How Much Cardio?

How much cardio should I be doing in a week? This is a question I get all the time. The answer to this question depends, of course, on what you are trying to achieve. The American Heart Association and the American Medical Association both recommend Americans get at least 30 minutes of consistent activity five to six times per week. “Activity” in this case simply means walking - being up and mobile for a total of 30 minutes. This guideline, however, represents the absolute bare minimum of aerobic activity people need to attempt to stay healthy with a relatively sedentary lifestyle. If your job entails a lot of moving around like being in construction, repair, or other labor industries, you may already get enough activity to reach this bare minimum. If you spend most of your day sitting, however, whether it be at a desk, in a car, on an airplane, or on a couch, the AMA and AHA believe you need this half hour of activity just to keep your ticker ticking.

By releasing these minimum requirements, the AMA and AHA are attempting to combat the number one killer in the US - heart disease. They are not suggesting that a half hour of walking will do anything for your figure nor will it guarantee good health. Studies have found that some people move less than 1 mile per week under their own power! Instead they rely on cars, elevators, rolling chairs and other such devices to travel for them. Imagine moving only enough to cover 1 mile of ground per week! So when you read these half hour standards, understand that this sort of activity is not what the models in magazines or athletes are doing to carve out the beautiful bodies they possess. That being said, is it really your goal to look like a model or athlete? If it is, think about their professions - they are paid to exercise and paid handsomely. Therefore, these people often spend four to six or more hours per day doing rigorous physical activity. Can you really imagine trying to devote a full four extra hours a day to working out?

Try to make a reasonable goal for yourself rather than trying to be someone else. Rather than measuring your weight, measure how you feel or how your body works. Perhaps buy a pair of pants that is the next size below yours and work to fit into them. This is the sort of reasonable, achievable goal one can reach rather than looking like some 18 year old model in a magazine. So now how do we reach our new reasonable goal? Remember, a half hour of walking is the minimum for health so that is just a starting point. Which means from that starting point we must increase time and/or intensity of cardio exercise to achieve physical progress.

First of all, what constitutes cardio? Cardio-vascular activity is essentially any activity which increases heart rate and breathing. So going from a seated position to walking is technically cardio. Both heart rate and breathing do elevate in order to accomplish this change in energy expenditure, but we need to do more to force our bodies to fatigue more quickly thereby further improving our heart and lungs and enticing our bodies to burn fat as energy rather than the simple sugars and carbohydrates we ingest each day during meals. The first step to increase our cardio, then, is to increase a walking pace. Go from casual to brisk - this will further elevate heart rate and breathing. Still this is not enough for fat burning activity.

Now lets increase the walking pace again and add an extra fifteen minutes to each work out. So 45 minutes, 5 to 6 times per week at a pretty good walking pace. Now we are getting somewhere - we’re breathing heavily, our heart is pumping quickly and we’re breaking a pretty good sweat before the exercise is over. This is a good start. If you are tackling cardio exercise for the first time in a long time, this level of activity will help an overweight person loose a few pounds. (Not without some attention to diet, however).

What if you are already in decent shape - not lean and toned like a high class athlete, but not unhealthily overweight either. You want to make progress. You are going to have to work even harder than your previously sedentary counterpart. You could do a brisk 45 min walk with relative ease. You’d get the same sweat and your breathing would increase, but it wouldn’t seem that hard. So increase time and increase intensity. Its time for you to start running - and not just 45 minutes either, most likely you’ll need to be at it for 60 to 75 minutes. So already we’ve reached a threshold of an hour of cardio and we’re still wearing a 40in waist for men or a size 12 for women. Your goal is to lose more.

The next step is to further increase the time or intensity. If you have the time to spend, try running for 90 -120 minutes. This is starting to become a pretty big chunk of the day, however. We’re starting to approach that athlete/model activity level. So if you don’t have that kind of time to devote to the exercise, you are going to need to maximize your output at a lesser time of 50 - 75 minutes. Now you have to start trying techniques like sprint intervals where you run easy for 4 minutes then run as fast as you possibly can for 60 seconds and repeat that 4minute/1minute pattern for 50 - 75 minutes. In order to achieve the goal, you need to put in the work.

Fortunately there are alternatives to simply running and then running faster. Some high intensity cardio activities like martial arts, boxing, soccer, basketball and surfing can accomplish the same type of calorie burning cardio exercise that running fast would but they are usually a little more interesting. Low and behold all of these activities are sports! Now all of a sudden to look like athletes, we start playing and exercising like athletes.

Again, the answer to the “cardio question” depends on your goals. But understand if you have lofty goals, you are going to be required to work harder and longer than just about all of your counterparts. From the health perspective, 5 to 6 days with thirty minutes of cardio is barely sufficient. To make any progress, you need to do much more than that. 45 minutes of running is starting to get you physical and 90 to 120 minutes of constant intense activity is what it takes to build an athletic body.