A Case Against Cardio (from a former mileage king)
We all know that we need to exercise to be healthy.
Unfortunately, the popular wisdom of the past 40 years – that we would all be better off doing 45 minutes to an hour a day of intense aerobic activity – has created a generation of overtrained, underfit, immune-compromised exerholics. Hate to say it, but we weren’t meant to aerobicize at the chronic and sustained high intensities that so many people choose to do these days. The results are almost always unimpressive. Ever wonder why years of “Spin” classes, endless treadmill sessions and interminable hours on the “elliptical” have done nothing much to shed those extra pounds and really tone the butt?
Don’t worry. There’s a reason why the current methods fail, and when you understand why, you’ll see that there’s an easier, more effective – and fun – way to burn fat, build or preserve lean muscle and maintain optimal health. The information is all there in the primal DNA blueprint, but in order to get the most from your exercise experience, first you need to understand the way we evolved and then build your exercise program around that blueprint.
Like most people, I used to think that rigorous aerobic activity was one of the main keys to staying healthy – and that the more mileage you could accumulate (at the highest intensity), the better. During my 20+ years as a competitive endurance athlete, I logged tens of thousands of training miles running and on the bike with the assumption that, in addition to becoming fit enough to race successfully at a national class level, I was also doing my cardiovascular system and the rest of my body a big healthy favor.
Being the type A that I am, I read Ken Cooper’s seminal 1968 book Aerobics and celebrated the idea that you got to award yourself “points” for time spent at a high heart rate. The more points, the healthier your cardiovascular system would become. Based on that notion, I should have been one of the healthiest people on the planet.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t – and that same mindset has kept millions of other health-conscious, nirvana-seeking exercisers stuck in a similar rut for almost 40 years. It’s time to get your head out of the sand and take advantage of your true DNA destiny, folks!
The first signal I had that something was wrong was when I developed debilitating osteoarthritis in my ankles…at age 28. This was soon coupled with chronic hip tendonitis and nagging recurrent upper respiratory tract infections. In retrospect, it is clear now that my carbohydrate-fueled high-intensity aerobic lifestyle was promoting a dangerous level of continuous systemic inflammation, was severely suppressing other parts of my immune system and the increased oxidative damage was generally tearing apart my precious muscle and joint tissue.
The stress of high intensity training was also leaving me soaking in my own internal cortisol (stress hormone) bath. It wasn’t so clear to me at the time exactly what was happening – in fact it was quite confusing, since I was doing so much of this so-called “healthy” aerobic exercise – but I had no choice but to give up racing, unable to train at anywhere near the intensity required to stay at an elite level.
To make ends meet…
…I became a “personal trainer” and I refocused my attention on training average “non-athletic” people to achieve reasonable levels of general fitness and health. Of course, we lifted weights as part of the overall plan (and I will go into greater detail on that important aspect of fitness in a later post), but for the aerobic component of their training, I started doing long walks or hikes or easy bike rides with them. My many clients got the benefit of me actually working out right along side them and I got the benefit of 3 to 5 hours a day of very low intensity aerobic work (well, very low for me anyway). It was refreshing and really didn’t take much effort on my part, but I knew I had to be deriving at least some small benefit from those hours.
Since I didn’t have much time left in the week for my own workouts, once or twice a week I would do a very short but very intense workout for my own benefit, usually sprints at the track or “hill repeats” of 2-3 minutes each on the bike. Lo and behold, within a year, my injuries were healing, I was rarely sick and I was even back to occasionally racing – faster than ever. Something “primal” was happening and it made total sense in the context of the DNA blueprint. I was training like my hunter-gatherer ancestors, building my aerobic capacity slowly and steadily without overstressing my adrenals or my immune system, training my body to derive more energy from fats (and not glucose), requiring far fewer carbohydrate calories from my diet, and building muscle with occasional quick bursts of speed and intensity. I was suddenly both fit AND healthy. My Primal Health system was kicking in and it all made perfect sense.
Humans, like all mammals, evolved two primary energy systems that powered the skeletal muscles of our hunter-gatherer ancestors 40,000 years ago and that would keep us all well-powered the same way today, if we weren’t so bent on circumventing them with our ill-fated (literally) lifestyle choices.
