When we are talking about the role of exercise in a person’s life, it is almost inevitable that most people will associate cardiovascular exercises immediately. There are two camps when it comes to exercise. One camp will deride the role of cardio in fitness, and very much prefer to use strength training as their mode of exercise. The other camp will prefer cardio, which explains the popularity of long distance races in Singapore. To scope the discussion today, I will just focus on cardiovascular fitness.

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

That’s very stressful, isn’t it? So modality is important when it comes to selecting the best exercise to suit your needs. I see so many friends who gave up running when they run into their 50s. Very often, their selection caused a direct impact on their weak link (read: knee injury), and therefore forced to give up cardio totally. But it doesn’t have to be so. Walking is an extremely good exercise, low in impact, and gives the heart a good workout as well. I do want to caution that you need focus when engaging in walking exercises. Casual walking (start-stop-look see look see) is not counted. It has to be continuous (at least 30 min to 1 hour), and done at a slightly faster pace than your casual walking. Basically you should feel the increase in your heart rate (if you are not sure, do join the National Steps Challenge organised by Health Promotion Board. You will get a free tracker which also measures your heart rate). If you do not have any tracker at all, you can feel your own pulse at your wrist or neck, and count for 60 seconds.

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.

So what is the best practice for walking? Since it is a very fundamental locomotion, I would say do it every single day. Find time for a minimum of 30 min to 1 hour of your time. If you can spend 30 min on your social media or TV, why not consider doing this instead? If you preferred to plug a ear piece while you listen to some music when walking, why not? I have seen people walking on treadmills, watching their favourite Youtube videos. I think all these can be done easily as you can probably multi-task when engaging in walking.

If you have other ideas for cardio exercises, do feel free to comment!