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How to Develop an Effective Cardiovascular Exercise Program

By John Preston

Everybody knows that cardiovascular exercise is good for them. But few people know how to design a fun and effective program that will help them improve their health and achieve their goals. In this article I will discuss how to progress with the cardiovascular or aerobic portion of your exercise plan. It is important that you start out slow and “progress” over time to avoid over training or injury. Specifically I will discuss mode or type of exercise, the duration of each workout, how often you should be working out or the frequency and intensity of your cardiovascular exercise. By making regular changes to these variables you should be able to continue to see progress all the way to your goals.

The first variable of cardiovascular exercise is the mode, or what exercise you will be doing. Pick an exercise that you enjoy. There are many choices, the most common being walking. But feel free to swim, cycle, jog, hike, take an aerobics class, jump on a treadmill or any other cardiovascular equipment at the gym. By choosing an exercise that you like you increase the likelihood continuing to work out over the long term. Another perk of having so many options is that if you do become bored, all you have to do is switch to another mode of cardiovascular exercise. An important thing to know about mode is that they are all the same. In other words the results you get from cardiovascular exercise are not determined by what exercise you perform but the other variables. If you exercise for 30 minutes with a heart rate of 130 you will expend the same number of calories regardless of what movement you are doing.

The next variable of cardiovascular exercise is duration or the length of each individual workout. This will be the first thing that you will want to manipulate. If you are just starting an exercise program, the goal will be to perform 20 continuous minutes of exercise. It is possible you will be able to do this during your first workout. A 20 minutes walk may be very easy if you don’t have any joint issues or chronic illness. If you haven’t been on an exercise bike in years your thighs will probably be on fire after a couple minutes even on the easiest setting. But stop after 20 minutes. See how you feel the next day. Are your muscles sore, do some of your joints ache? Your body will tell you if you can do more the next workout. If you feel fine the next day, increase the duration each cardiovascular exercise session until you can do 30 to 60 minutes. How long your workouts become will depend on how much time you schedule for workouts and how quickly you want to lose the fat. The longer you go the more total calories you will expend.

Now that you’ve decided which exercise you enjoy and you’re slowly increasing the duration of your workouts the next cardiovascular exercise variable is frequency or the number of workouts each week. Start with three days a week. When you are beginning an exercise program allow for a day of rest between each workout. Once you have increased the duration of your workout to the maximum your schedule will allow it is time to increase the number of times you workout each week. Add one day to your program. Give yourself three to four weeks to adapt to four workouts then add another workout session to the week. It is safe to do aerobic exercise up to six days each week.

If you have progressed to the point where you are working out six days a week doing the same exercise for 60 minutes it’s time to make some more changes. First of all you’re probably bored out of your wits. Here are a couple ideas to help you from becoming bored. Change your mode. By doing a variety of exercises you will use different muscles. Although you will be taxing your cardiovascular system six days a week you will reduce your risk of injury from doing the same repetitive motion. Try taking a couple aerobic classes, swimming twice, and riding a bike (yes outdoors) twice. Another option would be to alternate duration. On days when you lift weights only do 20 minutes of aerobic exercise, on the other days do 45 to 60 minutes.

And now I want to focus on the final variable of cardiovascular exercise, INTENSITY! Intensity is determined most easily by monitoring your heart rate. What should your heart rate be when you are exercising? I’ll give you a formula to estimate your proper training heart rate. Subtract your age from 220, this is your theoretical maximum heart rate. Now you don’t want to workout at your maximum heart rate. Instead you want to workout at a specific percentage of your maximum. So here’s the formula; 220 subtract your age, subtract your resting heart rate (RHR), times the percent you want to workout at, plus your resting heart rate (RHR) equals training heart rate (THR). So what should your training intensity be?

There is some controversy over this issue. You’ve probably heard that low intensity exercise with a long duration will burn more body fat. It is true that fat is the body’s fuel of choice at low intensity exercise, while the body utilizes more carbohydrate with high intensity exercise. Let’s look at the body’s sources of energy along a continuum. At rest the body will use almost entirely fat, during a sprint almost entirely carbohydrate. It never uses one or the other exclusively. Simply stated the lower the intensity, the higher the percentage of fat and conversely the higher the intensity the lower percentage of fat. On the surface it would seem that working out at a low intensity would speed fat loss, but it doesn’t. If you follow the logic that low intensity cardiovascular exercise is the answer then you should be able to sleep the fat off, because at sleep almost all the body is using is fat.

If you’ve read my other articles on FEN you might remember that I stated that weight loss is as simple as calories in versus calories out; calories in being food and calories out being movement/exercise. At higher intensity exercise you will expend far more total calories. This will lead to a larger caloric deficit thus more fat loss. So what is considered high intensity? I will give you some ranges, 50-65%(of maximum heart rate) low intensity, 65-75% medium intensity, 75-85+% high intensity.

I’m not recommending that you jump right in to high intensity cardiovascular exercise. You will need to build up to it over time. Start by finding out what your percentage is currently then increase it by 5%. When you are comfortable at that intensity increase it again. Intensity will have an effect on your duration. You may be able to exercise at a low percentage say 50% during a hike for several hours. If you are running at 85% you may reach exhaustion after 20 or 30 minutes. Keep that in mind when you are designing your program. Also you may want to alternate high intensity short duration workouts with lower intensity long duration. Most people can’t go hard every day.

Assume your 26 with a resting heart rate of 64 and you want to workout at 75% of your maximum heart rate. It will look like this 220 - 26(age) - 64(RHR) X .75 + 64(RHR) = 161.5(THR). It will be next to impossible to maintain exactly 161. So set a range, say 158 to 163 beats per minute. Take your heart rate for 15 seconds while exercising, stop if you have to, then multiply by four(double twice). Also check your resting heart rate periodically, one of the adaptations to regular cardiovascular exercise is a lower resting heart rate.

In addition to increased weight loss you will also enjoy greater health benefits with higher intensity cardiovascular exercise. These include; increased aerobic capacity, decreased risk of heart disease, cancer, and a lower body fat percentage reduces the risk of diabetes. By following this progressive approach to your cardiovascular workouts you can safely lose body fat and increase your aerobic capacity while keeping your risk of over training and injuries low. You will continue to see results, avoid plateaus, and ultimately reach your goals.

About the Author:

John Preston is a Certified Pesonal Trainer with 14 years of experience. He holds certifications from both the American Council on Exercise (ACE), and The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), as well as a B.A. in Kinesiology for Long Beach State. His website is http://www.johnprestonfitness.com