How Much Cardio Should You Do?
If you’re looking to get in shape, make sure to include cardiovascular exercise in your weekly training routine!
Cardiovascular exercise (or “cardio”) is a style of training that focuses on improving your cardiovascular system (i.e., your heart & lungs). This is the system that delivers oxygen and nutrients to your cells while removing waste.
Doing cardio regularly can reduce your risk of illnesses like heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, Type II diabetes, and some types of cancer. A healthy cardiovascular system can also reduce your risk of getting sick from viral illnesses like the cold and flu by boosting your immune system. People who do cardiovascular exercise regularly also experience improvements in mental health because it can relieve tension and anxiety while also improving your quality of sleep and overall energy levels.[1]
Adding cardio to your regular training routine can also improve your gains! It increases your total calorie burn, which makes it a super effective training strategy for fat loss. If your goal is to build muscle, cardio can also help maximize your muscle gains by improving the efficiency of your cardiovascular system—this allows your body to get more oxygen and nutrients to your muscles while you are training and recovering. Some types of cardio (like high-intensity training) may also help to maximize your muscle gains by stimulating the release of anabolic hormones like testosterone, growth hormone, and IGF-1.[2, 3, 4]
For these reasons, health and fitness experts recommend doing cardiovascular training regularly as part of your weekly exercise routine. Any exercise that gets your heart rate up counts as cardio! You can go for a walk, jog, swim, take a group fitness class, or even play sports. While you’re exercising, you’ll want to get your heart rate into one of 3 target heart rate zones:
Low-Intensity Zone: between 55% and 63% of your max heart rate
Moderate-Intensity Zone: between 64% and 75% of your max heart rate
High-Intensity Zone: between 76% and 93% of your max heart rate[5, 6]
Use a heart rate monitor, a fitness tracking device, or track manually while you are exercising to ensure that your heart rate is in the right zone.
Click the button below to calculate your personal target heart rate zones, and make sure to write these down so you can reference them later!
Low-Intensity Cardio
Low-intensity is the target heart rate zone recommended for people who are sedentary or deconditioned—meaning they move very little in their everyday life. So if you’re just getting started on your fitness journey, this is a good place to start!
Low-intensity activities are things like going for a leisurely walk, swim, bike ride, doing yoga, doing dynamic stretches, or using a cardio machine at a nice, slow pace.
Start small by doing these activities 10-20 minutes at a time. Try to add on more over time either by moving a bit faster or by doing the activity for a longer period. Ideally, you’ll want to work up to the point where you’re getting up and moving around for a total of 30 minutes every day.
While you’re exercising, check your heart rate or do the talking test to make sure you’re working at the right intensity. At low intensity, you should be able to talk normally or sing while you’re moving.
Moderate-Intensity Cardio
Once you have a baseline level of activity of 30 minutes every day, then you can begin to challenge yourself with moderate-intensity cardio.
To stay healthy, the American heart association recommends doing at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity cardio total each week.[7] You can split this up into 3-5 days per week of 30- to 50-minute cardio training sessions.
Many people meet their 150 minutes of moderate-intensity cardio per week by doing what is called Steady-State Cardio. This style of exercise involves doing a repetitive motion for an extended period of time while keeping the same pace and level of resistance. Power walking, hiking, cycling, rowing, and swimming are all popular forms of steady-state cardio. You can use any cardio machine (such as a treadmill, stationary bike, cross trainer, rowing machine, or stair climber) to do this style of exercise.
Check your heart rate every few minutes while you exercise to make sure it’s staying between 64% and 75% of your max heart rate. For the talking test, at the moderate-intensity level, you should be able to talk in full sentences, but you should not be able to sing.
High-Intensity Cardio
If you’re relatively new in your fitness journey, I recommend sticking with the moderate intensity level for your cardio for the first 3 months of your training. As you get more in shape, however, you can save time at the gym by incorporating High-Intensity Cardio training into your weekly routine up to 2 times per week.
