It’s a new year, so we’re going back to basics. This week I’ll spend two days going over what we need to know about cardio. Next week, we’ll talk about weights. The week after that, we’ll discuss Pilates. Then stretching the week after that. Finally, in the last week of January, we’ll put it all together and talk about goals. Why this way? Because it’s hard to set goals when we don’t have basic information. It’s worth waiting until the end of the month to set goals because we’ll be equipped to set better goals than we can right this very minute with the knowledge we have. Ready? Here we go.
I’m starting with cardio because cardio is a good foundation for everything else we do. It’s also easy to get started with cardio because nearly all of us can go for a walk.
Let’s define what we’re talking about here. Cardiovascular exercise is movement that makes our hearts beat faster and our lungs work harder. The benefits of cardio exercise range from boosts in mood and cognitive function to calorie-burning to improved heart health to the ability to go upstairs without feeling like we’re going to die. We can get cardio exercise by walking, running, skiing, swimming, biking, dancing, skating, and playing a variety of sports. This list is (obviously) not comprehensive. If it gets the heart rate up and keeps it there for a good while, it counts.
To be effective, we want to get our heart rates up to 65 to 85% of our maximum heart rate. Those of us who wear fitness trackers or smart watches can ignore the following math: our gizmos do it for us. The rest of us can get out the calculator app on our phones. The quick-and-dirty math for calculating our maximum heart rate is to subtract our age from 220. I will use myself as the example. I am 55, so my max heart rate is 220-55, or 165. Then I use that number to calculate my training range, which is a heart rate between 107 (65% of 165) and 140 (85% of 165). I can take my own pulse for a minute during a workout to check that I’m working hard enough. In my experience, it is rare for people to work too hard; when we get above 85% of our maximum heart rate, we feel terrible and slow down. However, any special snowflakes out there who like to feel terrible might want to check the heart rate to make sure to stay on the safe side of the max.
Now that I made everyone do math (sorry!), I will suggest that we don’t need to pay too much attention to the numbers. As we get moving, we get a feel for how hard we’re working on a given day. When we quantify that, we get a scale of perceived exertion, which ranges from 0 (equivalent to lying on the couch) to 10 (please shoot me now). (No, those are not the actual descriptions for the scale numbers, but they get the point across.) We want to aim for a 7 or 8 (working hard, but we can still cope). More simply still, we can assess how hard we are working by talking. If we can still mostly carry on a conversation, we’re all right. If we can sing, we’re not working hard enough. If we have to pause our clever response to breathe, we’re working too hard.
How long we walk (or run, or rollerskate, or swim, or bike, or Zumba) is another factor we have to consider. If we haven’t hoisted ourselves out of the comfy chair for the last couple of years, we’re going to start with less time than those of us who just chilled out for a few days over the holiday. It is better to start slow and easy. In fact, I’m in favor of the stupidly easy beginning. So, couch potato friends: walk five minutes to start. Ultimately, we want to work up to about 150 minutes per week, which is 30 minutes per day, five days a week.
Go play.
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