The one (but not the only)thing I find it good for is stamina and building "wind"

There are a lot of people on this site who promote various sorts of lifting as cardio.

While all this is well and good , from personal experience I have found that doing breathing Squats and the like does not give me anywhere near the lung efficiency and wind, as doing something something like HIIT or other ex where you are forced to increase breathing rate for a sustained period.

I have tried doing zero cardio. And my wind power absolutely tanked.

Could still lift lots of weight..but...one run up a flight of stairs and that was it.

The fact is...when you do sustained high rate breathing, your lungs actually develop to accomodate this. The Alveoli increase to handle the extra demand.

The better your lung efficiency, the more oxygen you can process, which translates to more reaching your muscles.

The weightloss argument aside, I think cardio is exceptionally good for your lungs and stamina.

But I don't agree that doing sets of rep-cleans or the like is going to do as much for your lung efficiency.

Simply because from my experience, the lungs just don't work as hard on these kinds of ex's.

And if you do get to where you're breathing pretty good , it doesn't last long, compared to a HIIT session or something similar.

Even sustained LISS for half an hour will make my lungs work more overall.

(I know Zen might jump in here with a quote about Fred Hatfield's V02 Max. But I'm not Fred Hatfield. And I find that lifting-based cardio is inferior to other types.)

How about you?

I agree.

I've lost my 'wind' too from not doing any cardio in the past month.

I'm sure the lifting does help, but nowhere near what the elliptical would do.

Agreed. I just started doing HIIT this week, after 6+ months of moderate intensity SS work. Holy crap, it really pushes the aerobic limits for me, and my legs are still hurtin'.

Definitely showed me that my wind was not where it could be, even at 5x per week of cardio. Now I have a method to accomplish this.

So, cardio is something that doesn't produce lasting effects. You lose it if you ever stop for a short while. Interesting, does anyone know why?:confused:

So, cardio is something that doesn't produce lasting effects. You lose it if you ever stop for a short while. Interesting, does anyone know why?:confused:

Like anything, if not regularly practiced, the ability and degree of skill will decrease.

Practice makes perfect.

So, cardio is something that doesn't produce lasting effects. You lose it if you ever stop for a short while. Interesting, does anyone know why?:confused:

I think zen mentioned before that while VO2 max goes down realatively quickly while sedentary - 2 weeks? - that it can be renewed in a short period of time

On my lifting days I do HITT and have found that it helps when doing my fasted LISS on "off" days. My breathing has improved. Juat a side note.

I'm a strong believer in GPP work with weights. I have seen my measured VO2 Max (via Polar) go up with barbell complex and very long light squat sets (4+ minute non-breather style (1-2 breaths at top) with light weight (135). And that definitely carries over to climbing steps to some degree.

And my work capacity for lifting sessions increases every time I've gone back to this stuff. In fact, I generally try to work in complex phases into the lifting plans periodically just to bring up work capacity that might get lost during more strength focused times (even keeping in 1-2 HIIT sessions a week).

Stuff I use:

Barbell complexes
Breathing and/or long squat sets
High rep DB swings and 1 Arm DB Snatch sets
Bodyweight circuits
Long set step ups (for instance 2 minute sets)

Nothing says you have to use a machine or run. Get the HR up. Peg that HR however you like. But don't necessarily look for load in these types of sessions, fit them in with your strength work.

RTE....well if you stop lifting you'll lose your strength and muscle mass, so it's just like anything else IMO.

Mannishboy....that was my point..just increasing the heart rate alone is not the same.
Granted, there are other ways to do cardio besides eliptical etc.

But on lots of lifts my heart rate increases significantly while I'm barely breathing hard at all.

And it's a known fact that weightlifter's hearts get bigger from lifting. But bigger doesn't mean better in terms of efficiency.

Competitive cyclists have the most efficient hearts of any athletes in terms of volumetric ability. I would also surmise their lung capacity is more efficent than a lifter's.

Since cardio was defined here way back as "heart and lung" conditioning, an ex that increases heart rate alone is only half the equation.

"Long sets of step-ups" I would consider cardio, but if you do them slow you're not going to be breathing very heavy.

The problem with using weight-load for cardio is , you can't keep this up for too long because of the weight load. You get gassed from the weight long before you've tapped into your cardio reserves.

So while doing 20 reps of weighted breathing squats might make you inhale a little air and have your heart pumping, it isn't going to be for very long at all. Unless you're doing repeated sets and happen to be in fantastic condition. But even then it's a "broken chain" effect. You wait between sets.

And the more sets you do, the more you'll be gassed from the weight.

(Which may or may not be a plus, depending on your goals).

But if I want to do cardio where the lungs are involed 100%, I'm going to have to do something of a sustained nature where the ex is forcing me to increase inhalation rate on a prolonged basis.

On another note:- I think there is much too much emphasis on heart rate monitoring for cardio. I personally don't agree there is a "fat burning zone". The minute you step on an eliptical and start pedalling, you are burning calories. The slower you go the less you burn. The faster you go the more you burn.

Your body will tell you if it doesn't like the rate you are pedalling after awhile. Because you will really have to exert yourself to do it. If you are going too slow, you KNOW you are going too slow.

