The most important muscles to keep strong are the heart and the lungs. We call it ‘Cardio’. We need these muscles to be strong in order to live our lives well, and they also support all other fitness activities. How do we get, and keep, these muscles strong?
You can choose many different ways to do your Cardio ( should probably be called Cardio-Pulmonary). Walking is the number one choice. (Social walking is great, hiking is too ,but they may not be Cardio. See below)
Whether you choose walking/hiking or biking or rowing, there are a few generalities. Current recommendations are that we Heart/Lung train most days for about 20 minutes. That’s 20 minutes of challenge, so in my world that means 30 minutes total.
First, warm-up! For about 3-5 minutes, start slowly and do a mental and physical check in. Next, pick up the pace until you can not talk or must breathe through your mouth ( the only appropriate time to mouth breathe). If you can still talk, or breathe through your nose, you are not yet sufficiently challenging your heart and lungs. If you are social walking, great, but if you are trying to ‘exercise’, you need to pick up the pace! Most people do not get to this level when they think they are doing Cardio.
That’s not so bad, is it?
Now you need to go a little harder…This is called Intervals.
For about 1-3 minutes, challenge yourself to move much faster, so much so that after 1-3 minutes, you would need to return to your previous ‘mouth breathing’ ‘difficult to have a conversation’ pace. Keep your Cardio pace for 1-3 minutes, and then repeat your Interval. Intervals can be done by going uphill, or just increasing your pace, or by the gears on your bike. Your true measure of fitness is your heart/lung ability to start your next Interval ( Recovery time).
Warm-up for 5 minutes. Intervals for 20 minutes. The last five minutes are the cool down. Continue moving briskly, but no more intervals, and maybe now you can sneak in some snippets of conversation. I like to Stretch afterwards, but that’s another aspect of fitness.
A few other considerations as you keep your heart and lungs strong:
10, 000 steps is not a model for fitness. If you were to plod around the house for 10 hours a day, averaging about 17 steps a minute, you would get past 10K. The intensity is insufficient to train your most important muscles.
Outdoor Cardio exercise has been shown in cross cultural studies ( including one done here at Stanford) to far outweigh the benefits of doing the same workout indoors. When you can, do your Cardio outside.
Treadmills change your walking stride, and do not have same benefits as regular walking.
I’ll boil it down. Most days. 30 minutes. Intervals! Outside.
When the air quality permits, get outside and strengthen your heart and lungs!