This is a really interesting question and one that I am regularly asked by people looking to get in good shape. Unfortunately, like nearly every question about health and fitness the answer I usually give is, it depends. We are all individually unique with our needs and where we are at with our health and fitness journey so the timing of when to really up the intensity with your cardio training efforts will vary significantly from person to person. You have to appreciate that this type of training is very stressful to the body and problems can easily arise if you are not moving correctly to begin with, or if you have significant weaknesses present. I have found that cardio training tends to be highly over-rated in terms of the rewards it provides to the body and as a result it is regularly over-used and even abused often leading to chronic injuries that could have been avoided if a better plan was put in place. In this article, I will explain how I know when the time is right to shift my training focus to higher intensity type of cardiovascular training.

What is cardio training, anyway?

Cardio is simply any activity that requires an elevated heart rate and breathing rate to sustain. Our muscles require oxygen to function, so when we start using them hard enough and for long enough, we start breathing faster to get more oxygen into the system and our heart starts beating faster to pump that oxygen out to the muscles for them to use. Anything that engages this process is cardio.

You could be swimming, running, cycling, mowing the lawn, walking up the stairs, or playing with your dog in the park. These are all examples of cardio training and while they may improve fitness, they may not be the best choice for improving your health. More on this shortly.

The big question is how do you know when is it best to use this type of training method?

I find the best way to explain my answer to this question is by breaking this up into three parts that address the needs of different people.

1. Part one discusses the use of cardio with a weight loss or fat loss goal in mind.
2. Part two discusses how to use cardio with a beginner or a person dealing with injury rehabilitation.
3. Part three discusses how to use this if your goal is to get fit but maintain muscle and strength.

The most important part to understand with these three different types of scenarios the effect cardio exercise has on reaching their goal is much different. If you knew something had little influence on helping you reach your goal but could easily derail you would you still use it? This is exactly what happens to many people who are completely ignorant or oblivious to the potential problems repetitive cardio activities create. They just assume if they get fitter everything will fall into place which is why so many people are doomed with their training before they even begin.

This really comes down to understanding the difference between a health problem and fitness problem. A person with injury or someone who is fairly over-weight has a health problem that requires a health solution. Applying an aggressive cardiovascular exercise program to this person will only serve to make them worse for it ignores addressing the problem that they currently have. This is where they are using a fitness method to improve what is a health problem. This will never work.

Whereas, a person who has no injury and has been training for some time and wants to improve their fitness, applying a tough cardio program is a great idea to complement their program. If they are moving well and eating well their body will respond positively to this type of training and take their fitness levels to new heights. This is where they are applying a fitness method to improve a fitness deficit.

It all comes back to what does your body need right now? Devise a plan to improve your health first and then your fitness. This should always be completed in that order.

Before we dive right into these three parts the first thing I need to discuss is do I consider walking to be a cardio workout? I would not regard walking as a cardio type of training workout unless you are someone with a severe health problem, serious injury, a disability, or are severely over-weight and it is a real battle to get out and walk.

For everyone else walking is something we should be doing already and you should not find it hard to do. It is great to spend time improving your walking efficiency as it provides numerous benefits to the body which you can read about in the article – Why walking is so good for the core to alleviate back pain

The cardiovascular training I am referring to is the much more intense type of training such as running, cycling, rowing, elliptical trainer, boxing, etc. Something that gets your heart rate up leaving breathless and sweaty to improve your overall fitness levels. Like I said earlier this type of training is great to use if you are good enough and it is used wisely.

Let’s get started with the first part which is also the most common goal.

When You Should Use Cardio For Weight Loss?

Most people believe that the key to losing fat and getting in shape is to spend lots of time doing long slow cardio sessions. If you don’t get a sweat then it is not a good workout!

There are several problems with this type of thinking.

Firstly the chance of suffering an injury with this approach is very high for the body is not ready for this type of demand and you also need to be certain you move well enough to handle this type of stress.

Secondly, this type of exercise may burn calories at the time but it is not the calories that is important. It is more about balancing hormones, especially for the person who has been overweight all their life. The person who has had weight problems all their life there will be considerable amounts of inflammation in their body that need to be balanced and restored to their "normal" level. By ignoring these signals and just trying to sweat yourself into shape is doomed.

These, long, slow and boring cardio sessions will actually train your body to store fat. When you spend 30, 40 or even 50 minutes grinding out cardio sessions, you send your body a powerful signal to start storing fat instead of burning it.

Why? Your Hormones are out of balance.

