Episode 36: What to Do If You Hate Cardio
Hey there! 👋 I'm Jayd Harrison (Jaydigains), personal trainer and host of the Coaching Corner podcast. In this episode, I'm sharing tips for people who hate to do cardio.
It's important to maintaining health of your cardiovascular system (i.e., the heart and lungs) because it helps prevent common illnesses like heart disease and high blood pressure. Doing cardio as part of your workout routine is a great way to improve your cardiovascular system. For people who are trying to burn fat, it can be a great way to burn extra calories. In the episode I share a few options for people who find steady state cardio to be boring, including cozy cardio, high-intensity interval training (HIIT), and circuit training.
Also, check out the the Gains Club membership on my website for more details and tips for improving your health and fitness. I post new content every week, including meal plans, workout routines, fat loss tips, recipes, and more. Check out jaydigains.com to sign up.
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Jayd (00:00):
We do want to be challenging our cardiovascular system. That's our heart, our heart and our lungs. The system that gets oxygen to our muscles and delivers blood throughout our body. The cardiovascular system is one of the most important systems to train and to keep healthy because heart attacks, heart disease. These are some of the most common illnesses in the developed world. It's very common to have high blood pressure, high cholesterol. So maintaining your heart health is really important. So doing cardio is something that you really should be incorporating into your workout plan as a baseline regardless of whether you're trying to burn fat or not, just to keep you healthy.
(00:51)
So there's a topic that came up recently in one of my coaching calls with one of my clients. So I have this client who hates cardio, hates it, never wants to do cardio, and they are in a fat loss phase. And while I do like to say that when it comes to fat loss, the most important thing is to manage what you eat. Being in a calorie deficit is the number one way to get your body burning. Fat Exercise is supplementary to that. It can help you to burn more calories, but if you're not being mindful of how many calories are going in to your system, you're likely going to struggle to burn fat. So this client is in a fat loss phase. They are already tracking what they eat. They're already pretty much eating according to their daily calorie goal, and they're also doing muscle building resistance training three to four times a week, which is also very, very helpful because as you burn fat when you're in a calorie deficit, your body breaks down fat.(02:02)
It also breaks down muscle. So building muscle can be very helpful for boosting your metabolism, keeping your daily calorie burn high. Also, building muscle is a calorie expensive activity, so it gets your body burning more calories anyway. And then also the more muscle you have, the more calories your body burns overall. So you combat the loss of muscle mass. That naturally happens when you're in a fat loss phase, when you're eating a calorie deficit. But you also can increase the amount of calories your body is burning by doing muscle building. So he's already doing that. So the last piece is cardio, which already as a baseline we do want to be challenging our cardiovascular system. That's our heart, right? Our heart and our lungs are the system that gets oxygen to our muscles and delivers blood throughout our body. The cardiovascular system is one of the most important systems to train and to keep healthy because heart attacks, heart disease.(03:01)
These are some of the most common illnesses in the developed world. It's very common to have high blood pressure, high cholesterol. So maintaining your heart health is really important. So doing cardio is something that you really should be incorporating into your workout plan as a baseline, regardless of whether you're trying to burn fat or not, just to keep you healthy. There's lots of different ways that you can do cardio. The whole idea of cardio is that you're supposed to get your heart rate up and keep it up for an extended period of time. That's the only requirement for an exercise or an activity to count as cardio. Your heart rate has to get up and it has to stay up more or less for an extended period of time. Extended can be five minutes, 10 minutes as much as 30, 40, 50, or 60 minutes. I wouldn't really recommend doing more than 60 minutes of cardio because it's going to be hard for your body to recover from that.(04:01)
So that's kind of like the cap, but really anything that gets your heart rate up counts. Now, when I say cardio, what most people think about is steady state cardio, which is running. It's any exercise or activity that usually uses your big muscles, the muscles in your legs, in a repetitive motion that stays consistent for an extended period of time where you're doing the same motion again and again and again and again and again for an extended period of time. So running is an example of that. You're just, you're pushing your leg forward, you're moving your weight forward. Step, step, step, step, step. That's a repetitive motion. Using your big muscles and your legs, that would be steady state walking can also be considered steady state cardio. If you're walking fast enough or if you're on a treadmill and the treadmill is an incline, if you're moving in a way that gets your heart rate up where you feel it like you're having to breathe heavier or faster, if you can still talk, but maybe you can't sing, that's kind of what you're going for.(05:05)
Walking can do that as well. Swimming also counts as steady state cardio, but typically the cardio machines that you see at your local gym, those are all great machines for doing steady state cardio stationary bikes or Pelotons rowing machine. I just got a rowing machine and I love it. Ellipticals or cross trainers. What are other cardio machines? Let me think. Stair climbers, oh, that's a brutal one though. That's a real hard one. Assault bikes or echo bikes. Those are bikes that where you have to pump your arms while you're also pumping your legs and there's a fan. So all of these, if it's a repetitive motion that you're doing at the same rate for an extended period of time, that steady state, and that's what a lot of people do for cardio and that works for them. They just put on music in their headphones or maybe listen to a podcast or an audiobook and they just do 20 to 30 minutes walking on the treadmill or cycling or rowing, and that works for a lot of people.(06:08)
