If, like me, you have even a passing interest in human psychology, then you must love the crucible that is the cardio room/area of your local gym. Personally, I am continually amazed by the staggering number of people who perform behaviours that clearly don’t producing any results. And let’s be honest, the reason why most people find their way to the gym is to transform their physique for the better.
After having worked as a trainer for several years, you tend to lose track of the number of members who faithfully come in to the gym every day, yet fail to experience any noticeable change in physique. It is actually kind of depressing – all those hours of sweat and tears with negligible improvement.
Unfortunately, too many of us still cling to the foolish belief that looking great is as simple as, “eating a little less and doing a little more”. Obviously, eating less and moving more are important considerations, but it’s not quite so straightforward. Doing more isn’t always better; doing better is better!
Nowhere is this more readily apparent then in people’s choice of cardio workouts. For some reason, we think that if 30 minutes of jogging at a mindnumingly slow pace isn’t producing the results we are looking for, then the secret must lie in going for an hour! Uh… sure, that’s one way to look at it. Or we can accept that long-slow cardio is a relatively poor body transformation tool.
6 hours later and she may break a sweat!
To illustrate my point, at the gym where I train, the cardio activities that are most popular seem to be:
- using the elliptical/arc trainer (hands down #1)
- walking/slow jogging on the treadmill
- leisurely spinning or riding a stationary bike
- using the Stairmaster
- riding the recumbent bike
All these popular activities share two common traits: 1) they are easy and 2) they are also not very effective. In fact, there are numerous times when all the 10,000,000 elliptical machines at my gym seem to be occupied, and I can’t see even one person using them who I would classify to be in great shape.
One of the major reasons why all these machines are useless has to do with a basic aspect of human physiology: adaptation. Your body only adapts when confronted with a demand that outstrips your current ability. So although we like to brag about how “good” we are getting at doing the elliptical or that we can now jog for 60 minutes straight, all this is telling you is that your body no longer has to adapt to meet the demands of your activity.
No more adaptation means no more physique change. No more physique change means more unhappiness and frustration for you.
Don’t get me wrong, running and cycling can be effective for producing body composition changes, but unless you plan on incorporating the workout volume of a Tour de France cyclist, then there are better ways to get lean.
Conversely, gym activities you almost never see people doing:
- Sprinting on an inclined treadmill
- Running on the Step-Mill (the rotating staircase)
- Rowing
In fact, talk to anyone who is just finishing up one of these cardio workouts and the first words out of their mouth will be, “Wow, that sucked”. That is, if they can even speak at all. It’s far more common they’ll be breathing harder than a racehorse so you may just have to wait several minutes before starting up your conversation.
Not surprisingly, these last three activities also share two common traits: 1) they involve hard work and 2) they produce results. In fact, none of these activities ever seem to become easy. Although you might think this to be a bad thing, actually is what allows them to continue to produce results for you in the long run. And as an added bonus, they don’t require much time. Anywhere from 5-15 minutes worth of intervals on any of these machines can totally transform your current training regimen.
Perhaps the best way to conceptualize training (or anything in life really) is with the following quote, “Success leaves clues“. Basically, if you want to be successful with body transformation, find people who have transformed their bodies before and do what they do.
People who look the best, train the hardest (with both weights and intense cardio) and eat the cleanest. It’s really quite the simple formula when you think about it. All that it requires from you is to keep an open mind and a strong work ethics.
Well, what are you waiting for?
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