According to a study in the European Journal of Applied Physiology, People who performed intense cardio suffered from decreased T3 hormone production. (Eur J Appl Physiol. 2003 Jan; 88(4-5):480-4.) T3 is the hormone produced by your thyroid to burn fat.

When you do cardio, your body reacts to the stress by suppressing this fat burning hormone. This means your body starts gaining fat straight away for the body needs the fat in order to function. And on top of all this this excessive cardio also puts massive amounts of stress on your body by increasing the stress hormone cortisol. Excess cortisol is associated with illnesses like adrenal fatigue, chronic fatigue, depression and even more deadly diseases like heart disease, cancer and visceral belly fat.

This does not mean all cardio exercise is bad. It definitely has some great advantages and benefits, but your main focus should be with strength training and adding muscle.

If your hormones are out of balance what do you think is one of the fastest ways to help restore these back to normal?

Adding muscle. Along with healthy eating and quality sleep your body will be able to reset its hormonal system back to normal allowing for great adaptation within the body that helps to speed up your metabolism.

How much you weigh largely depends on the choices you make about food and how much physical activity you get. As you age, you tend to eat fewer calories mainly due to the amount of muscle you have decreases as you get older. Your muscle mass affects how many calories you need because muscle tissue burns calories, even at rest. Having less muscle decreases your calorie needs by decreasing your basal metabolic rate. Therefor it makes perfect sense to find ways to add muscle mass for more muscle equals a faster metabolism.

Many people do not realize that your body constantly burns calories, even when you're doing nothing. This resting metabolic rate is much higher in people with more muscle. Muscle uses about 3 times as many calories as fat per day just to sustain itself. That small difference can add up over time. After a session of strength training, muscles are activated all over your body, raising your average daily metabolic rate.

Strength training is the best choice of exercise for people of all ages as it stimulates the growth hormones and increases muscle mass. The muscles of people who regularly lift weights absorb blood sugar in response to insulin much more effectively helping the pancreas to secrete lower amounts of this hormone. There is so much more to muscle than looking good in a mirror.

In summary once you have improved how you move, you have your nutrition sorted out, and you have started to work on the strength of the joints and the muscles that are required to complete your cardio exercise, you are now finally ready to include some running, cycling or swimming.

How long would this take you ask? And how can you maintain your fitness levels in the meantime?

The length of time this will take will vary significantly from one person to the next as there are many factors to consider. You will know when you are ready to take on the demands of cardio sessions when you feel a bit stronger and you can easily walk 60 minutes without feeling stuffed. Which answers the second question of how to maintain your fitness in the meantime.

Also do not disregard the cardiovascular effect from lifting weights.

Obviously this depends on how you lift, and what exercises you are using. The variation between a bicep curl and barbell squat is massive in terms of fitness demands. If you waste your time sitting on machines or doing endless isolated exercises like the bicep curl you will get little benefit to your cardiovascular system.

However, if you use “big” functional movements like squats, deadlifts, lunges, step-ups, push-ups and chin-ups your heart and lungs will get plenty of work. The leg exercises in particular place a massive stress onto the heart, as the body is forced to pump huge volumes of blood to the working muscles. The muscles in your legs are the largest muscles in your body, so when they are on the limit of their capability the heart is also working to its limit to keep oxygen in your blood so you can continue to move.

The harder your muscles work the more oxygen they require, which means we start breathing faster, our hearts start pumping faster, we get sweaty, and eventually have to stop to regain our breath. This is cardio.

When To Use Cardio For Injury Recovery and Rehabilitation

This is really a no-brainer and the answer should be very obvious to everyone in that there is no way a cardio activity will resolve an injury or chronic pain. Yet weirdly this is something I see quite a lot.

Let’s take a look at one of the most common examples which is using swimming to heal back pain.  This is an interesting example for many people often report that their back feels much better when they swim and it is often prescribed as a treatment plan by many health professionals as well so it appears that this makes good sense. Well it does and doesn’t. Let me explain.

The reason swimming feels good for most back pain sufferers is that it places them in EXTENSION. Most people suffer with flexion related back pain such as a bulging disc and swimming counters the extension.

The weightlessness of the water allows their weak back extensor muscles to be able to strengthen without the compression that would normally be felt with land based movements and exercise. The horizontal position also allows the spine to lengthen which also reduces the compression on the discs.

There is no doubting swimming will help the person manage their pain and the disc bulge from flexion dominant movement and postures. However the key word here is it will manage the pain, it will not resolve the underlying problem.