The first energy system relied heavily on the slow burning of fats, keeping us fueled while we were at rest or sleeping, yet also allowing for continuous or intermittent low levels of aerobic activity (think of our ancestors walking across the savannah for hours foraging for roots, shoots, berries, grubs, insects and the occasional small animal). It makes sense. Fats are very efficient fuels that are stored easily in the fat cells and burn easily and cleanly when lots of oxygen is present (as when we are breathing normally). Even if there’s no food in the immediate area, a well-trained fat-burning hunter-gatherer could continue walking and foraging for days without compromising his or her health or efficiency.
The second major energy system we developed through evolution was an ATP-fueled system that allowed for intense loads of work to be done in very brief bursts (think of our hunter-gatherer ancestors sprinting to the safety of a tree to avoid being eaten by a lion). ATP is always sitting right there within the muscle cells, available in a split second, and it is the highest octane fuel we have. In fact, it’s ATP and adrenaline that allow the little old lady to lift the front end of the Ford Fairlane off her husband when the jack fails. Unfortunately, the muscles can only store about 20 seconds worth of this precious fuel to complete life-or-death tasks. If our ancestors survived that quick sprint to safety, their ATP reserves were filled again within minutes using the other energy systems.
Furthermore, that brief burst of intense energy sparked a small “growth spurt” in the muscle, making it even stronger for the next encounter with the next lion – a true survival adaptation.
(Note: While our energy systems are actually quite complex, varied and interrelated, I have simplified things here to make it easier to “digest”.)
Bottom line: Fats and ATP were the two primary energy sources for locomotion: we either moved slowly and steadily or “fight or flight” fast, and we became stronger and healthier the more we used only those energy systems.
But here’s the real take-home message for us: We did not evolve to rely heavily on a carbodydrate-fueled energy system, and yet, carbohydrate metabolism seems to rule our lives today. Yes, carbohydrate (in the form of glucose) can play a major role in the production of energy in skeletal muscle, but it turns out that the heart and skeletal muscle prefer fatty acids (fat) as fuel over glucose.
Our hunter-gatherer ancestors didn’t regularly ramp their heart rates up for over an hour a day like so many of us do now. Even when the concept of organized hunting came along, it would appear that our hunter-gatherer ancestors relied more on superior tracking ability (using our highly evolved and exceptionally large brains) and walking (using our superior fat-burning systems), rather than on actually “chasing down” their prey. In fact, squandering valuable energy reserves (and increasing carbohydrate [glucose] metabolism by a factor of ten) by running hard for long periods of time was so counterproductive it would have likely hastened your demise (imagine chasing some game animal for a few hours and – oops – not succeeding in killing it. You’ve spent an incredible amount of energy, yet now you have no food to replace that energy. You have suddenly become some other animals prey because you are physically exhausted).
So, what does all that mean for us in the 21st century seeking to maximize our health and fitness?
Well, we know that this current popular high intensity aerobic pursuit is a dead-end. It requires huge amounts carbohydrate (sugar) to sustain, it promotes hyperinsulinemia (overproduction of insulin), increases oxidative damage (the production of free radicals) by a factor of 10 or 20 times normal, and generates high levels of the stress hormone cortisol in many people, leaving them susceptible to infection, injury, loss of bone density and depletion of lean muscle tissue – while encouraging their bodies to deposit fat. Far from that healthy pursuit we all assumed it was! What, then, is the answer?
Knowing what we know about our hunter-gatherer ancestors and the DNA blueprint, we would ideally devise an aerobics plan that would have us walking or hiking several hours a day to maximize our true fat-burning systems and then doing intermittent “life or death” sprints every few days to generate those growth spurts that create stronger, leaner muscle.
However, since allocating a few hours a day to this pursuit is impractical for most people, we can still create a plan that has a fair amount of low level aerobic movement, such as walking briskly, hiking, cycling at a moderate pace, etc a few times a week and keep it at under an hour. Then, we can add a few intense “interval” sessions, where we literally sprint (or cycle or do anything intensely) for 20, 30 or 40 seconds at a time all out, and do this once or twice a week.
If you are willing to try this new approach, but haven’t sprinted for a while, you may want to ease into it. Start with maybe three or four the first time, resting two minutes in between and, after a few weeks of doing this, work your way up to a workout that includes six or eight all-out sprints after a brief warm-up. An easy few minutes of stretching afterwards and you’ve done more in less time than you could ever accomplish in a typical “80-85% Max Heart Rate” cardio” workout. That’s exactly type of the plan I do myself and that I give all of my trainees now.
