Putting it all together
So now you know about the various cardio training methods let’s briefly look at how you can incorporate them into your weekly schedule…

If your chosen sporting activity is very start/stop like basket ball or rugby, the majority of your cardio training time would be best spent performing a variety of interval training whereas if your sport involves fast but continuous effort e.g. 5km running or similar, FCR should be the dominant feature of your workouts. If you are more involved in activities that take place over longer durations e.g. long distance running or cycling then LSD will be a necessary tool for you to utilise on a regular basis. If however you just want to add some variety to your current cardio routine I suggest the following template as a good staring place.

Day 1 FCR
Day 2 LSD – recovery/easy pace
Day 3 Rest
Day 4 Intervals
Day 5 Rest
Day 6 Fartlek
Day 7 Rest

If you choose to design your own weekly template it’s important to remember the following…

• Avoid having too many intense workouts in a row without any rest/recovery time as you may feel burnt out
• Monday follows Sunday! Don’t begin AND end the week with hard or identical workouts.
• It always look easy on paper – don’t be afraid to change your plan if you underestimated its intensity.
• Make haste slowly – only increase your workout durations by around 10% a week. Greater increases than this may lead to injuries and you can’t train if your are injured.
• Cross training is a great way of making sure you don’t over stress any one particular part of your body.  By mixing your exercise modalities e.g. running, cycling, rowing, swimming etc, you can avoid overloading and possibly injuring your limbs.
• Choose the exercise modalities you enjoy – running is not compulsory! You can swim, cycle, step, skip, row, walk or whatever suits you best. If it hurts it’s probably not doing you any good.
• Remember that cardio is not the golden goose of exercise – it’s important to make sure that you also perform your strength training, flexibility work and core work otherwise you may find yourself very fit but as weak as a kitten with the posture of Quasimodo and as flexible as concrete!

So now you know about cardio exercise. Introducing some of the methods described in this article will hopefully get you out of your cardio rut and push you on to new, higher levels of aerobic fitness. Oh, and by the way, if you are one of those people I see in the gym every morning walking sedately on the treadmill while reading a newspaper…you’re wasting your time!!!