Podcast 5

What about Cardio? Part 1: Is It Possible To Improve Your Heart Health Without Doing Traditional Cardio Exercise?

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SHOW NOTES

Dr. James Fisher answers the question once and for all, do we really need to do exercises like running, cycling, and swimming to improve our cardio? Find out the truth about cardio exercises and cardiovascular health and why you should get off the treadmill and start doing resistance training right now.

• The fundamental question is “What is cardio?” Even people who have seen the results of the 20-minute routines delivered by the Exercise Coach still wonder what place cardio has in physical fitness.
• Historically people have perceived exercise to be going for a run or what we think of as traditional cardio. Usually this takes the form of long duration and low intensity and focuses on aerobic energy production.
• The accepted wisdom is that cardio is just activities like running and cycling, but the truth is that any activity can become cardio exercise if done at the correct intensity. Cardio also raises the idea that we need to perform prolonged exercise to get the result, but that’s not necessarily the case.
• The trouble is that duration doesn’t necessarily translate to improved fitness. Someone going for a 4-hour walk isn’t going to see the results they would see from an activity with a higher intensity level.
• Cardio activities like running, cycling, or swimming improve our heart health because of the sustained elevation of the heart rate. While that’s true and that process also makes the heart and muscles more efficient, but it’s really the act of having the heart rate elevated for an extended period of time that brings those results and it’s not reserved for traditional cardio exercises.
• It is possible to be fit while still having an unhealthy heart due to lifestyle choices. Studies have shown that it is better to be fit and fat, than unfit. People who are overweight and exercise have better health outcomes than people with a normal Body Mass Index who don’t exercise at all.
• Exercises that we perform that are a high enough intensity and frequency can more than counteract any of the other lifestyle risk factors. There is growing evidence that shows that effective exercise alone and improving fitness is powerfully prophylactic in terms of health and longevity.
• Even if you no longer see visible fitness increases from your exercise, you are still catalysing positive changes at a cellular level and prolonging and improving the quality of your life.
• Traditional cardio exercises are not necessary to become healthy. Strength training exercises have similar results to traditional cardio training with similar cardiovascular health benefits. It also comes with less risk of chronic joint pain.
• Don’t feel tied to an exercise modality. Studies have shown that people have seen increases in cardiovascular health and efficiency with only a simple 12-week strength training program.
• Resistance training is the superior choice because, in addition to the cardiovascular benefits, you also improve strength, bone density, and muscle mass. Improved muscle quality is a jackpot outcome because it has a ripple effect that leads to all of the systems of the body getting better when we optimize the health of our muscles.

The thing that we have to realize when we talk about cardiorespiratory fitness is whilst we might prolong the exercise, we reduce the intensity so much that actually for most people going for a four hour walk wouldn’t do much for their fitness.

Welcome to the Strength Changes Everything podcast. I’m Amy Hudson, and today kicks off a new series of episodes on some of the most common questions we get about strength training as it relates to health, weight loss, performance, and cardiovascular fitness. We’re calling this series, Ask the Exercise Coach. Today’s episode will be part one of a series all about the question, what about cardio? Brian Sagan, co -founder and CEO of the Exercise Coach, interviews Dr. James Fisher, one of the world’s foremost experts in exercise science. In today’s segment, Brian and James discuss the basic question to inform the whole conversation around how cardiovascular fitness and strength training are connected.

This fundamental question is, what is cardio? They’ll also be discussing the connection between cardio and heart health. If you or someone you love are included in the millions of Americans dealing with heart disease, this will be an episode you won’t want to miss. Laying this basic groundwork will help our listeners understand what the real definition of cardio is so that we can ask the right questions to inform our understanding of why we choose the type of exercise and activity we do and dispel some myths we may have believed about fitness and health in the past. Let’s listen in as Brian Sagan and Dr. James Fisher start the conversation.

I’m excited today to have a guest on the podcast, Dr. James Fisher from the UK. Dr. Fisher is a senior lecturer and researcher at Solent. University in the UK. And he has extensive experience with elite athletes, which includes coaching at the Olympic Games in 2012 in London. He also has a comprehensive range of peer -reviewed research publications with both clinical and asymptomatic populations, as well as elite athletic populations. And at present, His ambitions surround the progression and delivery of theoretical and practical knowledge for health, fitness, and sporting success.

James also enjoys spending time with his son and trying to keep up with his wife on a bike. And I am delighted to welcome Dr. James Fisher to the show today. Hello, Dr. Fisher. How are you?

I’m very well, Brian. It’s great to be on the show. Thank you for having me.