Let’s recap:
The benefits of low level aerobic work (walking, hiking, cycling, swimming):
- increases capillary network (blood vessels that supply the muscle cells with fuel and oxygen)
- increases muscle mitochondria
- increases production of fat-burning and fat-transporting enzymes
- more fun, because you can talk with a partner while doing it
The benefits of interval training (sprinting in short intense bursts)
- increases muscle fiber strength
- increases aerobic capacity (work ability)
- increases muscle mitochondria (the main energy production center in muscle)
- increases insulin sensitivity
- increases natural growth hormone production
The costs of chronic (repetitious) mid- and high-level aerobic work
- requires large amounts of dietary carbohydrates (SUGAR)
- decreases efficient fat metabolism
- increases stress hormone cortisol
- increases systemic inflammation
- increases oxidative damage (free radical production)
- boring!
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Technorati Tags: exercise, working out, cardio, toning, strength, DNA
Posted By: Mark Sisson
I can see both the points of Mark and George. I think any type of exercise, be it weight lifting, sprinting, long distance running, etc., etc., can cause harm if there is not enough rest given so the body can recover. Overtraining is a real issue with people. It causes injury and negative side effects regardless of the form of exercise. Long distance running is not unhealthy, in fact, is actually very healthy. Running a marathon everyday, however, and not giving your body proper rest and recovery, is not good. The same can be said if you go out and sprint everyday or don’t give the muscles enough time to recover from a weight lifting session.
I have a LiveJournal friend who runs marathons just for fun (by the way, she’s also overweight–I love trotting her out for people who think fat folks are incapable of athletic pursuits). But it doesn’t look all that fun to me. She loses toenails a lot. There were probably circumstances under which primal people had good reasons to run long distances–sometimes they hunted that way. But not everyone did that and, of course, no one hunted every single day. Maybe a couple, three times a week at most.
I don’t know if I’d call long-distance running “healthy.” Maybe “not unhealthy enough to kill you.” If you like doing it, do it. As you quite astutely stated, just don’t overtrain.
Luke,
Great stuff. I read “The Old Way” about the San Bushmen people with great interst and had concerns about how their practice of “hunting by running,” fit in with Mark’s excercise concepts. A recent Scientific American article about how well adapted we are to running long distances in the heat reinforced my concern. However, the 6-10 K per hour pace for these hunts reported in the research you found, along with the fantastic condition of paleo human hunters makes it pretty clear that most of the time these hunts were taking place within the fat burning aerobic range of the individuals.
Also, watching the Tour de France right now and checking on the heart meter readings, its also clear that those super atheletes are keeping their heart rates < 70% of max most of the time. (And they are still totally wiped out by the end of the month.)
Mark, Thanks for your work on Diet and Fitness. I look forward to reaping the rewards of your program.
Gene
Hello Mark,
Thank you for confirming my suspicions! I bought the whole HIIT all the time myth and did at least three HIIT sessions (about an hour each) for years without results. Instead, I got sicker, more tired, had aching joints and hardly lost weight!
After learning to listen to my body, I changed the way I ate and exercised, and it’s quite funny that the diet that I ate is almost like the Paleo diet, and my new aerobics workout is like the one you recommended!
Now I do lots of walking (about 30 to 2 hours a day at time), swimming and stationery bike cycling, all low intensity. I do HIIT sessions too, and exactly like you recommend – at 20 to 40sec bursts!
It goes to show that if you listen to your body it will tell you what it needs and wants
Hi Mark,
I am obese and a type 2 diabetic. I lead a walking group on Meetup.com for those of us who are under-athletic. I started this group to save my own life and hopefully help others in the process.
We walk twice a week for at least 2 hours logging 4 to 5.5 miles each time at a speed that fluctuates around 3mph. There is a short hill on the trail that we call “cute butt hill” where we change it up and take longer strides and sometimes a faster pace. I have been doing this since March of this year.
I am also a new member of an outrigger canoe club. I row once a week for about 45 mins to an hour. I have been rowing now for 3 weeks on Sunday and it affects my entire body. Every muscle hurts until Thursday!
I try to eat right most of the time, avoiding “white carbs” and bad fats. And I have still not lost one single pound! This scares me. What am I doing wrong?
