Cardiovascular training

Also known as cardio workouts, cardiovascular training and fitness relates to the ability of your body to get oxygen and blood to your muscles. So cardiovascular training is vital if you want more rides, on more days on and to go off-piste for any length of time!

When you undertake any physical activity, your pulse will get quicker and your breathing deeper, this is when you know you are using your cardiovascular system. So cardiovascular training and cardio fitness will improve your cardiovascular system's efficiency allowing you to perform for longer.

How much Cardio's needed?

There's a few simple guidelines when you want to workout how much cardiovascular training you should do and it depends on what you want to ahcieve. To burn fat, you need to do more cardio than if you want to gain weight. To improve cardiovascular fitness generally (ie to go whizzing down the piste) three or four times per week for 20 to 40 minutes per session would be a good goal to work towards.

What types of cardio?

The obvious choices are treadmills, rowing machines, cycling or jogging round the park. Regardless of the type of activity, the duration and intensity are what are key to getting fitter.

To improve general cardiovascular fitness, you will need to be doing an activity of moderate (about 60%-70% HRmax) activity where you begin to breathe more deeply than normal and you can feel that you are working out.

How do I work out what 60% is?

If you start by working out your Maximum Heart Rate (HRmax) this is the theoretical maximum beats per minute for your heart. Simply subtract your age from 220 to find your HRmax. e.g. if you are 50, then your HRmax will equal 170 beats per minute!

Your Target Heart Rate is the range of heart beats per minute that you need to workout at to best achieve aerobic fitness. As above, thie range varies but is typically between 60% to 80% of your HR max depending on the intensity of your training (60% for low intensity and 80% for high intensity training.

Weight training and cardio?

If you want to continue with your weight training, that's fine. However, if you want to do both in the same session, make sure you weights first. Otherwise with cardio first, your muscles will fatigue which limits your weight training. With weights first, this serves to fatigue your muscles before the cardio, lowering your blood sugar thus allowing you to burn fat immediately after you start the cardio (as a point to remember, doing cardio first, it takes about 20 minutes before you start to burn fat).