Matt Hank

The only time athletes (that require quick bursts of speed to be successful at their sport) should be doing low intensity jogging for an extended period of time is when there is systematic planning to put this type of workout in place.  A couple examples of reasons to plan medium/low intensity “cardio” would include days of recovery, regeneration, or flushing (elimination of lactic acid accumulation).  Essentially all three of these words are the same thing; however, different coaches have different terminology.

Too often, I see teams running laps around the track or the field for conditioning purposes.  Unless your goal is to be the best jogger in the sport of baseball, soccer, basketball, etc. you should stop jogging around the track and start doing sprint intervals.  Some people say that continuous paced jogging/running will increase your VO2 max (maximum ability to use oxygen – develop your aerobic system).  It has been shown that intensity is the far more important variable for increasing your VO2 max.  In addition, especially for sports such as basketball and soccer, you can only have a positive influence on your lactate threshold when you exercise at or above your current threshold.  The lactate threshold is the point at which your lactate production begins to significantly exceed lactate consumption. (Everyone knows the feeling of lactic acid production – when your muscles become tight/stiff and it begins to affect your performance)

The bottom line is that your body responds to the type of stimulus that you provide it.  Do you want to be slow or fast?  Think about this and design your program with that in mind.

Train Hard-Train Smart,
www.asap-pt.com

“I’m going to do cardio at the gym.” What the heck does that mean? For most individuals it means flopping yourself on the elliptical or treadmill for 30 minutes while you read your favorite gossip magazine or watch Oprah. It is not efficient and certainty not effective. You are not going to melt the fat off your body if do cardio at a low intensity for a long period of time – you’re just going to waste your time. Start incorporating interval training, which is efficient and effective. It is efficient because you can accomplish more work in less time. Try doing 10 hard sprints for 30 seconds with one minute of rest in between repetitions. You will only be working out for 15 minutes (5 minutes of high intensity exercise and 10 minutes of low intensity recovery. It is effective because you will burn more calories in those 15 minutes than in your 30 minutes of low/medium intensity cardio that you are currently doing. You can manipulate your interval training by changing a few different variables

• The length of the interval – Run for 1 minute instead of 30 seconds
• The intensity of the interval – Run at 85% of max heart rate instead of 75%
• The number of intervals – Last week you did 8 intervals, this week do 9
• The length of the rest period – Decrease the rest interval from 1 minute to 45 seconds

Interval training is even more important for competitive athletes that rely on quick sprints to be successful in their sport. If you are an athlete (except cross-country and long-distance track), you are wasting your time and hurting your performance if you are doing low/medium intensity cardio unless it is for a recovery workout. I will talk more about this during the next post.

Train Hard-Train Smart,

www.asap-pt.com