This is because swimming does not address the faulty movement that triggers the pain. It does not strengthen the weakened muscles that will be causing the problem to continue causing compensation and stiffness. There is no point spending time swimming only to continually move poorly.

You must learn how to adopt correct MOVEMENT with bending in particular. It is not the lack of swimming the reason you developed back pain, it is the poor movement usually with associated with bending that created the back pain. Success with any rehabilitation program requires removing the cause. As much as removing pain is important, there is no point to leaving the trigger waiting to be pulled again. Leading back pain researcher Stuart McGill refers to this as "picking the scab".

While it may help to manage things I would rather spend the time on doing the things that would get rid of it. Once you have completed that stage then you could add in the cardiovascular type of training to get fit.

Here is another example where we see cycling used to resolve a knee or hip problem. There is no doubting that cycling can be a great way to rebuild strength into your legs if you have knee pain. This is in fact a key part of the early stages of an ACL rehabilitation program after surgery. However it is not the real solution to your problem. And too much can even be the reason behind your knee pain!

The reason cycling feels good for most knee pain sufferers is that it builds strength into their legs without excessive compression or impact. A great way to build quad strength when there is pain present which is why it is often one of the first things you can do after knee surgery. It is one of the easiest ways to build some muscle into the quadriceps muscles in particular for cycling is a quad dominant activity. The VMO muscle which is very important for knee stability gets a lot of attention if you set up your bike correctly and adopt good pedalling action. A stronger VMO enables better alignment and support of the knee.

However, just like swimming it has several major problems associated with using this solely to "fix" your problem. While it may definitely help the person with knee pain, cycling will do little to address the reason for knee pain. Such as:

• Instability & poor alignment of joints in movements completed standing up.
• Demand stability at the foot or the hip 
• Change faulty movement patterns that load the knee such the squat and lunge.

But when we perform the simple action of walking these things are essential for healthy alignment of the knee. Cycling will not have any influence over this.

For more detail on this read our articles in the link below.

• Why The Knee Has Nothing To Do With Knee Pain!
• Bike set-up is critical for preventing hip and back injury

What about competing in ball sports and running?

Well these activities are very likely to cause serious problems due to the high impact they demand. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that competing with an injury or trying to run on an injury is only going to lead to more problems.

Spend the time resolving the weaknesses and instability of joints first before adding in your cardio training later on. In all of these examples fitness was not a priority for it will not address the muscle imbalances or faulty movements that create all the pain and trouble.

When To Use Cardio For Fitness But Without Losing Strength & Muscle

This last particular question I devoted an entire article a few years ago for it is quite difficult and complicated to explain so to avoid repeating myself I will just briefly list the main things you need to know. There are several factors that you have to get right in order to maximise the effectiveness of combining strength methods with endurance methods. I highly suggest to read the full article to gain a better understanding of what I am about to cover. You can access that here – How to improve endurance without losing strength and speed

Ask anyone who plays in team sports that require incredible fitness but at the same time incredible strength, speed and power will know exactly how hard it can be to do this. Physiologically the two processes of building strength, power, and speed versus fitness and overall endurance are completely opposed to each other and training both methods at the same time cancels out their effectiveness.

The reason it is difficult to build both at the same time has a lot to do with the enzymes that produced from each type of exercise. AMPK leads to improved endurance and mTORC1 increases strength. The release of AMPK blocks the activation of mTORC1. This means that there is a block to improving both our endurance and our muscle mass and strength at the same time. Ask any body-builder what ruins adding strength and muscle and they will tell you endurance cardio.

All good strength coaches and elite athletes are aware of this principle and know that to improve performance these two opposing methods are best trained on their own which is known as periodization.

Unfortunately, sporting codes that run for several months of the year do not allow for this perfect recipe to be adopted. Compromises must be made, and usually, it is strength, power, and speed sacrificed for fitness and endurance. But there is a way you can minimize the losses of strength and power by adopting smarter implementation of your fitness training?

The two most important things to know is when to do the cardio session and when you need to eat.

Complete your cardio training first thing in the morning and do your strength and power sessions later in the afternoon.

The reason behind using fitness sessions first is all to do with the enzymes of AMPK and TORC1.

Remember that AMPK blocks the activation of TORC1 and prevents you from adding muscle mass. If endurance exercise is performed first thing in the morning and glycogen is reloaded by eating good nutrition immediately after the training session, then the enzyme AMPK will be low later in the day when you complete your strength workout. This means it has less chance of blocking the activation of TORQ1 enzyme that is crucial for adding much-needed muscle for strength and power development.

