10 to 15 on a run per minute. So the caloric expenditure on running is far greater. That's not great for everybody, which I'll get to in a second. It is great for improving your running specific fitness and economy. Economy of motion is basically means that you are improving the exact muscle pathways and the exact way that you want to use them. So if you want to do your local turkey trot, your 5Ks on Thanksgiving Day or any other days, I mean, the best way to improve that is running. So you really can't bike a lot and walk a lot and then expect to do well in a running 5K. There is a specificity function in that. So it's absolutely great for that. But, and it's a weight-bearing activity. I wanted to slide into the downsides really quick, didn't I? Can't forget this one. It's a weight-bearing activity, just like walking. So it does help improve osteomalacia, osteopenia, osteoporosis. It absolutely improves that. So it is great for that. And because it's high impact, you're actually going to get greater benefits to your bone density if you ran versus walking. Now, the downsides to it, because it's higher impact for some people that have pre-existing conditions already, because I hate when people say running causes injuries, it really doesn't. Studies have shown that that is not true. Biomechanical flaws can cause injuries. So if you have something biomechanically speaking that's wrong with you, prior injuries, maybe you over pronate too much, whatever, that could be exasperated by running, but running doesn't cause injuries. If you have arthritis already from your days of playing football or your days of just whatever, then yeah, you might feel some pain in your knees and hips when you run, which means it's exasperating it, kind of making it worse at the time, but it's not causing it. All right. I need to caution people with that. It got to give you the fair news on both. For some people, it is going to hurt when they run because they do have pre-existing conditions. So don't run. But for other people, it doesn't. It's really so much of this comes down to your personal choice. All right. So because it's higher impact, there might be people that that causes problems for. It's going to make you have to recover more. So that's another downside. It's going to be tough. Like, let's say, if you are pretty serious about your strength training and you work your legs pretty hard on a Monday, if you go for a run on a Tuesday, that's kind of two days in a row back to back, that your legs aren't getting a lot of recovery. So that's not necessarily great. So for somebody that cares about both things, which we call concurrent training, then they're going to want to limit that. They might be better off to do their strength training, which requires a lot of energy and recovery, and then walk the next day versus run. But again, you if you are going to run, you do have to consider these things. Um, you know, it can create more muscle damage. So the bodybuilders may not do it a whole lot because again, it's not just about getting your heart rate up. You are using more of the muscle tissue as you are running, which could cause maybe you not getting the gains in the gym that you want to get. All right. So there's definitely issues with running and hypertrophy training. There's definitely issues where they don't always go great together. But you also don't see a lot of people that bodybuild that want to do running for a serious hobby either. So, in a way, you probably aren't going to see that anyway. But if you were, and hey, I've been there, it definitely can impact both of them. All right. So you'd kind of have to pick what which one is more important to you, and you know that you're going to have a downside with that. All right. So if your goal is the best cardiovascular fitness you can have, if your goal is running performance, if your goal is time efficient cardio, because you can do a lot more on a 20-minute run than you could in a 40-minute walk for sure, and you love the run, then you know what, dear Abby? Running is for you. Now let's look at cycling, indoor or outdoor.

Cycling For Joints Fitness And Warmups

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It's a non-impact activity. So your feet never leave the ground or hit the ground. So it's a non-impact activity. It seems to be fairly tolerated, if not very well tolerated by most people on their joints. So it's very joint-friendly. You get to get off your feet. So if you're doing a lot of like walking, running, jogging, and you're looking for something to cross-train on an outdoor or an indoor bike, it would work out great. So it's very good on the muscles that way, good on the joints. You are gonna have to work at a higher rate of perceived exertion on a bike than you would with running. For example, if you've ever run or really pushed it a little bit, like even jogged, you realize your heart rate up comes up pretty fast if you're like most normal people. On a bike, you are going to have to work harder to elevate your heart rate, especially indoors. So, for some people, even though the heart rate's not getting as elevated, the rate of perceived exertion or how it feels feels harder. So that's not necessarily a great thing, but it is good for health. It is good for fitness, but you are going to have to push it more to get your heart rate up. You're gonna have to work to get your heart rate up higher on a bike. But it is a great tool, good on the joints, will improve your health, will improve your fitness, great for cross training, great to get off your feet to do something different. And it definitely is great to build up your quadriceps. So cycling is another one, another great choice. Now, if you're gonna go like lower intensity cycling, that's similar to like walking in a way. So you're gonna find that the bodybuilders who are afraid to lose too much muscle tissue or they don't want to get in the way of their hypertrophy training are going to also cycle more because they can cycle at a lower intensity and not really put a lot of damage to the muscles. That changes drastically if they start cycling with more intensity. So it is great for that. And also, cycling is one of the best warm-up choices you can use. Like I had two bikes at my gym to warm up for strength training. So it really is a great warm-up tool as well. One more.