> Thank you for confirming my suspicions! I bought the whole HIIT all the time myth and did at least three HIIT sessions (about an hour each) for years without results.
I think you’re confusing HIIT with “aerobics” You can’t do HIIT for more than 20-25 mins. And Mark is promoting HIIT, not against it. I think you meant “long slow cardio” was bad for you.
Yes, that’s right. I meant long aerobic sessions, though I did do high intensity sessions for 40 minutes too. I was crazy.
blue waffles are real!!
Blue waffles are not real!! Only the red ones are!!
Excellent fitness (e-book) however
no one ever said that competition level fitness was healthy or a model for general wellness! Your (current) approach is great though.
The 220-age formula should be dumped however. It is going to give a way-too-low level of exertion. It is better to use an RPE method if the actual MHR isn’t known.
Maybe If There was no spin class,only hills to climb on a bike,You would see those nice butts.I am sorry.But your way off on that one.Cardio,Done right,Is the best:O
What gives a cyclist a nice butt isn’t the cardio, it’s the leg work. Your butt is basically the tops of your thighs mushed together. What makes your legs pretty usually makes it pretty too.
Enjoyed the read, went well with my night cap.
That is EERIE. I just read a link from Facebook about a guy who lost 100 pounds cutting calories and running. I’ve put the link into the “website” box here so it’s not spam-filtered. Look at him. Is this what you guys call “skinny fat”? Sure looks like it to me. I’m happy for his weight loss but he could look *so* much better.
And right after reading that, someone on my friends list shared this post of yours. Are you psychic or something?
Great article.
What are the affects of doing hot yoga. I do it about 4 times a week in a heated room. I do find it increases my blood sugar levels, I am type 1 diabetic, no one can seem to figure out why. Does hot yoga increase cortisol levels. I have noticed my free radicals have increased by the increased amount of oxigenation.
I do hot yoga 5 x week. What is this classified as and is this too much.
Mark,
What do you think of yoga?
Good site: The theories expounded here are generally accepted now.
The short “intense workout” programme (as opposed to long runs!) to enhance weight loss, increase HGH production and aid all round well being is further discussed here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NmNS75w9hI
Mark –
I’ve up until this point run high school XC. I’m chronically injured (tendonitis, et cetera), stressed, and frankly often overworked during the season due to homework, extracurricular activities, honors academics and 35-50mi/week of relatively intense training. Is it worth running the sport, sticking it out until I graduate (I’m varsity), or do you think it’s probably doing me more harm than good?
Hi Mark,
I so enjoyed reading your article. I am a Middle School teacher, youth sports trainer and exercise enthusiast. I train my soccer players in the off-season and pre-seasons for “function” and subscribe to your “Primal” philosophy. However, I need to take more of my own advice. I have almost the exact same symptoms as you did when you were 28, most likely b/c I am undernourished and overtrained. How long did it take for your body to feel back to “normal” again? What did you do initially to stay active after you stopped running in order to make the transition into a healthier body. I am not sure if I should just stop all activity until the aches and muscle soreness completely stop. Can I continue to weight train and just back off the cardio to 20-30 minutes. Thanks for your advice.
I’m training for my third marathon and teach lots of group fitness classes at a gym at the same time. I also work a desk job, so all my time spent not working out is pretty much spent parked at a computer. I recently have been experiencing some serious fatigue so I went to the doctor and had blood drawn to find that my glucose was unusually low. I then did a 4-hour fasting glucose tolerance test to find that my body overproduces insulin. I had NO idea why or how that could happen until I stumbled across this article today. So I’m thinking I need to change my workout routine and start cutting back on the carbs… I’m starting to see a little clearer finally. I’ve always been really opposed to cutting back on carbs because I know that my body needs them because I put it through such long hard workouts… what an ephiphany!!! Less cardio. Less carbs. Less fatigue.
I do HIIT for my cardio conditioning, and maybe 30 minutes of moderate intensity running to train my muscles, but any longer than that and I’m just making it harder to recover from my workouts… at least from my experiences. I have to agree with this article.
Interesting TED talk which signals that early humans were dependant on running a lot:
http://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_mcdougall_are_we_born_to_run.html
It also deals with the injury-part.
