Caridio: Exercising Power!

Cardiovascular exercise is defined as any such activity where you are using a whole body movement that elevates heart rate. Normally people think of aerobic exercise as Cardiovascular exercise, but aerobic exercise has within its definition the ability to sustain said activity for longer durations- 2.5 minutes and longer. In essence almost all compound movements can be considered Cardio, and if you can do it for at least 2.5 min it’s aerobic. This means that when talking about cardio you have quite a bit of lead way. However in the first article in this (Cardio) series I said that I would describe in better detail about why Cardiovascular exercise is such a great power builder for most people. Therefore let’s start with talking about power vs. strength.

So when people think of power and strength they normally think of them as one in the same, but they are wholly different. Strength as an aspect of fitness that refers to how much weight you can lift. However power refers to how much you can lift in an amount of time. So think of pushing a car 50 feet. The fact that you can push a car 50 feet refers to the amount of strength you have, but if today you can push a car 50 feet in 30 seconds, and 4 weeks latter you do the same car in 20 seconds, then you’ve gotten more powerful.

Many people would say well then you’ve must have gotten stronger too, but that’s not all that correct. See the specificity principle extends to power vs. strength in lifts. So if you take an Olympic weight lifter, who’s max clean and jerks 500 pounds and ask him to deadlift the same weight as someone who’s his same size in powerlifting (ignor the name powerlifting for a second) he’s probably not going to be able to do it- 800 pound dead lifts in powerlifting are regularly reached in training. Yet turn the comparison around and you get the same result; you’d be lucky to find a powerlifter who can dead lift 800 pounds able to clean and jerk 500 pounds. Therefore power and strength take separate training to develop.

So now that we’ve established why a movement under time, or power, is a separate task then strength, and that it must be trained for let’s talk about why power is good for you. First, as I said in the past article power correlates with longer life expectancy than strength. Second, power also correlates with a reduction in falls more than strength.

We all know that falling for someone past 60 is something that can result in serious consequences like hip replacements, and all sorts of other surgeries. Falling past 70 is even worse, and falling past 80 well you might have well have just fell into a grave. The reason why power keeps you from falling is thought to be because of the type of muscle fiber that normally has to be present to produce powerful movements- fast twitch muscle fibers.

As you age fast twitch muscle fibers are lost and intermediate fibers are normally converted into oxidative fibers. Oxidative muscle fibers help you last when you walk, but unfortunately when you start an activity: running, walking, etc… you use non-oxidative pathways for energy. Thus the oxidative fibers are practically useless, for any event that lasts less than 2.5 min; so in daily life this means it’s useless for almost anything other than standing at the kitchen sink, or sitting watching T.V. Oxidative muscle is much better at synergistic functions, and long distance events. Fast twitch muscle helps you go upstairs to your bedroom or walk to the mail box. Therefore as you age if you don’t train for power when you need those fast twitch muscles they won’t be there for you, your stride length will shorten and your base of support will be really hard to keep under your center of gravity making it easier for you to fall.

So if those two reasons for keeping power are not enough I’ll give you one more- when do you move slowly in life? If you reach for a can of corn you do it quickly, not in a slow strength manner. If you get in a car you sit in quickly, not like you’re carrying 500 pounds. (If you do sit down like you’re carrying 500lbs then it’s time to seek help). So powerful movements are functional.

Ok so you’re stoked on building power, why use cardio? First off there’s a benefit in using lighter weight for power training. So when you lift for strength not only do you normally lift your body weight, but you also lift the load of resistance. In cardio training you’re only lifting you, thus you can get faster without worrying about additional momentum that an external load would have.

Second, as I mentioned at the end of the last blog, cardio training is as functional as it gets. In life you walk, run, lunge, etc… why not use those as your motor skills to get better at? Furthermore you do all of those things in a flowing way. In other words you don’t just walk, or just run- i.e. you walk to a place and do something (even if it’s sitting down). Cardio training is normally a continuious event, but because it can be any gross motor skill compound movement you just do a yoga flow, kettlebell circuit, or a walk up stairs, squat, and pushup circuit. On the tredmill you do sideways walking forward walking, you get on and off the treadmill, and for someone who can’t do a whole lot of physical work it’s fast, natural, and it flows. Even most 70 years olds can walk for 1 min go sit down, walk for 2 min, get off, get on again for 3 min etc.. until they can do at least 10 minutes of tredmill.

Now normally no one builds up to 10 minutes of straight treadmill training. Normally once they can do about 5 minutes of straight walking their conditioning and mentality is good enough to start working on progressing to a more strict interval training protocol with an exercise more suitable for producing real power, like a touch and go deadlift, kettlebell swing, etc… . (If you’re wondering why mentality is important I’ll touch on it in the next article).

In conclusion I understand that until the ladder of treadmil training gets to be a time over 2.5 minutes it is the esteemed interval training, but if you’re dealing with seniors you have to build power in a safe way, and I’m not quite certain it’s best to stop training on the tredmill until they can do this one thing for a little longer than 2.5 minutes; walking even with disfunction is pretty darn important. Waiting until everything is corrected before you work up to a power producing exercise is great, but people need what they need, and normally they need it yesterday. If that need is power making someone in this situation do strength training in a very minimal corrective way until they can do strength exercises powerfully doesn’t seem to make as much sense as picking one exercise as functional as walking, patterning it and then performing it in a ladder format until until they reach an acceptable point for doing other power movements. I further understand that at some point, you’re going to have to cut away from the steady state cardio. My number is 5 minutes and sometimes a little longer dependant upon what their condition is. Then my concentration begins a progression towards swings, and then toward snatches. Since these exercises take a lot more tension and a mastery of an outside resistance I pick walking first in a lot of these cases.