Death To Cardio

By Al Kavadlo | Published: July 16, 2012

So long, Stairmaster!

After racing the NYC Triathlon last week, I’ve decided that I’m never doing cardio again.

In fact, I actually stopped doing cardio workouts a long time ago.

You may have seen me running, swimming and biking in this recent video clip, but that wasn’t cardio training – it was skill practice.

In the context of my overall training schedule, I don’t even see the race itself as cardio. It was a one-off endurance challenge, and really more mental than physical.

Trading Cardio
The difference between seeing your workout as “cardio” vs. seeing it as “practice” may be a subtle distinction, but I believe it is an extremely important one. People who “do cardio” tend to have one objective in mind: weight loss. As I’ve discussed before, exercise alone is not a very effective way to lose weight (you have to eat less crap in order to do that!), but the mindset you bring to any activity can greatly impact your experience.

Swimming for sure!

Rather than forcing yourself to simulate movement on a piece of machinery for a set amount of time, a better way to approach your training might be to work on skill improvement. While there are certainly benefits to “gym cardio” (improved circulation, increased cardiac output, higher oxygen uptake/utilization efficiency), part of what makes exercise worth doing is the activity itself. I personally never met anyone who genuinely enjoys an hour alone on the stationary bike, but it’s fun and exciting to do something like a triathlon – and all of us have that potential.

Skill Power
You can become a perfectly good runner without ever worrying about how many calories you burned, what your target heart rate is or even knowing exactly how much distance you’ve covered. And you’ll probably enjoy the process a whole lot more without wasting mental space on trivialities. Treat your workout as skill practice and the shift in perspective turns any health benefits into an added bonus. You might even forget you’re working out and start having some old-fashioned fun!

Don’t get me wrong – exercise isn’t always gummy bears and double rainbows, but it shouldn’t be torturous either. There are plenty of times when I feel challenged during a workout, but pushing through those uncomfortable moments leads to a better understanding of my body – as well as personal growth.

I firmly believe that any “fit” person ought to be able to run a few miles or swim to shore should they find themselves in such a predicament (in addition to being able to do some pull-ups, of course!). Besides, if you focus on improving at physical skills, you’re inevitably going to get in better shape along the way. Having a good body is nice, but being physically capable is empowering.

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    • John Kennedy

      Huh? I feel like I’m missing something here. Aren’t you a proponent of functional fitness? What’s more functional than the ability to run, bike, or swim long distances? Are you saying death to cardio, or death to cardio machines?

      I am attempting to work my way up to an Ironman and there is no way I could do that simply through weight training or calisthenics. To run fast and far, you must run fast and far. The same goes for biking and swimming.

      I feel like I hear this death to cardio refrain from far too many fitness experts. I get it. The average person trying to get fit is likely heading to the gym for a few hours a week, they feel obligated to jump on the treadmill/stairmaster/stationary bike, which is monotonous and unappealing. So everyone loves hearing that they don’t need to do those things to be fit, and in a way that’s true.

      But if you do care about being a well rounded and functionally fit person, at least by my definition (being able to swim efficiently, bike well enough to commute comfortably, and run long distances, pick your poison), you need to, ideally, get outside and do those things.

      Perhaps what I am referring to you would consider skill exercise or practice (that is certainly how I think of my swim practices as improving efficiency is the key to improving pace, in many ways even running has begun to fall into this category as I’ve been transitioning to a forefoot strike), but I think simply telling people that they don’t need to do cardio is misleading if they do seek to improve their overall fitness.

      Maybe I’m miles away from your point, but I feel strongly that if people want to be functionally fit, they need to have good cardiovascular fitness, the best way to obtain that? Cardiovascular exercise.

      So yes, ditch the stair master, and perhaps the stationary bike (at least in favor of a real bike, and possibly a training stand for when the weather truly prevents you from using it outdoors), and yes treadmills are boring (running is running though, I may hate the treadmill, but I definitely still get a workout when the weather is demotivating), but don’t disregard these aspects of basic functional fitness just I would not disregard weight training (bodyweight or otherwise) in my pursuit of being a well rounded athlete.

    • RobbyTaylor

      Honestly, if you’re doing intense, highly compound exercises, like lever holds, it gets your heart racing and your breathing gets heavy. You will get cardiovascular work from that. As for endurance races, Al sees it as more of an endurance challenge rather than a cardio session, and he has a good point. At any given point in the race, you don’t have to be exerting a lot of energy, so it’s mostly about endurance. Of course, to do this you have to train for it with lots of running or what have you. The thing you have to realize is that overall fitness is a series of skills. Strength, flexibility, endurance, balance…of all of the fitness skills, strength is the only one that can serve as a proper foundation for every other skill; every other skill is easier if you already have strength. Regarding advanced calisthenics in particular, as you progress you are almost necessarily building solid levels of flexibility and, particularly, balance (thanks to hand balancing). While endurance isn’t directly affected, if you have strong legs, a strong core, good mobility (a function of strength and flexibility), good kinesthetic awareness and proprioception (also highly developed with advanced calisthenics), building up the endurance will be a lot easier. Really, if you can do sets of 10+ pull ups and a few pistol squats, you should be able to run a 5k or even a 10k with little if any specific prep. Personally, the last time I tried training for distance I was able running 25~30 miles a week within 2 weeks of starting, and I hadn’t worked out at all in the previous 10 months. I was also able to do several pull ups, the significance being that I was fairly adept at moving my own weight when I had not trained in almost a year.

    • http://www.AlKavadlo.com/ Al Kavadlo

      I think we pretty much agree, John. I’ve just chosen to frame my ideas a bit differently. So yeah, you sorta missed the point of this piece, but at the same time you seem to have gotten the point. Life is full of contradictions!

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