The beauty of completing the strength workout last is the athlete will also be able to maintain the TORQ1 enzyme at high levels for at least 12 hours as they have time to eat, rest and sleep until the next morning. As opposed to completing the strength workout in the morning and only having 5-6 hours before the endurance workout. The extra time is massive for allowing the body to put the anabolic process of build and repair to work.

Training timing is one thing you need to do but it will not work if you do not get your nutrition timing right.

You must eat quality nutrition at specific times.

This part is critical to ensure the can recover between workouts to minimise the cannibalisation of the muscles.

1. Eat a meal or snack with a high carbohydrate content within an hour of completing your endurance training is important to refuel the lost glycogen stores and more importantly to turn off the AMPK enzyme.
2. Have a drink or eat a snack that contains 6-8g of protein before your strength training workout to help deliver amino acids to the working muscles. Since blood flow is increased to these muscles, they will see more amino acids and assist your body with the activation of mTORC1 enzyme resulting in maximal strength gains.
3. Eat a protein- and carbohydrate-rich meal within 30 minutes of completing training which increases insulin and amino acids in the muscle. This step is critical, for the first 30 minutes after the workout the body is in a frenzied search for amino acids found in quality protein to begin the repair and rebuild process. This is why you see body-builders walking around with protein shakes when they train.

Great articles to read on protein and nutrition are below

• Everything you need to know about protein
• Best foods to speed up recovery from training

Other factors to ensure success are

1. Keep your strength workouts short. Do this by using low reps and high sets to minimize muscle damage and DOMS. This also helps to develop fast twitch fibres needed to produce high power and speed movements needed in sports. Long slow lifting creates hypertrophy but not necessarily maximal strength needed for power and speed.
2. Using interval training more so than long slow endurance training
3. Keeping an eye on your fatigue and recovery to ensure you do not over-train.

Do You Need More Help?

While I have provided you with a ton of exercise ideas it can be hard trying to put all the pieces together. The good news is I have put a lot of this together for you already and you can download some great reports that show you everything you need to know. The Little Black Book of Training secrets provides you with 101 different workouts to make sure you keep your body guessing and continually improving. The nutrition report gives you everything you need to know about nutrition so you can match your food to your training effort.

You will also find special reports for back pain, knee pain, shoulder pain and hip pain in the online shop if you have trouble with these joints right now.

Click the image below of the report you need.

Summary

As you can see there is a lot more to cardio training than you think. We must move beyond the thinking that all you need to do is get there and get sweaty and the body will just figure it out. We must respect the damage that aggressive physical training can have on the body and ensure we have all the pieces in place before trying to get fit. If you do things correctly you will reap the rewards and have a fun time getting fit.

Okay so let’s take a deep look at each of these three different scenarios to see how you can put this into place.

For more ideas and information on specific topics I may not have covered in detail be sure to check out our INDEX PAGE on the website that has over 300 of our best articles. These are all sorted into categories for quick reference so you can find what you are after more easily. You can also subscribe to our FREE fortnightly newsletter by clicking here.

If you do need specific help with your exercise program please feel free to reach out to me for help and we can set you up with your individualised program.

About The Author

Nick Jack is owner of No Regrets Personal Training and has over 18 years’ experience as a qualified Personal Trainer, Level 2 Rehabilitation trainer, CHEK practitioner, and Level 2 Sports conditioning Coach. Based in Melbourne Australia he specialises in providing solutions to injury and health problems for people of all ages using the latest methods of assessing movement and corrective exercise.

References:

• Built From Broken - Scott Hogan CPT, COES
• Movement - By Gray Cook
• Corrective Exercise Solutions - by Evan Osar
• Back Pain Mechanic - by Dr Stuart McGill
• Diagnosis & Treatment Of Movement Impairment Syndromes - By Shirley Sahrman
• Low Back Disorders - by Dr Stuart McGill
• Ultimate Back Fitness & Performance - by Dr Stuart McGill
• Core Stability - by Peak Performance
• Athletic Body in Balance - by Gray Cook
• Anatomy Trains - by Thomas Meyers
• Motor Learning and Performance - By Richard A Schmidt and Timothy D Lee
• Assessment & Treatment Of Muscle Imbalance - By Vladimir Janda
• How To Eat, Move & Be Healthy by Paul Chek
• Scientific Core Conditioning Correspondence Course - By Paul Chek
• Advanced Program Design - By Paul Chek
• Twist Conditioning Sports Strength - By Peter Twist
• Twist Conditioning Sports Movement - By Peter Twist
• Functional Training For Sports - By Mike Boyle