Today, I decided to write about cardiovascular/endurance exercise. Yes, marathon running, treadmill jogging, long distance cycling, and the list goes on. Those are referred as endurance or sometimes known as long distance cardio exercises. Most people would call it as "Cardio".
This topic has been a 'hot selling cake' discussion, a never ending debate about cardio vs weight training, or similiar type of workout. I've been itching to write about the real truth about cardio exercise, and I guess today, will be the day where all of you get to realise the real stuff about what cardio is all about, and how it will impact our body and health.
Of all the advise and tips given by personal trainers and fitness instructors, does doing cardio workout really works for you? What does it do to your body and health? Do you know what happens when you step on that treadmill for 45, 60 or even 90 mins? You are about to find out the truth about cardio exercise, and by the end of this post, you will decide yourself, which type of workout or exercise suits you better.
Whenever I hit the gym, I noticed people coming in to the gym, especially Monday or Tuesday mornings, looking rather clueless what they are going to do next, should they just step on that treadmill or elliptical trainer, or customized high intensity weight training such as interval, resistance or burst trainings. I can tell you, almost everyone of these people entering the gym, decided to go for the treadmill or elliptical trainer. Why? I'll buy you a drink if you could give me the answer. Of course I know the reason, but it would be fun if any of you could try to tweak your thinking a little bit.
Now, who pays for personal training sessions at specialty gyms such as Fitness First or Celebrity Fitness? Hands up please, don't be shy. You are paying a lot of money for these sessions folks! Before I proceed further, does any of you care to interview or question the personal trainer or instructor about their knowledge and skills? No? thats what I thought too. The thing is, almost none of the client dare or care, to ensure they are making their money worthwhile, making effort to interview the particular trainers throughly, before decided to enrol in his or her training sessions. I know by making this statement, I will pissed off a lot of personal trainers. I may be blunt, but I'm all about reality and being honest. Either you love me, or hate me. Pick one.
Honestly, I DO not think it is too much to interview or ask questions from a fitness trainer. Come on ladies, are you going to pay to get tortured or drained? Paying to lose water, muscles, instead of fat? Bear in mind, you are paying your hard earned money for a personal trainer, not personal DRAINER! I see all the time fitness trainer drained their clients in private gyms and asking obese people doing sit ups thinking it can flatten their tummies? This is ridiculously absurb! How did these so called fitness trainers obtained their certification?
As I went to a new gym recently with my close friend, Mr. Chris, we were both stunned, shocked and out of words. A huge fat marginally obese guy, wearing fitness trainer shirt, giving personal training session?? What is happening here? Like I always tell all my friends and colleagues, NEVER TAKE HEALTH ADVISE FROM SOMEONE's GUT WHO LOOKS LIKE SHIT! That fitness trainer's gut looks like he is 7 months pregnant! And guess what, he has man's boobs too! I also had a guy friend (ex-colleague), who was employed as fitness trainer in FF, and he don't even have any qualification, and no knowledge about diet and health whatsoever. Utterly unbelievable for the standard of hiring of personal trainer for these private gyms. My overweight boss could be a fitness trainer too for god sake! I'm dead serious.
Alright. Let's talk a bit about cardio exercise. What is the most popular type of cardio exercise seen in most gyms? Yes, you guessed it right. Treadmill running/jogging. My question is, why does so many people hit the treadmill jogging and running? Yes, you guessed it right again. People spent their time on treadmill, thinking that they can burn fat efficiently, at the same time, lose couple hundred of calories from the junk they ate.
To be honest with you, I used to involve cardio running (treadmill) before I even know about the harmful impact of cardio to human's body and health. I used to run for 30-40 mins everytime I hit the gym, accompanied by resistance weight training. I feel burnout and exhausted. I thought I was training correctly for a better health and stronger leaner body. But, I was wrong, and when I studied endocrinology and physiology passionately, everything make sense, how our hormones react, whenever we perform any physical activities, as well as our sleeping cycle, stress management, diet and almost everything we do, it affect our biochemical messengers, HORMONES. I fell in love with nutrition, and most stuff which evolve around human body, health and our primal ancestors, Homo sapiens, which lead me to study intensively about human evolution, nutritional anthropology.
It is simple, if you do not have good knowledge of how human physiology and endocrine system works, you will not be able to be a personal trainer. And knowledge about fat storing and burning is also very important as well. Why? How can you fine tune a car, if you do not fully understand how parts of the car suppose to be fit together and work optimally? Make sense? In order to train someone to be lose weight in a healthy way (means not shedding water, fluid and muscles), or being leaner and stronger, fitter and full of energy, building a healthy body is extremely important. What do I mean a healthy body? Of course I'm not referring to huge bulky massive body with inflamed layered fatty gut, and yes, I'm referring to tons of personal trainers who are addicted to toxic protein powder supplements.
A healthy body, consists of many elements. Balanced hormones, sufficient in neurotransmitters, healthy diet, balanced energy (Qi), healthy GI tract and regular detoxification, and the list goes on. It is not about how many calories you can burn or how much weight you can bench or how many crunches one can do. It's about totality of the body's well being.
Stay tuned..
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