Bri­an Chin Le­ung

The word "car­dio" is com­mon­ly used in T&T to de­scribe var­i­ous forms of aer­o­bic ex­er­cise. In T&T when you use the word "aer­o­bics" most peo­ple im­me­di­ate­ly con­jure up im­ages of women jump­ing up and down to the lat­est dance mu­sic; but this is aer­o­bic dance, which is on­ly one form of aer­o­bics; it would be in­cor­rect to say that this (aer­o­bic dance), to­tal­ly con­sti­tutes aer­o­bic train­ing.

Aer­o­bic ex­er­cise can be de­fined as any phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty that el­e­vates your heart rate in­to your tar­get, train­ing heart rate zone for a pe­ri­od of 40 min­utes or more. This would mean that dis­ci­plines such as run­ning, bik­ing, swim­ming etc, are all aer­o­bic in na­ture. The rea­son why the words car­dio and aer­o­bics are al­ways loose­ly in­ter­changed is be­cause of the pos­i­tive im­pact that aer­o­bic ex­er­cise has on your car­dio­vas­cu­lar sys­tem.

The pros of aer­o­bic train­ing

Aer­o­bic ex­er­cise (run­ning, bik­ing etc) has proven to be the best form of ex­er­cise for strength­en­ing the car­dio­vas­cu­lar sys­tem, which means it keeps your heart, lungs, ar­ter­ies etc, healthy and clean. To reap max­i­mum ben­e­fits from your aer­o­bic work­out, you should cal­cu­late your in­di­vid­ual, train­ing heart rate zone us­ing the Kar­vo­nen for­mu­la; this will en­sure that you are train­ing at the cor­rect in­ten­si­ty. Apart from the pos­i­tive ef­fects on your heart, the ben­e­fits of aer­o­bic ex­er­cise in­clude:

• Helps to low­er cho­les­terol and triglyc­eride lev­els.

• Nor­malis­es blood pres­sure lev­els.

• Low­ers body fat per­cent­age.

• In­creas­es lev­el of car­dio­vas­cu­lar en­durance,

• Gives you a feel­ing of well-be­ing.

The cons of aer­o­bic train­ing

There are some peo­ple in T&T, who are quite con­tent to on­ly per­form aer­o­bic train­ing. This is a big mis­take! These peo­ple are usu­all­y­seen run­ning them­selves in­to the ground every­day, or try­ing to par­tic­i­pate in as much aer­o­bic dance class­es as pos­si­ble.Too much aer­o­bic train­ing can cre­ate many neg­a­tives which in­clude:

• An as­sort­ment of in­juries such as heel spurs, se­vere hip, knee and low­er back in­juries.

• Putting your body in a cata­bol­ic mode, where­by you be­gin to lose mus­cle mass. Loss of too much mus­cle can have a neg­a­tive im­pact on your me­tab­o­lism.

• Los­ing your body shape; you will be­gin to look straight with­out any sexy curves; this isn't hard to com­pre­hend when you con­sid­er that mus­cle is what gives your body curves. On a per­son­al note, I very much pre­fer the pow­er­ful look of a sprint­er, who en­gages main­ly in anaer­o­bic train­ing, as op­posed the ema­ci­at­ed, hun­gry look of a marathon run­ner, who has to have a very strong aer­o­bic base; but then that's just my opin­ion.

Mix­ing up­y­our work­out

I am not sug­gest­ing that you should com­plete­ly shut down your aer­o­bic pro­gramme; I just think that in ad­di­tion to your aer­o­bic train­ing, it is vi­tal­ly im­por­tant for you to do some weight train­ing in or­der to main­tain bal­ance in your physique. The ben­e­fits of weight train­ing in­clude:

• Bet­ter body shape.

• In­creased me­tab­o­lism in the post work­out phase.

• Stronger joints, lig­a­ments and ten­dons.

• In­creased body strength.

I think most peo­ple can reap many ben­e­fits from a 3 aer­o­bic/3 weight train­ing ses­sions per week.

With this sort of fit­ness pro­gramme, you will main­tain a healthy car­dio­vas­cu­lar sys­tem and a great body shape.

Keep Train­ing.

Bri­an Chin Le­ungis a cer­ti­fied per­son­al train­er