Steps Tracking And The 10,000 Myth

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How about just getting in your steps? Okay, so steps have become a big thing over the last 15 years or so. And it's funny, you know, there's that 10,000 step rule, right? Here's what's really, really interesting about that. That number is completely made up. Like nobody really even knows where that came from. Sure, if you're like most people, that's going to be five miles in the day. All right. But as far as it being like this benchmark of like that's where you need to be to be considered a highly active person, nobody knows where that came from. And when I say nobody knows, I mean people in my industry. So, you know, we look at all the exercise studies. So 10,000 is kind of a made-up number. It doesn't make it bad though. I mean, it's a it's a great benchmark for most people. It's just funny, you know, that there's really nothing to it. But more steps the better as far as your activity level goes. There's no question about that. Like I can tell a lot about a person when I look at those numbers, you know, if they're not moving a lot with steps, they're probably not moving a lot at all. Now, here's the thing: it's a great tool when somebody is trying to lose weight. I'm talking about measuring steps and not necessarily doing any kind of formal cardiorespiratory exercise because the more activity you're burning, I mean, the more calories you're burning. I mean, weight loss all comes down to energy in versus energy out. So it's a great tool for that. It's also a barometer to make you feel better. Like, you know, give yourself a pat on the back. That's important. It's like, man, I did my 10,000 steps or I did my 5,000 steps or I did my 8,000 steps. So it's good. You get yourself a win for the day. It doesn't tell you anything about your heart rate or your cardiorespiratory performance. It doesn't tell you a thing about that. It doesn't tell you your speed of walking. So it's not really telling you if you are getting more fit or not. So, you know, that's the negative to it. And in short, you're not really getting any form of cardiorespiratory or cardiovascular adaptation. So you're not improving your heart and lung health outside of the fact that you are burning calories, you're moving, so you're gonna burn more energy, which hopefully, if you need to, will help you burn body fat. Okay, so it's great for that. So if you're interested in only that, then it's for you. If you're interested in improving your cardiorespiratory fitness, aerobic fitness, cardiovascular fitness, you're gonna have to do another mode of cardiorespiratory exercise at least three days a week for 20 minutes. All right.

