Cardio myths busted

Aerobic fitness is essential to our cardiovascular fitness. Still, there are a bunch of myths out there cutting your cardio fitness lunch. Aquanation Health Club Coordinator, Scott Ryding, is here to help you ditch common cardio myths and get the most out of your workouts.

Cardio is the only way to lose weight 

This this one is probably the biggest cardio myth going around. Ryding admits it’s an essential tool for to help you lose weight, but it traditional cardio ain’t necessarily the bees knees. That’ because if your goal is body composition (involving both weight loss and muscle strength and toning), traditional cardio doesn’t quite come to the party.

“If body composition is the goal I’d advocate that traditional cardio is not included in your workout, that’s because this goal is more about increased muscle,” Ryding recommends. Or to put it more blunty, “cardio is probably the most detrimental thing to muscle growth that you can do.”

Oooft! Look he’s not totally opposed to it and if you like cardio because it makes you feel good or if you enjoy HIIT Ryding reckons you can absolutely throw that into your routine, but definitely focus on more effective cardio workouts.

“Instead of traditional cardio, try cardio with resistance, in which case it would be high repetition exercises,” says Ryding. He suggests the skill mills up on the mezzanine at Aquanation. These new machines have a sled built into them “so it’s cardio but not in the traditional sense and it becomes more of a resistance exercise.”

For Ryding, it’s all about holistic training and providing a stimulus to a variety of muscle groups if your aim is to lose weight and tone up. “With body composition we’d be leaning towards more volume and weight training to get more calorie burn, it’s about creating a larger volume but in the same period of time,” says the Coordinator. He adds that by doing this, “you get your heart working and generally that’s more beneficial than traditional cardio.”

Cardio burns more calories than weights 

If you're after a blitz on your calorie intake, Ryding is adamant there are ways of doing cardio with a much larger calorie burn.

 “Traditional cardio such as a treadmill, bike or cross trainer are great for those who require low impact cardio but for the general population I recommend using the higher intensity cardio instead,” says Ryding. He suggests including rowers or Aquanation’s new skill bikes and skill runs (where you run against resistance) or HIIT training for a higher calorie burn.

If you’re not convinced, picture a traditional cardio exercise like running or cycling. “You’ve got a large range of movements with your legs so you do burn quite a bit of calories especially if you’re doing sprints, but again, it’s just your legs,” explains Ryding. He says that in terms of the muscles being used and the calories burned, there’s not a lot even when you’re running.

Still, if traditional cardio makes you feel good Ryding says by all means go and do it. However, if your game plan is steered towards body composition the Coordinator recommends focusing on resistance training too.

Cardio sessions should be lengthy 

Short, sharp and sweaty is the name of the game if you want to really get the most out of your workout. As Ryding puts it, “long duration cardio doesn’t necessarily burn a lot of calories because there’s not a lot of movement going on different muscle groups.”

Ryding suggests tyring something like a rowing machine, which involves a lot more muscle groups and “they tend to have a higher calorie burn due to the intensity of the workout - it’s using your whole body in a short period of time.”

Or for a seriously speedy sweaty cardio session, Ryding recommends Aquanation’s new skill mills. “These are great because it changes direction sideways, backwards and forwards, you can add a small or large amount of resistance, you can stand upright or lean forward on a 45 degree angle,” Ryding says enthusiastically. He adds that you can even anchor yourself and have resistance like a traditional sled, this gives you a super effective workout in a short period of time. We’re sweating just thinking about it.

 Don’t forget… 

Again, Ryding isn’t totally opposed to traditional cardio. He is more suggesting more effective cardio if your goal is body composition. The Health Club Coordinator says that if you do like running, absolutely keep it up but don’t forget to fuel your fitness.

 “Understand that when you train in the gym you need to fuel that plus fuel your body to recover from the run as well,” says Ryding. He points out that you “can’t fuel your body for weight training and then add a 20-30min run and expect to get the same result as what you would if you didn’t do the run.”

Ryding warns that if you don’t fuel your workouts properly, you also won’t recover properly and you’ll overtraining state. “You have to have fuel in the tank.”