Absolutely. Glad for you to be here. And today, the topic of our discussion is going to be what about cardio? And Dr. Fisher, for many years at our fitness studios, the exercise coach, we’ve been helping people get the health and fitness results that really mean the most to them. I’ve often heard, even from people that have seen the firsthand results of a 20 minute strength training workout performed a couple of times a week. We’ve often had this question.

What about cardio? I’m getting great results. I’m losing weight. I’m getting fit. My muscles are toning up. Or sometimes it’s the question comes from someone that hasn’t started with science -based strength training yet.

And they’re considering, they’re in the contemplation mode. and they’re looking, investigating our approach, and they’re asking the question, what about cardio? Now, I will sometimes… with a question like cardio what and what I mean by this is cardio vascular really isn’t is an adjective that describes something potentially, and it describes a system of the body, but I know what people are getting at. I really like to then take the conversation into a discussion in three different areas. I think what people really are asking about when they ask what about cardio is what about cardiovascular type exercise or aerobic type exercise for heart health, for weight loss, or for fitness, or we might say sports performance in that third category.

And so I’m happy to have you on the show today. And I’m hoping we can talk about these, these three categories that I think people are really thinking about when they ask, what about cardio? Don’t I also have to do a bunch of cardio? So I thought we could start with Dr. Fisher, first of all, what is cardio?

Brian, everything you’ve said there is brilliant and it’s exactly what people are thinking about when they begin exercising because historically people have perceived exercise to be going for a run or doing some sort of what we now call traditional cardiovascular exercise. If we take a step back and say, what is cardio? I think we can think of it in terms of energy type. So it’s longer duration, it’s lower intensity, and therefore it’s built upon aerobic energy production. So from that, we then tend to think of cardiovascular or cardiorespiratory fitness. So using our respiratory system and using our cardiovascular system to move, which is essentially just about moving oxygen around the body, then that’s really what our body is doing.

to do when our heart beats. It’s moving blood around the body to move oxygen around. And that’s where we say about using aerobic energy production is with oxygen. If we talk about cardiovascular fitness, then we generally think about the efficiency of the body to move this oxygen. So if somebody is unfit, they might get out of breath running up a flight of stairs. or walking to the shops.

But if they improve their fitness, then that no longer tasks the cardiorespiratory system in the same way. And they may now be able to go for a run or for a marathon and so forth. So it’s good to think of it in both the energy type and the efficiency of the body.

Great.

And what would you say then are the conventional dogma around cardio. What is it that y really believe about this Yeah, again, this is really interesting because the dogma, the accepted wisdom has been that cardio is defined by modality, is defined by things like running, cycling, swimming, Nordic walking or skiing or things like that. But in fact, when we say cardio, we really mean anything that’s done at an aerobic pace, at a pace where we’re still able to breathe comfortably, probably converse with each other. Two people go for a jog, are still able to talk to each other if they want. And that would be really what we mean when we say cardio. It’s not necessarily the modality.

And with that in mind, anything is or isn’t cardio based on the intensity of exercise that we perform it. Myself and Dr. James Steele published papers dating back to 2013 to raise this issue. We started out with there’s no such thing as cardio because everything be cardio if it’s of a low enough intensity. Cardio also raises the idea that we need to perform prolonged exercise because it’s aerobic, we’re burning more fat, so it’s about this energy system. But actually, that’s not necessarily the case, and we’ll get into that later.

The thing I would tend to say is when we think about exercise, we can perform it either intensely or for a long duration, but we can’t do both. So we can do a 20 minute interval session or a 20 minute resistance workout, or we could go for a one hour run, but it’s at a slower pace, or we could go for a four or five hour walk, but it’s at a slower pace again. And I think the thing that we have to realize when we talk about cardiorespiratory fitness is whilst we might prolong the exercise, We reduce the intensity so much that actually for most people going for a four hour walk wouldn’t do much for their fitness. They would need to do something of a higher intensity than that.

So we need to be careful not to just think of it as duration of long steady state exercise. And you touched on some misconceptions, I think in there, but maybe if we go into these specific categories, I find this so helpful just to be discussing. cardio really looking at it through one of these lenses, or we might just be talking past our listeners or someone that we’re trying to professionally guide related to their health and fitness. So let’s just use heart health to start with. Let’s talk about heart health. What would you say about the connection then between performing what you’ve described as cardio and building a healthy heart?