They enjoy that. The girlies of TikTok about a year ago had a trend in the fitness space. They had a trend that was called cozy cardio, which I'm a big fan of. Cozy cardio is when you set up whatever the space is that you're going to be doing, your walking or your rowing or your elliptical, whatever you're doing your cardio in, you make the space really cozy. So girlies, were making their turning all the lights off and only putting the LED colored lights on, putting on a movie or a TV show on the tv, having a yummy beverage, some iced coffee and some water, and just making it a very comfy atmosphere so that it's like, yeah, I'm exercising, but this is also my self-care time. I've seen girlies put a diffuser with some essential oils that it smells nice. So cozy cardio is a great thing.(07:01)
If you find steady state cardio to be boring or intimidating, make it cozy for yourself, especially if you're doing it at home. I have been working my butt off over the last year because I have been developing a membership called the Gaines Club, and it is on my website, and this is me officially launching it. So on my membership site, on my website, I have an area where I post every week a new meal plan that you can follow if you are not sure how to eat healthy and you need a place to start. I get a new meal plan with new recipes every week as well as every month I'm posting workouts of the month that give you something that you can follow for when you go to the gym or if you're working out at home. I also have weekly posted training tips, nutrition tips, recipes, fat loss tips.(07:49)
So that is all now live on my website and I'm really excited to share it with you guys. You can go to my website, jjaydigains.com or jaydharrisonfitness.com to see more about the membership. But there's other things that you can also do if you find study state cardio to be boring. What I recommended to this client was shake it up a little bit, especially since he has a good baseline level of cardio fitness. I encouraged him to start incorporating what are called high intensity interval training intervals, high intensity intervals where you take your steady state and you alternate between periods of time intervals where you're going really fast or you're using a lot of resistance, and then longer periods where you're going at a slow or moderate pace or using less resistance. So hi training is what it's usually called, HIIT, high intensity interval training where you can use your phone.(08:47)
There's lots of apps. You can find a timer on your phone, a circuit training timer. I use the Tabata Timer Pro. I've used it for years. I like it. I know how it works. You don't have to use the one that I use, but that's the one that I use. I also, for my clients that I program for, when I designed workouts for them, they actually can just press play and the training app that I use will guide them through their intervals. So you can use any of those high intensity interval training. A really good place to start is a good split would be, say you're going to go fast or heavy for 15 to 20 seconds. It's like a sprint, right? If you're on the rowing machine, you're going to do 15 to 20 seconds where you're going really, really, really, really fast. And then one to two minutes, you'll slow down and you'll do more moderate intensity.(09:39)
And then once that one to two minutes is up, then you'll do another 15 to 20 seconds going fast, and then you do moderate. So what this does is that it gets your heart rate from the moderate intensity zone into the high intensity zone, and according to the American Heart Association, each minute of this type of exercise where your heart is fluctuating between high intensity and moderate intensity, each minute counts as two minutes of steady state. So it counts twice. So say you do high intensity interval training on the bike for 10 minutes, that is the equivalent of 20 minutes going at the same moderate, steady state pace. So if you, it's torture to sit on the bike for 20 minutes, then just do high intensity interval training for 10 minutes, alternating between periods of going fast and then going at a moderate pace and then going fast and a moderate pace because you'll be able to step off of the bike sooner.(10:39)
Now, it's harder, right? It's high intensity, but that's a way to make it more interesting. Another way that you can make it more interesting for yourself is, especially if you're in a fat loss phase, you're not super, super hyperfocused on building muscle or super, super hyperfocused on developing strength. You can incorporate your steady state cardio into your strength training session or into your resistance training. So a workout pattern that I often use for my clients who are really trying to burn some fat is that during their rest periods, I'll have them walk on the treadmill or I'll have them on the rowing machine or on the elliptical. And so they have an active rest period when they return, they'll do that for two minutes, 1, 2, 3 minutes depending on what the workout plan is for that day. They do their strength exercise and then instead of sitting down and resting, they hop on the treadmill or they hop on whatever cardio machine and they go at a moderate intensity and they keep their heart rate up.(11:44)
And then once that one, two or three minutes is up of the cardio, then I might give them 15 to 30 seconds to bring their heart rate back down, and then they'll do their next set of their resistance training. So you could do a set of squats, hop on the treadmill and another set of squats, hop on the treadmill, and then move on to your chest pressing. If you're doing a total body day, chest presses, hop on the treadmill, chest presses, hop on the treadmill. So say you have in a workout, say you've got 15 sets, five different exercises for three sets each. If you're doing a minute to three minutes of steady state cardio during each of your rest periods easily, that's 15 to 30 to 45 minutes of steady state cardio that you've also done alongside your strength training. So that's a way that you can kind of work it in, turn it into circuits, turn it into strength and cardio circuits.(12:47)
