Long gone are the days of thinking you have to run on a treadmill for 60 minutes at the gym to get the body you’ve been craving. I smile when I mention cardio to my clients as it’s always met with a dreaded rolling of the eyes. Now we’re in the age of women feeling more confident in the weights zone, we’ve turned our back on getting out of breath.
My mission for you and my clients is to have a functional body; run after your child, carry your own shopping and go about your day without back pain and with good posture. The question is “how do you get the balance when it comes to cardio and strength?”
If you are someone who is on your feet all day long, congratulations, you are already miles ahead most of the population and will be doing more cardio then most around you. If you sit down at a desk all day then you’re the one who needs a little more cardio in your life.
I’m not going to ask you to run every day but I am going to ask you to move. Going for a walk, dancing, skating, swimming, playing football, basketball, playing in the park with your kids or dog, these are all forms of cardio. In reality, I would like you to work up a little upper lip sweat when doing them so I’m not saying walk so slowly your going backwards, it’s meant to make you warm and energised.
To those of you who prefer to complete your cardio in the gym, during a workout, I urge you to think about how much movement you are doing in a day or week. As mentioned in my ‘how to create a workout that works’ post, I talk about ways to add cardio into a gym routine. In a dream world, you would visit the gym twice, once to do weight-based movements and then later that day for your cardio, but let’s face it, hardly any of us have the time to do this, let alone want to. So I recommend splitting your cardio and weights workout by goal. If your goal is to get fitter cardiovascularly then do your cardio first, if your goal is strength or weight-based, do it last.
How do you complete your cardio? I’d love to hear how it features in your week so leave me a comment below!
