Cardio for Meatheads

When it comes to cardiovascular exercise, many gym goers either flat out don’t care or they toss in a lackadaisical 30-minute session on the elliptical following their weight work. These gym goers forget or clearly may not be aware of the plethora of benefits that cardiovascular exercise delivers, including increased maximal oxygen consumption and utilization, improved cardiorespiratory functioning, increased oxygenated blood supply to the body’s muscles, lower heart rate at rest and during submaximal exercise, and a heightened lactate threshold for lactic acid accumulation as well as faster lactate clearance rates. Why the long-winded statement? You’ll see in a second, but first let me address a few pet peeves of mine as they relate to lifters and conditioning.

1. You’re 200 lbs and don’t have visible abs. This is one of the most reprehensible things I see among gym goers. Guys' weights are hovering around the Mendoza line, yet the linea alba is barely visible. This usually means two things—you date a fat chick or your conditioning blows. Nightly trips to Golden Corral and Old Country Buffet with your flabby armed girlfriend will blur any definition in your midsection as will bunking off your cardio.

2. You reach for you inhaler after climbing a flight of stairs. Your cardiopulmonary functioning is comparable to your emphysema-ridden elderly uncle and you still have the audacity to consider yourself athletic? Cardiopulmonary health is often lacking in lifters, who bulk to the point that their epidermis is ripping at the seams and care only about moving heavy weight. As a novice trainee, I was guilty of this. I was a former collegiate soccer player who fell in love with the iron game so much that I completely sacrificed all my cardio work in an effort to add as much mass as possible. The result? A puffy bloated look. I was roughly 18 percent body fat and couldn't survive five minutes of full court basketball. I was like a white, short Oliver Miller. OK, I wasn’t that sloppy.

3. High rep work leaves you gassed. You’d be hard pressed to find a lifter in a commercial gym who's worth his salt that is able to halve their 1RM on any exercise and crank out 20 repetitions. Take for instance the proclaimed 450-lb bencher at your gym. Though he never notched a 450-lb bench in a sanctioned powerlifting meet, we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and for example’s sake say that he can bench that weight. Strip two wheels plus some change off each side and see how many times he’s able to get it. I’d be willing to bet my 401K that he wouldn’t get 20. This same guy would also get spent on assistance lifts with shorter rest periods.

Now that I have three of my conditioning pet peeves out of the way, here are some ways that you can dial in your conditioning. No, we aren't going to transform your physique into one that is stage ready nor am I suggesting that your cardiorespiratory health will be up to par with the US Postal Service team cycling the Tour de France, but you’ll craft yourself a more respectable physique and will be able to last a couple games of basketball with the neighborhood kids or wash-ups at your local LA Fitness.

Improve your max

While increasing your maximal power and maximal strength will ultimately increase the percentages at which you’re performing each exercise, it’s improving your maximal oxygen consumption (expressed as your VO2 max) that we’re specifically targeting here. VO2 max is defined as the maximal amount of oxygen that can be consumed by the body and utilized for ATP production. Even those possessing the most elementary knowledge of exercise physiology should know that adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which consists of adenine, ribose, and three phosphate groups, is the body’s primary energy currency and is produced anaerobically via the ATP-PC system and fast glycolysis and aerobically via slow glycolysis and the oxidative system.

Because muscles have a very small supply of ATP, it ends up depleting rapidly during intense exercise. In the ATP-PC system, also termed the phosphagen system, phosphocreatine (PC) within the muscle cell splits into a molecule of creatine and a single phosphate group. This breakdown of PC is then used to add the remnant phosphate group from the splitting of phosphocreatine to ADP, or adenosine disphosphate, to create ATP again. However, this process takes a long time, which is why athletes must allow for ample time between periods of maximal exertion (high intensity short sprints and lifts at or above 90 percent of one’s 1RM).

ATP is also produced via fast glycolysis, also termed the lactic acid system. Here, ATP is utilized at the onset of less intense periods of exertion (up to 40 seconds) such as a challenging set using one’s 5–10 RM on a given lift. In sport, examples of activities using this system are 200–400 meter sprints, kicks, and punt returns or, for the college basketball historians out there, the famous Mo Scurry block to dunk play during the era of the height of the UNLV Runnin’ Rebels program. After the phosphagen system provides energy during these longer duration, high intensity activities, fast glycolysis is then called upon. Fast glycolysis breaks down stored muscle glycogen, which is derived from carbohydrate sources. Research has shown that the average human has anywhere from 500–600 grams of glycogen in reserve within the skeletal muscle, which are tapped into during exercise. For exercises that are of longer duration or during the initial phases of starvation, the body taps into liver glycogen as a fuel source. It should be noted that roughly 75–100 grams of glycogen are stored within the liver. When the glycogen is broken down, ATP is resynthesized by adding a phosphate group through glucose bonds to ADP. The process of ATP production is a bit slower in this system and is more dependent upon an individual’s nutritional status, specifically carbohydrate intake.

