What is the Best Cardio Exercise?
What is the ‘Best’ Cardio Exercise?
I have been asked the question “what is the best cardio exercise?” hundreds of times over the past decade. Honestly. Not a week goes by when I don’t get asked it. In fact, today I was asked it twice. I wish I had a quid for every time I had to trot out my answer!
The word ‘cardio’ conjures up images of treadmills, stationary bikes and cross trainers. Rows upon rows of sterile, unimaginative kit being used by bored, sweaty people all in the name of fitness. Equipment providers realise how boring cardio is – that is why they install TV’s and iPod docking stations into their kit. They know that it takes a special kind of person to use one of these machines for any great length of time, so they have to throw a few fancy sweeteners onto the kit to get you to stick around!
Traditional gym-based cardio is my idea of exercise hell. It is the very things that puts millions of people off exercise, but it doesn’t need to be like that – there is another, far more effective way of performing cardio exercise.
Before we look at the better alternative, let’s look more closely at what cardio actually is.
Cardio is exercise designed to improve stamina. The word cardio is actually a short way of describing the cardiovascular system – the heart, lungs and blood vessels. Cardio training works by increasing the workload of this system, in turn increasing its efficiency, functionality and overall health. Generally speaking it is a low-intensity movement repeated for a long duration. Common forms of cardio are running, swimming, cycling, walking, cross training etc.
Traditionally, there has been a split in exercise kit – there is ‘cardio’ equipment and ‘resistance’ equipment. The two barely crossed over until a recent change in strength and conditioning thinking.
Led by the ‘conditioning’ revolution of around 2008 onwards, personal trainers and strength coaches started to explore other ways of improving clients and athletes cardiovascular fitness. For lots of reasons cardio machines were out of the question (boring, high injury risk, cortisol-raising, single use etc), so other avenues were used.
If you look at cardio exercise objectively, what is the goal? To improve the function and health of the cardiovascular system by forcing it to work harder. Does that have to be achieved using running (for example)?
No. In fact, for the reasons discussed above it probably isn’t a good idea at all. If the goal was to improve your running, then run. If however, your aim is to simply improve cardio function there are better, quicker and safer ways to do it.
The cardio function is improved by performing work that brings about an elevated cardiovascular response – this doesn’t mean you have to perform low-intensity, high duration work until you raise your heart rate. Any activity that causes this response over a long enough period could be considered cardio. The term isn’t exclusive to old-school cardio.
So if traditional cardio isn’t very good, what is? What is the ‘best’ cardio exercise?
A better alternative is a varied, high intensity workout using resistance equipment, body weight or varying sprint patterns such as SAQ drills, hill sprints or parachute sprints.
Why?
High intensity work requires less time, therefore the repetition of movement patterns reduces the likelihood of injury to the joints and soft tissues. Additionally, using a variety of movement patterns and loads means there are more broad athletic benefits and less localised emphasis to one particular body part being exercised.
If we took this workout for example…
- 60 second Kettlebell Swings
- 60 seconds Burpees
- 60 seconds Push Ups
- 60 seconds overhead Kettlebell Snatches (30 seconds per arm)
- 60 seconds jump squats
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