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Boredom is a frquently encountered problem with aerobic training.
Unlike weight training, where progress in the form of increased
muscle size and strength is apparent, gains from aerobics
are more subtle: increased endurance and, if combined with
diet, lower bodyfat. While the aerobic benefits are certainly
desirable, the fact is, aerobic exercise is tedious.
One solution is to vary your aerobic activity. This offers
dual advantages in that it not only provides a psychological
boost, but you work different muscles while still maintaining
an aerobic training zone. Such variety decreases your likelihood
of overtraining, a common effect of daily exercise.
There’s a problem with varying aerobic exercise, however,
and it involves effectiveness. For example, any aerobic exercise
done standing will burn more calories and, ultimately, bodyfat
than a seated version. Thus, treadmill walking is a better
fat burner than stationary cycling. In addition, the more
muscles involved in the exercise, the greater the caloric
cost. That’s why cross-country skiing machines using
both upper- and lower-body muscles are top-rated by many experts.
Another consideration is structural or prior injury limitations.
In my case an old knee injury precludes using a stair-climbing
machine, as it causes my chronic knee overuse condition to
flare up. Likewise, people who have lower-back problems should
be wary of seated rowing machines, which place an inordinate
amount of stress on susceptible lower backs.
In the late 1970s I became a convert to the jogging craze
that swept the nation. I did everything right: I ran on a
soft surface, invested in an expensive pair of jogging shoes
and so on. At first I was gratified by my results. Without
altering my diet in any way, I lost fat. My enthusiasm rose
with each compliment about my nouveau svelte look.
I gradually increased my daily runs from three to five to
eight to 10 miles. I recall running 10 miles in a New York
park with my brother on the day he got married (he needed
to relax). What I didn’t realize was that heavy-volume
jogging isn’t the correct prescription for a 230-pound
bodybuilder. I eventually paid the price with a case of chondromalacia
of the knee, a common overuse injury among runners.
Orthopedic physicians report that as many as 75 percent of
their athletic injury patients are recreational runners. The
problems usually occur in the knees and hips.
One physician once confided that anyone who weighs more than
125 and runs every day is guaranteed to eventually get injured.”
This points to jogging as being an inefficient aerobic exercise
for most body-builders. You have to consider the stress placed
on joints in the usual bodybuilding exercises for legs, such
as squats. While normal rest between workouts provides sufficient
recuperation time, adding something like a daily run or jog
to the routine can push you over the injury edge.
With the plethora of machines now available for aerobic training,
you can only wonder why anyone would want to jog, other than
getting out and enjoying the scenery. If you do decide to
jog, don’t neutralize most of the health benefits by
running near heavy traffic. Studies show that jogging under
such circumstances is comparable to smoking a few packs of
cigarettes in terms of carbon monoxide ingestion.
If your time for aerobic training is limited; that is, 30
minutes or less, consider using exercises that work larger
muscle areas. This provides more oxygen intake, or VO2 max,
which is a primary benefit of aerobic training. Or you can
increase the difficulty of the exercises you commonly do.
For example, increasing the grade on treadmill walking is
not only more effective for toning thighs, hips and buttocks,
but it also elicits a greater oxygen intake than seated stationary
cycling.
A study reported in a 2003 issue of the journal Medicine and
Exercise in Sports and Science compared the oxygen intake
of a stair machine called a VersaClimber, which has an upper-body
component, with those of a treadmill and rowing machine. The
results showed that the VersaClimber produced a greater oxygen
intake than either the treadmill or rower. This should come
as no surprise because the Versaclimber involves standing
while using lower- and upper-body muscles simultaneously.
Another study examined whether in-line skating was a suitable
alternative to other aerobic exercises and found that if you
skate at a speed fast enough to maintain your heart rate at
75 percent of maximum, you’ll get aerobic benefits comparable
to treadmill walking at a similar intensity.
As for the optimum intensity for aerobics, that depends on
your goals. Performing aerobics at a lower intensity more
frequently and for a longer time causes a greater fat loss.
In practice that means at least four times a week for 30 to
60 minutes at a heart rate of 60 to 70 percent of maximum.
You can figure your maximal heart rate by subtracting your
age from 220. Then figure 60 to 70 percent of that as your
target zone during aerobics.
For endurance and cardiovascular conditioning the most effective
method is to gradually increase to a higher intensity, approaching
your anaerobic threshold. That’s the point of intensity
where you slip from aerobic into anaerobic metabolism. The
signal is a burning in the working muscles coupled with increased
respiration.
The burn is caused by lactic acid because you’ve exceeded
your body’s ability to deliver oxygen to the muscles.
At that point you’re no longer burning fat but instead
are relying on blood glucose and glycogen stored in the muscles.
Approaching the anaerobic threshold constitutes an overload
form of aerobics similar to adding weight on resistance exercises.
It conditions your body to use oxygen more efficiently while
decreasing the buildup in muscle of lactic acid, a substance
that signals muscular fatigue. The net effect is increased
endurance and a stronger heart reserve. You even get a spillover
effect in your weight training because of increased muscle
buffering factors that more efficiently deal with lactic acid
produced during high-intensity weight training. In short,
you can train faster, taking shorter rests between sets.
There’s one caveat, however: Combining aerobics with
weight training will interfere with your strength gains. The
reasons are too complex to get into here, but you can minimize
the effect by not overdoing aerobics (keep it to no more than
one hour a day) or by taking a rest day between your aerobics
sessions and your weight training.
Related Articles
Aerobic Exercises
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