More relevant to the article’s topic and the subject of VO2 max, ATP is produced aerobically through slow glycolysis and the oxidative energy system. Here oxygen is required for ATP production, meaning that if someone’s oxygen uptake is poor, his ATP production will suck, thus leading to fatigue. Here ATP production relies on the concurrent function and interaction of the Krebs cycle and the electron transport chain. It is in the Krebs cycle where hydrogen ions are removed from carbohydrates (chemically termed as CHO), fats, and/or proteins. The latter occurs during longer duration, lower intensity activities such as ultramarathons and cross country skiing. Hydrogens, which contain potential energy from macronutrient molecules, are used in the electron transport chain to add phosphate to ADP to resynthesize ATP. This process is known as oxidative phosphorylation, which occurs within the mitochondria of the cell. An increase in mitochondrial content is a chronic adaptation to aerobic exercise, and although improvements of its density in comparison to the other parts of the cell may not be significant in resistance trained populations, the change, along with improved capillary functioning, will help with oxygen uptake and extraction.

So how can improving one’s VO2 max be accomplished? Research suggests that improving one’s cardiorespiratory fitness is linked to age, current fitness level, and type of training. In untrained or lesser trained populations, resistance training has been shown to improve cardiorespiratory fitness. However, these improvements are soon blunted, leveling off until cardiovascular exercise is introduced. In lesser trained individuals, improvements will be noted in cardiorespiratory fitness when cardiovascular exercise becomes progressively longer or more intense.

The last thing a hypertrophy conscious novice trainee wants to do is handcuff himself to the treadmill, nor is it likely that a larger strength athlete will develop an affinity for long duration, steady state work. With both of these individuals, you’re going to have to speed up the back end of the training sessions. Get in the big stuff first—the exercises that require an utmost amount of technical proficiency and mental focus and the most contribution to the phosphagen system such as sprints, plyometrics, Olympic lifts, and the classic lifts, preferably in that order—and taper off to assistance/accessory exercises that work to develop muscular endurance, thus taxing the glycolytic energy system, and a circuit of either metabolic conditioning or continuously alternating lower intensity corrective exercises to work the oxidative system. Ramp up the intensity levels within your sessions, and no, we aren't exclusively referring to percentages of your 1RM. We’re talking about steadily cruising through your workout after all the power and strength stuff is out of the way. Reduce rest periods. Superset. Do drop sets. Intersperse your weight work with body weight exercises or Strongman influenced training that doesn't require a high level of technical proficiency such as Prowler pushes, sled pulls, medium weight tire flips, sandbag carries, heavy bag carries, or medium weight hex bar or dumbbell farmer's walks. OK, you get the point. Medicine ball chucks and chases, popularized by Martin Rooney, and running hills, much like Jim Wendler does on his conditioning days, are good, too.

Here's a sample training session:

*Disclaimer: By no means am I suggesting that you follow this workout verbatim. You should consider this template in designing your own training sessions if you’re trying to focus on conditioning.

You’ll see that the session above doesn't just include exercises at greater intensities. It also reduces the rest periods between work as the session progresses. Most people fail to track their downtime between each set, often times dillydallying—hitting on the hot coed in spandex with an extreme case of camel toe or catching highlights of a bunch of meaningless MLB games featuring teams that are ten games below 0.500 on ESPNNEWS. These people should definitely keep track of their time between sets. Rest periods, much like sets, reps, intensity, volume, frequency, and repetition quality, is a loading parameter and should be treated as such.

Because I’m not a big fan of steady state cardio, joining the contingent of former fat boys (at 18 percent body fat, I was once one), heavyweight strength athletes, and bodybuilders (believe me, they hate it, too), I’ll offer a not so boring and painful alternative instead—non-exercise physical activity (NEPA), a concept popularized by T-Nation contributor Chris Shugart back in the day. If my fellow Philadelphians are reading this, they’d think NEPA refers to a wasteland of people with bad teeth and squawking accents like Scranton, Pennsylvania, the town where the show The Office is staged. But I’m talking about getting physical activity on the days when you aren't in the gym. Go for a walk. Ride a bike. Play with your kids. Do housework or garden. These activities, because they aren't usually planned, aren’t considered workout sessions. Though to the completely sedentary, going for a walk means they’ll end up wheezing heavily.

As you can see, addressing your aerobic conditioning doesn’t just entail strapping yourself to your gym’s equivalent of a hamster wheel. It can actually be fun, allowing it to invite numerous health and performance benefits, if done smartly and creatively.