LISS is good in certain applications. HIIT is good in certain applications.

But I like HIIT for the lung work.

I don't monitor heart rate. Since it's virtually impossible to keep your heart at a constant rate while exing. And if my heart rate happens to be 135 instead of 130...so what.

If you're a Boston Marathon runner, your heart rate is not going to be constant throughout the race at all.

If you walk a couple of miles around your neighborhood, your heart rate will fluctuate during.

The guy that gets on the eliptical and tries to hold his heart rate at 120 for 25 minutes may actually be doing himself a disservice.

If he'd forgotten about that and gone for a random HIIT session instead he'd have probably have burned more calories and given his lungs a better workout IMO.

I like LISS for days when I'm still a little bit fatigued from a previous workout.. but want to get circulatory stimulation and bloodflow without depleting my reserves.

Bit I'll do HIIT for out and out cardio.

I have found that doing breathing Squats and the like does not give me anywhere near the lung efficiency and wind, as doing something something like HIIT or other ex where you are forced to increase breathing rate for a sustained period.

What was the sets, loads, and reps, that you tried?

So, cardio is something that doesn't produce lasting effects. You lose it if you ever stop for a short while. Interesting, does anyone know why?:confused:

Some effects of exercise are long lasting, others are not. For example increased blood vessels, circulation, lung capacity, these are long lasting. This is because it takes a long time to get your body to build them, and then even longer before your body undoes them.

Some of the metabolic chemistry stuff is short lasting. This is beacuse your body doesn't want to waste metabolic capacity. So if you don't use it? You lose it.

This is not really different than resistance exercise. Some of the effects are long lasting - like muscle mass - and some of the effects are short lasting - neural and metabolic stuff. So for example if you want to be a competitive high jumper, you have to train before a big meet, and not just rely on last year's muscles.

Almost all forms of exercise have short and long term effects.

I think zen mentioned before that while VO2 max goes down realatively quickly while sedentary - 2 weeks?

The sharp edge of VO2max gets dull in about three days.

It's two weeks to see improvement.

Keep in mind that a high VO2max depends on a lot of things - there is a huge "weakest link in the chain" effect. Your liver is always up to no good if you haven't exercised with the past couple days, and some of the stuff your liver does will take the edge off your VO2max. The 55 in my signature is the highest VO2max I recorded (personal best). But I normally maintain about 50. I do a rest week now and then, and that gets me back to the high 40s.

On the other hand, the stuff like increased lung capacity, better blood flow, etc., that stuff doesn't go down much at all even if I were to rest for weeks. This is why the VO2max doesn't go back to 23 when I have a deload week. 23 is where my VO2max was when I was way out of shape a few years ago.

But on lots of lifts my heart rate increases significantly while I'm barely breathing hard at all.

Sounds like you need to do longer sets.

3 days to a month is a very short time to see reversals. how long does it take to build "Wind" or VO2max? or they the same? I thought we could only estimated VO2max, because of the expense of getting a true measure. if we don't use a complex process which requires the analysis of expired gases while performing a maximal exercise test. What factors could throw off the measure so they might be useless?

I suppose the simple measures might be like the Navy body measurement way of estimating % bodyfat. But even that measurement can show the rapid loss, right?

Mannishboy....that was my point..just increasing the heart rate alone is not the same.

Wow, you're long winded :lol:

But as I said, it definitely transfers for me to other things in life, wind, HR, whatever.

Maybe it's how what you are doing. I see nothing special about traditional cardio that you can't recreate in more full body ways with other implements.

As for being able to do extended sets, you can train for that. I recently worked up to 5 minute sets of squats @135 with no more than 2 breaths per rep. I couldn't do it to begin with, but it came on quickly. Same thing with long step up sets (I was doing a couple of minutes to a 21" bench @120, which is a decent weight considering the unilateral nature and time). So strength endurance is something you can acquire to make this stuff possible.

:read:

3 days to a month is a very short time to see reversals. how long does it take to build "Wind" or VO2max? or they the same? I thought we could only estimated VO2max, because of the expense of getting a true measure. if we don't use a complex process which requires the analysis of expired gases while performing a maximal exercise test. What factors could throw off the measure so they might be useless?

I suppose the simple measures might be like the Navy body measurement way of estimating % bodyfat. But even that measurement can show the rapid loss, right?

"Wind" is really a combination of VO2max and lactate threshold. They are not quite the same - you can get a high VO2max with short endurance if your lactate threshold is low and that person would get winded quickly if they exercised near their capacity. VO2max is how fast your aerobic metabolism can generate Calories, and lactate threshold is how close to that can you perform for a long time.

You can only estimate VO2max unless you have a gas exchange device with you. But the "only estimates" can be pretty good. The Polar "Ownindex" test based on resting heart rate is quite accurate in my experience, as long as you do it after a day of rest. If you do it too soon after a big workout then it will read low. (This is true of the gas exchange type too.)

The loss of VO2max from a few days rest is only a small part of it, and it's close to the limit of the convenient estimates. We know about this because people with gas exchange figured that out, but also because you rarely find pro athletes who need their VO2max to be happy taking more than a week off from training completely.

What Good Is Cardio, You Ask???

For lifespan.