The recommendations for cardiovascular exercises are to get 150 minutes of moderate exercise, 75 minutes of intense exercise, or somewhere between those two numbers if it is mixed between moderate and intense.
There are two possible reasons someone might be doing massive amounts of exercise. One is the idea that if a little is good, a lot is better. If someone is doing 400 minutes of cardio in a week in order to get health benefits, there is some bad news in the form of the law of dimininshing returns. The truth is that you will gain some more benefits from doing more, but the higher the amount is, the less bang you get for your buck.
If you go from no exercise to 75 minutes of moderate exercise you will start seeing some huge health benefits. The benefits keep increasing a lot as you up the amount or intensity from there. Once you get over those numbers though, to get a little more benefit, you have to do a lot more work.
The other reason to massively increase exercise is if you are training for a specific event. That is why I will be doing 400 minutes of cardio this week. That is why by the time my training is done, I will have a had a couple of weeks with nearly 10 hours of cardio. I have a 31 mile trail race coming up. I have carefully crafted a training plan to create in my body the physiological adapatations that will enable me to complete this massive race.
After the race, I am going to tone things back down to a more reasonable level. Rest and recovery is part of the plan.
Your exercise plan, or your training for an event should be planned intelligently. Randomly doing some exercises will benefit you. Having a long term plan in front of you based on your specific goals will benefit you a lot more.
If you want help with setting and meeting your goals, whether they include weight loss, toning muscles, or running a marathon, let me know. I'll be glad to help.
No comments:
Post a Comment