So longer duration, lower intensity, activities. What role does that play in making sure that

I optimize my personal heart health? Yeah, it’s a great question. So the key thing really is, like I said, first of all, cardio is often defined by modality. And because people don’t typically do resistance training for prolonged periods, we’ll tend to refer to cardio by cycling, running or swimming. And we tend to think that this improves our heart health because we increase our heart rate, but we sustain that elevated heart rate for a long time. Now, whilst we’re moving oxygenated blood around the body, we’re also catalyzing metabolic pathways to make our body adapt to be more efficient.

So it’s about that efficiency that I said about. And that might be that we can sustain the same intensity of exercise, but at a lower heart rate. So we can run at the same pace, but after a period of training, our heart rate doesn’t get as elevated. or even that we can run at a higher pace and not exceed the original heart rate. We also get improvements cellular level. So we get improved capillarization, which is where the oxygen is transferred in the muscles.

So an increased number of capillaries allows a greater efficiency of oxygen to be transferred from our bloodstream into our muscles to allow the muscles to continue working aerobically. And of course, the carbon dioxide, the waste product of energy production is passed back the blood and then that’s what we exhale. So it’s not wrong to think that cardiorespiratory exercise does improve heart health, but it’s wrong to think that it’s defined by the modality of cycling, running or swimming.

Really, it’s the act of elevating our heart rate to any intensity or for any period of time that’s going to catalyze these favorable adaptations. Well, sure. And I’m hearing, though, maybe a little of a distinction that I would like to make and see if you agree with it. So I hear what you said, it seems that what you were describing, I might put into a category though, of cardiovascular fitness, as opposed to cardiovascular health, or heart health. And what I mean by that is, Couldn’t someone even become more fit, able to perform a certain activity with a lower heart rate than previously, and yet not have a healthy heart?

What about various risk factors for coronary artery disease? And does improving, another point, improving efficiency, it sounds like what you’re describing really is fitness, sort of the capacity to perform work, And then it also sounds like these adaptations that are taking place are peripheral, not necessarily in the heart itself, but actually around the body and around the vasculature and the musculature.

Or would you disagree? No, on the last point, you’re absolutely correct. A lot of it is happening peripheral to the heart, but a lot of that is also happening within the heart because the heart is a muscle itself, so it needs oxygen itself. So, we do get the increased, you know, vascularization around the heart as well. Going back to your earlier comment about somebody being fit but unhealthy, that’s certainly possible because of a number of lifestyle factors. We know that Tobacco consumption, we know that high alcohol consumption, we know that obesity are all risk factors for coronary artery disease.

But to some extent, the evidence now suggests that it’s better to be fit and fat than to be unfit. So studies have looked at this, and they’re observational of course, but they’ve taken people that perform exercise but are overweight or obese by their body mass index, and they’ve looked at their kind of risk factors and they’ve and even over a prolonged period they’ve looked at the death rate and they found that those people have a higher survival rate and a better quality of life than people that just are of a normal body weight have a normal body mass index but don’t do any exercise.

So I think there’s definitely we can make a distinction between fitness and and health and heart health certainly but I I also think that to some extent the the exercise that we typically perform, if it’s a high enough intensity, and perhaps of a higher frequency as well, then it can more than counteract any of the other lifestyle factors that could be risk factors.

That’s a really powerful possibility.

Absolutely.

Yeah, it’s referred to as the fit but fat paradigm.

Wow. And it’s potentially so empowering because, as we know, losing weight can be challenging, right? Changing the way we eat and putting that to work for our body in combination with exercise is a pretty big task.

And so it sounds like what you’re saying is that there’s growing evidence to show that just effective exercise alone in improving fitness is powerfully prophylactic in terms of health and longevity, independent potentially even of significant changes in diet and changes therefore in body composition.

Exactly. And I think it’s easy to be disheartened, especially as we progress through our training, that we think we’re no longer making strength increases or muscle mass increases or fitness increases. And so, is there any point in trying? Exercise almost becomes a bit demoralizing. In fact, the reality is we’re still catalyzing positive changes, even at a cellular biological level that we might not see aesthetically, which to some extent sucks because what we want is a smaller waistline and bigger biceps.

In reality, what we’re doing is we’re prolonging the quality of our life. We’re prolonging our life and we’re improving the quality for that prolonged period.

To me, that’s the more important side of things. Maybe one more question in this category. This has been very helpful. So, especially if we’re talking about maybe someone who is a little bit overweight, has arthritic knees, and is not a very experienced or avid mover, exerciser, maybe is busy. I guess the question that I want to ask comes down to then, to get this health protection and to get these results, Does one have to perform? Is there any reason why someone has to perform what is what has been historically referred to as cardio type activities?

