Does cardio have a dark side? But everyone says that cardio is the best exercise method for weight loss. So what is the problem?

I recently received a letter from a woman who discovered that good cardio has a slightly darker and more hidden side.

***

Craig,

I saw the orthopedist today, and he noticed several things that would be causing my hip pain (which has improved with light workouts). It seems that one of my legs is longer than the other. And when I increased my cardio times (to try to get more results), the difference started to ‘come out’ and resulted in my hip pain …

***

She learned her lesson the hard way.

When someone with a minor injury or biomechanical defect, doing the same activity over and over again (like the thousands of reps you will do in a cardio workout) will hurt you all the time.

Why are runners always in the physio’s office? Or why do people always hurt themselves when they go from being sedentary to trying cardio 3 times a week?

Do you think I’m full of it? Well, I am not the only one who has this opinion. We just have to turn to the words of Alwyn Cosgrove for an even better explanation …

CB: Alwyn, where do you start working with an overweight person?

AC:

With a complete lifestyle and structural evaluation. Usually the overweight person has so little structural integrity that my first focus is a resistance training program to address their weaknesses and imbalances. By manipulating the rest periods, I can always get a cardio workout without the overuse injuries that often occur in the untrained.

Research (Jones et al., Sports Med. 18 (3): 202-214, 1994) has shown that the intensity required by the average sedentary person trying to improve their cardiovascular system is likely to create excessive structural overload; in fact, in this study there was a 50-90% injury rate in the first six weeks of training.

Interestingly, the typical program for an overweight person is usually thousands of repetitions (i.e. aerobics) that will cause more problems.

A superior system would be to target the muscular system and control set duration and rest periods to create the same metabolic and cardiovascular demand.

***

Yes, cardio is like good water torture … because pressure, when applied over time, will always bring you down. Even this woman’s doctor said that the intervals were better for her conditioning.

So prime your muscles with strength training (bodyweight exercises done on the floor) and low-volume interval training (done at a slightly stronger pace than normal cardio), rather than jumping into an aerobic routine. intense to lose fat. If you have good nutrition, you will lose as much or more fat with this approach than with hours of cardio. Nutrition is more important to beginners than exercise.

Train smart and train safe!