One popular style of high-intensity cardio is High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). For this style of training, you alternate between periods of vigorous activity with your heart rate in the high-intensity zone (between 76% and 93% of your max heart rate) and periods of rest or active recovery bringing your heart rate back down into the moderate zone (between 64% to 75% max heart rate).
You can turn any exercise into a HIIT workout! For example, you can do a HIIT speed-walk workout by alternating between 30-second periods of speed walking and 2-minute periods of slower walking for a total of 20 minutes. You can also do what’s called a tabata alternating between 20 seconds of any exercise (like jumping jacks or squats) and 10 seconds of rest for 8 rounds.
Circuits are another popular style of high-intensity training, although you can certainly do circuit training at moderate-intensity as well. In circuit training, you alternate between a group of exercises for a set number of rounds. For example, you can do a circuit like the one below 5 times for about 9 minutes:
25 seconds Jumping Jacks, 10 seconds of rest
25 seconds Bodyweight Squats, 10 seconds of rest
25 seconds Mountain Climbers, 10 seconds of rest
According to the American Heart Association, you can count each minute of high-intensity (or mixed high- and moderate-intensity exercise) as 2 minutes towards your weekly 150-minute cardio goal.[7]
Keep in mind that doing too much high-intensity exercise can keep your body in an inflammatory state and weaken your immune system—making you more susceptible to illness. Experts recommend no more than approximately 40-50 minutes of intensity above 85 percent per week, and not more than 30-40 minutes cumulative time per week with your heart rate above 90 percent in order to prevent symptoms of overreaching.[8]
Get Moving!
Feel free to mix up your activity and cardiovascular exercise. You don't have to stick with just one thing every day! I mix up my own cardio, alternating between walking, hiking, boxing, and using the elliptical on different days.
Some activities burn more calories than others, depending on how much effort you exert or how quickly you move. Click here to see a list of different activities and the number of calories they burn.
No matter what activities you do for your weekly cardio, try to find something that you enjoy—or at least something you don’t hate! The more you look forward to your cardio activity, the more likely you’ll stick to doing it consistently.
If you found this article helpful, make sure to “like” the post & leave a comment below!
[1] (2021) What Is Cardiovascular Endurance? https://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/what-is-cardiovascular-endurance
[2] Ross, A., & Leveritt, M. (2001). Long-term metabolic and skeletal muscle adaptations to short-sprint training: implications for sprint training and tapering. Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.), 31(15), 1063–1082. https://doi.org/10.2165/00007256-200131150-00003
[3] Estes, R. R., Malinowski, A., Piacentini, M., Thrush, D., Salley, E., Losey, C., & Hayes, E. (2017). The Effect of High Intensity Interval Run Training on Cross-sectional Area of the Vastus Lateralis in Untrained College Students. International journal of exercise science, 10(1), 137–145. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5214170/
[4] Avatar Nutrition. (2017). Cardio and Muscle Gain: Everything You Need to Know. https://medium.com/avatar-nutrition/cardio-and-muscle-gain-everything-you-need-to-know-a4ad0fc62469
[5] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2022). Target Heart Rate and Estimated Maximum Heart Rate. https://www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/basics/measuring/heartrate.htm
[6] ExRx.net (2022). Aerobic Exercise Guidelines for Specific Goals. https://exrx.net/Aerobic/AerobicGoals
[7] American Heart Association. (2018). American Heart Association Recommendations for Physical Activity in Adults and Kids. https://www.heart.org/en/healthy-living/fitness/fitness-basics/aha-recs-for-physical-activity-in-adults
[8] Hogan, E. (2022). Weekly Dose of HIIT. https://www.lesmills.com/us/fit-planet/fitness/how-much-hiit/
JAYD HARRISON (JAYDIGAINS)
Jayd Harrison (Jaydigains) is a personal trainer and affiliate streamer on Twitch. She has been an active trainer since 2014 and now specializes in comprehensive weight loss coaching. Check out some of Jayd’s coaching videos on Youtube, or join Jayd live on Twitch on Tuesdays & Thursdays 11:30am EST for a Fit Q&A session.
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