Is Cardio Worth Your Time?

Recently I visited Hong Kong and released my book The Real Skinny.  My sister Marsha was the model for the book and my mother was kind enough as to translate the book to Chinese.  The book release was at the HK Book fair, and it was a pleasure being there.

In this blog I wanted to address the common misconception of "cardio cures all."  I work with clients for years and still don't get this through their head.  Our society has brainwashed ourselves to do an excessive amount of cardio, much more then the human body was meant to do on a daily basis.  Meanwhile resistance training has been neglected almost across the board.  And those who do resistance are bodybuilders or use non-free weight (machine) training.  This saddens me because every day I walk and see people hurting themselves because of their excessive cardio.  People wear their joints down or depleted their muscles while doing this cardio, for what? Because they are given the illusion that they will lose weight, or become healthy.

OK. Lets think back to primitive times 10,000 years ago.  Humans during this time didn't run marathons, triathlons, I would be hard pressed that they would run over a mile at a time.  Lets think about hunting.  When man hunted he would often times have to either sneak up on an animal very slowly and explosively spear it, or run the animal off the edge of a cliff.  Sneaking up on an animal would be a very delicate process and wouldn't be a huge cardio event.  If it was, one would not be able to catch an animal.  I would be impossible to catch a dear, buffalo etc.  Humans are by nature slower animals then most other animals.  As for running an animal off a cliff, I'm sure a cave man would know the distance between the cliff and the herd before he/she ran at it.

I use the hunter gatherer example because this shows how humans evolved to exercise.  I would like to argue that most humans are short term exercisers.  Throwing a spear, picking up a buffalo, hauling a buffalo, are all pretty much power and strength exercises.  In our ancestral history is hasn't been too ingrained into our bodies to be a marathon runner etc.  In fact running too long or doing too much cardio will deplete and eat away at ones own muscle.  Then why is everyone doing cardio exercises?  It saddens me to see people think that they will gain results with excessive cardio exercise.  You have seen the person on the treadmill, elliptical, or stationary bike, hammering away for hours every day for months or even years, and what is the result.  They stay the same! In fact if they stop exercising they will gain lots of weight back.  These cardio kings and queens are lowering their heart rates to the point of no or little beats per min.  Does this benefit them? Probably not, in fact it might just be hurting them.

How could it hurt them? because running cycling and the elliptical are all fixed movement patterns and if the movement pattern is faulty it is very likely that the cardio king/queen gets injured.  For those out there that feel that they don't have a faulty movement pattern, you might want to double check and think again.  I see very few perfect motor programs in running, cycling, etc.  But it's not the end of the world.  You can change it and prevent yourself from injury.  Become aware of your body.  Watch it! Kinesiolgy is really very common sense.  See if your body is in alignment and go with the symmetry of your body.  Otherwise go look for a specialist to help you.  There is a huge difference between running inside and out.  Can anyone take a guess?

When one runs outside he/she is pushing his/her body away from the ground.  On a treadmill a person merely pushes the ground away from him/her.  We never walk/run with our bodies moving the ground; instead, we move our bodies away from the ground.  Again why are we going on machines?  My theory is advertisements.

Cardio exercises will increase a person's metabolism up until he/she finishes the exercise.  When someone uses resistance training he/she increases the metabolism for up to 4 hours after the exercise.  So if you are trying to lose weight and get healthy which one are you going to choose?  Now not all resistance training is created equal, which is why I recommend people to seek a proper "trainer" (if they are good).  Also educating ones self is also a great idea, which is why I recommend reading a book called How to Eat Move and Be Healthy by Paul Chek.  Also for a Chinese audience or for a shorter audience you can read The Real Skinny: You are Meant to be Healthy not Skinny,by me Harry Yuan.

I hope this helps someone out there, it is important to me that we all keep ourselves healthy, because a healthy body means a healthy mind.  And someone who is smart knows how he/she can change this world to be more positive.  Until my next informational blog, I will be hear to answer questions.

H

By the way I don't want people to get the idea that all cardio is bad, just over doing it is bad, and try to do it outside, in a park.