Now, if you are really, really focused on building muscle, you don't want to do this, right? If your goal is to maximize your muscle gains, then you do want to stick to a traditional strength training pattern of doing a set of squats and then actually resting and letting your body fully rest. You mean pace around, of course, pace around stay standing, but you don't want to keep your heart rate up in the moderate intensity zone because that's going to limit your recovery, which is going to limit the amount that you can challenge your muscles in each given set, right? So if you're trying, it's tricky to say, I hate to say this because at the same time, this is also a good way for you to maximize lactic acid buildup in your muscles during your strength sets. And lactic acid does have a hypertrophic effect on the muscles.(13:46)
So I could also see an argument for doing this for muscle building, but you are burning a lot of calories doing it this way. And again, you're not going to be fully recovered going into each set. So you could test this out on yourself, actually measure your muscles, and then do this pattern of training for a couple of weeks and see what the effect is. See if your muscles grow and if it's any different from how it normally is when you actually take full rest periods without staying active, but turning your rest periods into an active recovery where you're on some kind of a cardio machine, that's another way that you can sneak in your cardio without having to spend 20 to 30 minutes just endlessly on this bike, and it's just super boring. So that's another way that you can get your cardio in that's less boring.(14:36)
And then finally, the last recommendation that I have for making your cardio more interesting is to do actual circuits. You don't even need a treadmill or a rowing machine or some kind of a cardio machine to do cardio. Remember, as long as you're getting your heart rate up into that moderate intensity zone where you can still talk, but you have to take breaths more often, but you can't sing right, as long as you can get your heart rate up into that, it does not matter what you're doing. It counts as cardio. So what I often have people do if they find themselves really bored with cardio is they'll do circuits where I'll give them anything between two and five exercises that they will just rotate between. So they'll do 25 seconds of squats, and then they rest for 10 seconds, and then they'll go do 25 seconds of pushups, and then they rest for 10 seconds, and then they go do 25 seconds of jumping jacks, and then they rest for 10 seconds.(15:38)
That's one example. And you repeat, rinse and repeat for a couple of rounds and then change the exercises. You can play with the interval time according to your personal fitness level. 25 seconds on 10 seconds of rest is pretty, that's pretty hard. But if you look at the amount of time that it takes to do a muscle building set of between 10 and 20 reps of an exercise, it does usually average out to about 25 seconds. So you'll probably get a decent muscle burn going on. So you could build some muscle doing it this way, but I've also had coaches put me through circuits where I do an exercise for an entire minute and then I rest for 30 seconds, and then entire minute you can play with it. You can also, instead of if you don't want to use a timer, then you can just set a number of reps and say, I'm going to do between 10 and 20 squats, and then I'm going to do between 10 and 20 pushups, and then I'm going to do between 10 and 20 jumping jacks, right?(16:37)
You can do it that way as well. The main thing is that you keep moving. The benefit of circuit training is that you will build a little bit of muscle at the same time that you're burning calories and you're getting your heart rate up. So it's kind of a win-win. Again, though, at a certain level, there is a limit to how much muscle you can build, and you're maybe not necessarily going, there's a limit to how much strength you're going to build from training this way. So just remember that. And when you're doing this, the goal is cardio, right? So if your goal is to burn some calories to improve your heart health, then this is a great way to train. But if what's most important to you is growing big muscles, then again, you probably want to stick to the traditional way of training where you kind of rest alternate between periods where you push your muscles to fatigue, where you feel the burn, and then you rest for 30 seconds to two minutes, and then you do another set.(17:31)
But for cardio, for getting your heart rate up, these are all great ways that you can do it without it being so boring. So those are my tips for cardio, and I want to know what you guys are doing for cardio. What are you doing for your heart health? And do any of the tips that I've just given jump out at you as an option that you're interested in taking? Because I am going to be posting this to my podcast, but I'm also going to be posting this to my Gains Club membership page on my website. And I'll actually have this written out in detail with some exercise tutorials, a guide on how to program a timer for hi training or for circuit training. And then I'll also have some downloadable workout guides to kind of as a starter for you. So you can find all of that on my website.(18:25)
Just go to jaydigains.com or jaydharrisonfitness.com. If you are one of my personal training clients, you already have these types of cardio in your workout program. So all of my clients are automatically subscribed to certain workout libraries. And if you go to your program page in the ABC Trainerize App, if you click on the little kettlebell button that's at the bottom of the app, that's your program page, and scroll all the way down, you'll be able to see the different workout libraries that you can do as an add-on to your normal program. So if you want to try out one of these different styles of cardio for yourself, that's in your workout plan already. So go ahead and head to your ABC Trainerize App app if you're one of my clients, and scroll down and see that. So that's the podcast for today. Thanks for listening. Thanks for joining. You guys are so good.
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