The Best Aerobic Exercise

It's long been felt, but ignored by most people, that the best aerobic exercise doesn't necessarily have to be a low intense activity, and logically any possible central adaptation should be enhanced by a more potent stimulus – in this case, an increase in intensity.

Even the concept of aerobic exercise, which was initially thought to equate cardiovascular fitness, is a fairly recent creation, so one should question its utility for the general population.

When Kenneth Copper, the savior of America's hearts, coined the term “aerobics” in the mid-1960s it was believed that any steady state activity that keeps the heart rate slightly elevated (such as jogging or walking the dog out) provides substantial health benefits.

And long story made short, this nonsense caused the cardio craze that we still see today in virtually all commercial gyms. Most folks still perceive steady activity as the best aerobic exercise because it would supposedly create some sort of central adaptation.  

Nevertheless, recent research and many decades of sport specific training tell us a different story.

It turns out that low intensity aerobic stimulation is by no means the holy grail of a central cardiovascular adaptation, and most alterations determined by this form of exercise occur primarily in the skeletal muscles as a mitochondrial function improvement.

In other words, your muscles become more efficient in absorbing/utilizing blood oxygen, and eliminating waste products.

Contrary to popular belief, more vigorous forms of exercise that utilize primarily anaerobic energy pathways represent a more potent stimulus for cardiovascular adaptations – increased blood supply through an improved stroke volume.

It's important to mention that this central adaptation occurs rapidly but also plateaus rapidly, and beyond a certain point the only way to further increase aerobic endurance is through changes in mitochondrial oxidative capacity.

For this reason, highly trained endurance athletes should focus on exercising below their functional threshold, and include only sporadically high intensity intervals. But this shouldn't be a surprise if one analyze how professional endurance athletes train.

The old adage “miles build champions” doesn't change just because of some new unfounded assumptions regarding the best aerobic exercise are made.

However, most folks have no intention in competing in a marathon or becoming pro cyclists. So the logical question: do they really need to run their brains out on a treadmill like a mouse in a wheel?

It's important to note that the aerobic adaptation is specific to that movement pattern, and cannot be transferred to any variation of it.

If, for instance, you want to improve your VO2 max (an important marker of endurance) for jogging outdoors, you simply train in this fashion, and eventually you will see a marked improvement in terms of aerobic resistance.

However, if you make only a trivial chance in the way you train (jogging indoors, for example) you would notice that your endurance goes away.

This occurs for a simple reason: the movement pattern is not quite the same, and therefore you have to take it from the scratch.

By the same token, if somehow you find a way to exercise only one limb you would get an improvement in VO2 max for that limb but not for the other one. You get the idea.

And yet, if you go to any commercial gym, chances are that you wouldn't find an available treadmill because most folks are still convinced that the best aerobic exercise is to run or cycle until they get bored.

They genuinely believe that low intensity work is good for their hearts, which puts them in a fool's paradise because they end up with a peripheral muscular adaptation that is not even needed.

My advice is to stop following the crowd, and start thinking for yourself. Don't waste your time and energy by following the advice of some self declared authority who “knows” what is the best aerobic exercise for you. Most of these pseudo-trainers are full of shit, and don't know what they are talking about.

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