Matching Cardio To Goals And Muscle

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So, how do they all compare? How do you choose? It really depends on your goal. If you are mostly interested in improving your cardiorespiratory fitness, like you're not doing cardio because you're trying to get skinny. And by the way, that's one of the reasons why we should not do it. Like we need to think about that in the form of how we eat in regards to how we eat. I wrote a book called You Can't Outrun a Poor Diet. So cardio really should be first and foremost for your fitness and your health, not necessarily for losing body fat. Again, steps is a great way to measure that. If you're trying to get more activity, of course it is. But formal cardiorespiratory exercise, its main purpose should be to improve one of the other health outcomes. So if you're trying to improve your aerobic fitness, like you're like, if it's Abby, I I'm not completely sure. I I think I have an idea where she wants to go with it. But like if it's on, I want to be as aerobically fit as possible, then you do have to choose higher intensity aerobic modes, such as running, jogging, or walking on an incline, or higher intensity cycling or steppers. Like that's gonna have to be your mode if your number one goal is to improve your cardiorespiratory endurance. So, in the level of how they rate that way, it would go running number one, stair climbing or real stairs number two, as far as like the effectiveness. I already said cross-country skiing. But if you're out there in Wyoming, my sister lives out there, knock yourself out. She probably does have those snowshoes for that. I'm not sure, maybe it's a different thing, shows how much I know about it. But after stairs, it would be incline walking and then cycling and then level ground walking. It would go in that order. If you're trying to build muscle and get some sort of cardiorespiratory stimulus, you've got two options. You can limit the amount of higher intensity cardio you do to like maybe once per week, and then do some more moderate the other time. So maybe it's a run, and then the other days would be an incline walk jog in more like zone two. But if you are trying to preserve muscle, you are going to want to keep the intensity controlled for sure. What that looks like for you, everybody's different. But if your goal is to build muscle, maintain muscle, and improve your cardiorespiratory endurance, you're going to want to maybe you still have to do some higher intensity cardio, but you can keep it to less frequency. You can't just do one a week and do nothing, but you could do one day of that and then two to three days of lower to moderate cardiorespiratory exercise. If you're in the camp of you want to keep your health pretty good, and you're not really interested at all in maintaining your or not maintaining, you're not interested in improving your cardiorespiratory fitness, and you're a bodybuilder and you want to grow as much muscle andor strength as possible, then your aerobic choice is going to be walking or light cycling, low intensity. So that would be your goal. So really it comes down to how much do you want to preserve muscle and how much do you want to improve your cardiorespiratory endurance? I mean, there's one thing we all have to keep in mind. You can't have everything. Like, you can't. Like a bodybuilder can't say, I want to be as big and strong as humanly possible, and I want to be the best runner. I mean, there is going to be some give and take in everything that you do, but that is going to be the big determination as far as like what works for you. I mean, another consideration is that you just say, well, you know what? I like high-intensity strength training, I like high-intensity cardio, I like how it makes me feel, but I understand that I'm not going to get the best adaptations. It's not like you're not going to get good adaptations. I mean, my goodness, when you're at this point in your fitness career and you're worried about this, you are 90% ahead of the rest of the country and the rest of the world. So it's not like you're not fit at this point. It just means that you may not be maximizing both of them. All right.

Wrap Up Questions CTA And Sponsors

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So to wrap this up, and I really hope it answered the question. To wrap this up, a lot of this is going to come down to your fitness levels, your goals. How well do you deal with tolerate exercise and higher intensity exercise? Like, how well do you recover? And these things could be, you know, they can be transient. I mean, you might go through phases where you're recovering really well, and then you might be like recovering from COVID and you're not. So you have to kind of, you know, go, oh, I remember that high intensity exercise and won't recover as well. So I better do some lower intensity. I mean, yeah, so this could be transient too. So you have to always remember that too, that all of these tools are going to have different places in your life at different times. A lot of it also comes down to time. I mean, if you really like to do long, slow workouts, I mean, that's fine. If you like to go out and do long walks again, I think that's great for your health. Just keep in mind that you're probably not going to get the cardior respiratory adaptations. If you're really short of time, then higher intensity cardio is going to work for you. All right. So I think this was a great question, and I love these questions, and I want you to keep them coming. And if I did not cover something or if I confused anybody, look, I answer everybody's questions on social media or if you know me in a text or text the show. You can go to my website. You literally can text me if you live somewhere else and I will answer your question. All right. Hope everybody has a great day. Until next time, I want you to stay out there and stay max fit and stay max well. Thank you for listening to today's show. I ask you to please hit automatic download and also follow the show. It will cost you nothing. Now I would like to thank our second great sponsor, Procharge Liquid Protein. What I love most about it is it is extremely portable. I have a tendency to make a mess when I'm making my protein smoothies after I exercise because I spill the powders and all that other stuff. But instead, with Procharge, all I have to do is open up the cap and pour it in my mouth. There are two servings per container, and each serving has 20 grams of protein. My personal favorite flavor is lemon lime. Check them out on my website at fittothemax.net.