Is it actually, even if it’s sufficient to bring about certain beneficial changes, it’s time consuming. It can be a little bit challenging for certain people and, and even maybe even lead to some orthopedic challenges in the knees. And so is it necessary?

in order to get healthy? Yeah, that’s the key question, isn’t it? And personally, no, I don’t think it is. I don’t think that typical cardio in the form of swimming, running or cycling is necessary. for health or for a healthy heart. previously done studies that have shown that the acute responses to a cycle task, albeit a higher effort cycle task, are near identical to a recumbent leg press task, a recumbent cycle task and a reclined leg press task. When performed a similar degree of effort, they show similar oxygen consumption, a similar heart rate, similar blood lactate responses.

And then of course, muscle activation, and muscle swelling following the exercise. But the oxygen consumption and the heart rate are what typically people typically look at, excuse me, for the cardio tasks. But we’re seeing that in resistance training. So we see the same acute responses. And because of that, we see the same chronic adaptations. We see the same improvements in health.

And in fact, there’s been a growing shift in the sort of national government guidelines, especially in the UK and in Canada, prioritise resistance training ahead of typical cardiovascular exercise, for the reasons that you’ve said that for some people, cardiovascular exercise in the form of running is not good for them, because if they are overweight or obese, then the impact through their joints will can prevent them from doing it over a prolonged period, but can also be debilitating as far as the mobility and other lifestyle factors.

No, I don’t think that cardio is necessary by any standard of the imagination or cardio as we talk about it in that modality. That’s great. I absolutely agree. It’s great to hear that recommendations at a national level are changing. And yeah, an individual can without any of that time consuming joint pounding activity that they might not even be able to get started, especially if overweight, they can experience improved insulin sensitivity, reduced systemic inflammation, improved cholesterol, triglycerides, things that just really directly impact heart health without performing any cardio.

And we’ve just seen this so many times over the years. And even personally, it’s an it’s anecdotal, but I’m 46 years old. In the last 20 years, from an exercise standpoint, I’ve never done anything intentionally more than a couple 20 -minute high -intensity strength training workouts per week that are 20 minutes or less, and no more than two times per week for 20 years. I have not for 20 years engaged in any intentional cardio. There’s certainly things that I enjoy doing recreationally, whether it’s a hike or a bike ride once in a while, and I’m able to do those things. Recently, I had a cardiac calcium screen, and I was so excited to have no measurable plaque.

no plaquing in my heart and I’ve done no cardio for 20 years and I’m 46 years old and so it was just it was pretty cool anecdotal just experiment over 20 years but for me it’s confirming. Brian, let me add to that, because the data supports exactly what you’re saying. The key thing that I tend to say to people is that this information actually sets them free. They shouldn’t feel tied to an exercise modality. They can self -select. There was a study by some Spanish authors in 2017, and they showed that untrained people improve their aerobic capacity, so basically their cardiorespiratory fitness.

by about 10 % with 12 weeks of resistance training performed once or twice a week for around 30 minutes a session. So exactly what you’re talking about. It’s high effort. It’s moving from one exercise to the next relatively quickly, but in 12 weeks to see an increase in oxygen uptake of 10 % is incredibly good. The other thing that we should think about with regards to exercise the other benefits of different modalities.

For example, we talk about running, and I’m not a big proponent of running, but the impact forces can be good for bone mineral density. We know that some exercise is good for bone mineral density. Of course, some people choose not to run, they choose to cycle. And I’m a cyclist by nature, as you said, by trying to keep up with my wife more than anything. But cycling, of course, is non -impact. So we can obtain some fitness benefits, but we can’t obtain the bone mineral density benefits.

And this is where I think resistance training becomes the the more favorable choice because we can obtain our cardiorespiratory benefits, as I just highlighted in the study, but we can also improve our bone mineral density and our strength and our muscle mass, which we don’t see in the same way from traditional cardio exercise.

So this is where resistance training becomes the kind of the save all, in my opinion.

It’s really, yeah, improved muscle quality is really a jackpot outcome, I like to say, because it just has this ripple effect and leads to just all the systems of the body getting better when we really optimize the health of our muscles.

Yeah, absolutely. So that wraps it up for part one of our What About Cardio series. In next week’s episode, we will continue the conversation by discussing the connection between cardio and weight loss. If you have ever wondered what type of exercise will best help you lose weight, this will be an episode you won’t want to miss. As always, thank you for listening, and if you find the content we share helpful, we’d love for you to subscribe and share this episode with a friend. We’ll see you next time, and remember, strength changes everything.