If you have read any reasonable amount of my blogs and articles then you know how important your cardiovascular conditioning is to the success of your training routine. Whether or not you are an athlete or a serious fitness junkie you have got to have superior cardiovascular conditioning in order to withstand the duration of your workouts. Take a minute to read this article to learn how the benefits of high intensity bouts of cardio conditioning can help you do this.
Benefits of High Intensity Cardio Exercise
Just like there are many forms of strength training there are also many forms of cardiovascular fitness too. When looking at your workouts you can structure your cardiovascular training to be either lower in intensity to endure longer periods of time, or you can structure it to be high in intensity to get your heart rate up faster to achieve more work within a shorter period of time. I like to promote the latter for a number of different reasons.
To begin, high intensity cardio can be structured in a number of different ways. For example, you can incorporate interval, circuit, or even cross training into your workout plan to achieve a significant conditioning effect. By having a conditioning plan that significantly elevates your perceived level of exertion you will stand to elevate your personal level of fitness in a much more profound way. To me it just makes sense, because you are getting your heart rate up fast and often this will allow you to adapt your nervous system much faster. By doing this you can condition yourself to be ready for most any physical event whether you are training for a marathon or looking to step onto the gridiron for a football game.
There is no doubt you can cater your training to be more specific for your trained event, but there is always room and a significant level of benefit for most any athlete or fitness junkie to incorporate intermittent bouts of high intensity cardio drills into their training regimen. Even if you look at your strength program you can add a significant conditioning element to it by simply manipulating the rest you take between sets and the intensity (weight lifted) during your workout. Don’t always assume that you can only obtain your cardio solely from just “running” or “cycling.” Like the old saying goes “there is more than one way to skin a cat.”
Examining Other Reasons For High Intensity Cardio
When examining the pros and cons of anything you have to look at it from the perspective of who might be asking. In other words, if you are asking about the benefits of high intensity cardio this has to be assumed that the individual seeking to perform high intensity cardiovascular exercise is first capable of doing so. Remember that everything is about progression so this wouldn’t make sense to a totally deconditioned individual to perform right away if he or she is not even used to moving in the first place, hence the value of a lower intensity version of cardio. Now once the deconditioned person has progressed to a respectable level of conditioning then the high intensity bouts of exercise should be implemented often.
Another huge benefit of high intensity cardiovascular exercise has to involve the time factor. If you are one of these people that is always concerned about not having enough time to train or to get a good workout in then blistering through a few highly exerting cardio strength training drills are the ingredient you definitely need. Even for athletes there is only a certain amount of time to “get the work in” to ensure they are not falling short of their strength and conditioning goals. This is where high intensity bouts of cardio conditioning can be so valuable. By doing this you can get a lot of work done in a shorter period of time.
The truth is that I can go on and on about the benefits of generating a high level of cardio conditioning by focusing in on increasing your work capacity during a bout of exercise. This is simply an effective way of getting the work done so that you can see results sooner. Take the time to read up on more of my material. Remember that most anyone can train hard, but only the best train smart my friend.