My tipping point was when the prescription for seborrheic dermatitis stopped working altogether. For years I was filling presciptions for either a topical cream or oral sterroids. Both prescriptions slowly became less and less effective until to point they became useless. Every dermatologist I went, I have seen many over the years, always claimed the same thing. No change in diet will help. They were all wrong. Once I switched to Primal all signs of seborrheic dermatitis are gone. Curing this condition means so much to me, it is not all about vanity. Walking around with flakey skin all over my face (had it really bad) most of the time was affected all of my day to day interactions with other people. Most people will avoid “David the Lizard King”, and that is lizard king in a bad way not the Jim Morrison way.
Excellent! Just read this article and the Primal Blueprint book. With regards to running, it makes perfect sense, common sense even! Take, for example, the marathon run which is 40+km in honor of the guy who, according to the popular story, ran that distance without stopping in order to deliver a message… and then DIED ON THE SPOT. Isn’t it the moral of the story in this case to avoid such strains on one’s life if possible cause it can kill you and NOT to be inspired to emulate the guy?
Mark: I agree whole-heartedly. I have been a massage therapist for 14 years and I have come to the exact conclusion. I find people causing themselves more problems by overdoing it then under doing it. The exercise machines should be thrown in the ocean. They WRECK people’s bodies. Everybody should get off them. Walking is the best exercise and then I tell my clients to do whatever sport they want for fun, because they will then not be prone to injury the way the machines set them up to be. Walking stabilizes, calms, eases the body into homeostasis. Everybody should walk 3 times per week and that is really the minimum needed for overall body health. Breath, Walk and Stretch. After those are in place then Pilates or core strengthening. I am not big on upper body strengthening, because it usually causes more pressure and tightness which turns into pain.
Hi Mark.
I am a 64-year-old yoga teacher, and am fairly fit.
One of the places I teach at three days a week is at a University, and I take the metro to get there. It is 1-1/2 miles from my house to the station (I can walk a 15-minute mile).
I was thinking of walking to the metro and back again, and two of the three days a week, on the way home, (about half way home,) I would change to jogging and doing 6 sprints along the way.
Is that too much, or does it sound right to you?
Thanks,
Douglas
Back in the day, when I started mountain biking, my strategy was: sprint up the mountain to catch, keep up with, and pass the experienced mountain bikers… go hard ’till I blew up. It was intuitive interval training.
Then all my MTB buddies said “Nooo your doing it wrong.. just ‘sit & spin.’ You gotta learn to suffer.’
Ok, so I did. But lo and behold, I got slower. Only when I went back to interval training, mixed in some plyometrics, did I launch back into some speed. And I feel better and have more fun. It’s fun to “shoot in spurts.” haha. Cheers, recovered chronic-cardio’ers!
Dear Mark…I am new to your site. A friend led me to your newsletter and free cookbook downloads…and now I’m here. Yea! I’ve been reading all the comments and notice most are from young athletes. Well, I am not young and not an athlete, although very active…Still working as a hairstylist and feeling pretty ok. I’m a 70 yr old lady who still feels young and always thinking young. I’m 5’4 and weighed in today at 148.5….I have a vision of getting rid of this never ending mid-section. I have been doing Leslie Sansone walk/jog dvd’s and def feel better after… I like the idea of your blueprint and getting back to true nature with eating habits. I’ve been doing something like this for a while and trying hard to stay clear of whole grains, going gluten free…blaming it for skin breakouts I’ve had for the past 2 years. Not sure it’s working though. Do you have any recommendations for a senior in getting fit, loosing weight and building strength especially in my core and legs. Thank you for all you are doing to help us get fit and healthy.
I’m a 29 year old female, and I find that a 2-4 mile run and stretching a few times a week offers me a huge stress relief, not to mention that sweating is a great form of natural detox. Personally, I find a tempo run a lot less abrasive on my body than weights and sprints.
Burn calories from either carbs or fat. It does not matter as long as you burn enough in absolute value. It takes longer to burn equivalent fat calories than carbs calories from high intensity exercise. Being fit and athletic requires a balanced exercise routine. Weight lifting alone is not natural while running is. If you can’t handle the heat get out of the kitchen.
I’m not arguing that you’re wrong, but I have to say… I feel so great after a hard cardio workout, and fear I wouldnt get the same satisfaction from the low level cardio taking over. That said, I used to do primarily interval workouts in college, with weight training, and was at my healthiest weight and overall condition then, so like I said, not arguing that you’re wrong about the superiority of this primal plan in terms of health benefits.