Cardio: The misunderstood exercise
In the 70s, jogging was big. Really big. It help footwear giants like Nike and Adidas make a foothold in this market and create a boom of endurance events that we see today. I remember the first time when I joined a 21 km race when I was just 19 years of age (kind of being forced, due to compulsory National Service). But hey! I did it! It was an eye opener, and drew me to more races, and finally did the holy grail of completing a marathon in 1999. Since then, I have completed more than 10 marathons. Along the way, I also saw the emergence of other events in Singapore, such as the now defunct OSIM triathlon, Singapore Biathlon (also stopped for many years now), 70.3 Ironman, and most recently Men’s Health Urbanathlon as well as Spartan Race. So as you can see, a certain level of cardiovascular fitness is required when you wish to scale these events comfortably.
Let’s just do a very simple test to see your cardiovascular fitness. Do you feel out of breath when you are playing a basic 3 on 3 half court basketball with your peers? Do you feel out of breath when you climb up, say just 5-7 floors (not very high by the way), in a typical apartment? Do you feel out of breath when you try to chase your kid in a neighbourhood park? Hope you get my point. Cardiovascular fitness is important. If you like to run long distances, and do not mind running as your form of relaxation, then go ahead (But long distance running do come at a cost though. I will leave it as a topic for another day). If you prefer long slow walks, then do it! Whatever your preferred mode, it should do one basic thing: Train your heart for the rigour of handling physical tasks that you may face from day to day (eg. climbing stairs when lift is out of order, running after your kids, etc).
If you are having issues with your knees, then do not stress them further by running. Due to the force, you are facing an impact of about 3 times your bodyweight for every step that you take when running. So if you are weighing about 100kg for instance, and say doing at a constant pace of 1000 steps per kilometre, you are looking at:
1000 steps x 300kg impact = 300000 kg of force over 1 km
A simple formula for calculating your maximum heart rate is 180 – age. For a start, go for a training heart rate which corresponds to about 50%-60% of 180-age. Once you think you can go faster in subsequent weeks, you can go to 65-80% as your next progression, and finally 80-90% as your final progression. The other way of estimating your effort, is through ratings of perceived exertion (RPE). To make it simple, a scale of 1-10 is used. If you score 1, it means the exercise is very light (possibly casual walking in shopping malls). If you score 4-6, it is considered moderate intensity, you are breathing heavily, but can still hold a short conversation with your friends or partner. If you score 9-10, you can hardly breathe and can’t talk to anyone anymore. You will probably stop in a short while.
If you have other ideas for cardio exercises, do feel free to comment!
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