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In truth, there’s no one best way to improve cardio. Some may challenge that statement by calling attention to the fact that cardio cannot be improved without consistent training. To them, keeping up a consistent regime is the best way to improve cardio.
A more informed individual could take that one step further by emphasising the importance of selecting the right type of exercise (technically referred to as specificity). And they’d be correct: consistently curling a dumbbell will never improve cardio performance.
Yet others could complicate matters even more by evoking the ‘essential training principles.’ Even consistently doing the right exercises will not necessarily improve cardio fitness if we fail to modulate the volume, intensity, and frequency of our workouts. After all, one super-easy ten-minute stint on a stationary bike every Monday ticks the consistency and specificity box. But would it be enough to improve cardio?
Of course not!
So, what is the best way to improve cardio?
When trying to improve cardio fitness, prioritising one factor over another is a mistake. While some factors undeniably exert a greater influence on developing cardio, they all need to be considered. For beginners or those who are untrained (or have never ventured beyond the resistance room), the simplest considerations can have the most significant impact. Here’s what I mean.
Years ago, I worked with a client who wanted to get fit and shift ‘some stubborn body fat.’ Before that point, they’d been largely inactive and spent most of their days in a sedentary state. Unsurprisingly, they found exercising unnatural and unpleasant.
But, having firmly resolved to achieve their fitness goals, neither commitment nor consistency was a problem. The challenge was finding an exercise that they felt comfortable doing. A person with obesity can be restricted (both physically and psychologically) to a limited range of exercises. Until such barriers are broken down, all other training factors will count for nothing.
The purpose of this anecdote is to illustrate the importance of seemingly unimportant factors – feeling good and enjoying the activity. Of course, improving cardio is always going to be an uphill battle if you loathe the exercise.
Four tips to improve cardio
In this article, I’m going to share with you four tips that can help you not only improve cardio but also enjoy it. We’ll look at ways to exploit opportunities to include cardio workouts into your week naturally. Furthermore, you will learn how to turn cardio into a competitive game by tapping into the power of fitness goals and training programmes.
In addition to the four tips, you’ll get access to an array of useful resources. These resources include workouts, exercise programmes, books, training manuals, and much more.
Best way to improve cardio quick finder
Best way to improve cardio #1: Learning to enjoy it
Though possibly the most understated factor, enjoying exercise is arguably the most important. The more we enjoy working out and keeping fit, the more we’re inclined to do it. This is true of all levels of ability and experience. In the NSCA’s Essentials of Tactical Strength and Conditioning (a training manual for coaches who train elite-level law enforcement officers), we are reminded that ‘Personal preference should be key when selecting a training method because it may lead to increased adherence.’
Countless studies have shown that people who regularly participate in physical activity – especially cardiovascular exercise – are typically at a healthier weight, suffer fewer illnesses and diseases, boast a better level of fitness, and enjoy a generally better state of wellbeing.
But considering most people view cardio as a chore, the trick is finding ways to enjoy working out. Dr Kenneth Cooper – who is widely regarded as the grandfather of aerobics (he wrote the book on the subject) – has some simple strategies that can help you enjoy cardio.
How to enjoy cardio
In his important book, The Aerobics Program For Total Well-Being, Dr Kenneth Cooper tells us that ‘the secret of enjoying exercise is rather simple.’ According to Cooper, the secret consists of three key ingredients.
First, you’ve got to understand what types of exercise best serve your training goal. This is important because by regularly engaging in the right exercises, you’ll make quicker progress. Seeing your body and physicality change for the better is highly motivational.
Cardio for life
Second, once you’ve pinned down a selection of exercises that align with your goal, you’ve now got to pick the ones you’ll enjoy doing. Cooper goes so far as to say that the exercise you pick should be ‘one that you can stick with indefinitely, perhaps for the rest of your life,’ (The Aerobics Program For Total Well-Being).
When it comes to selecting a cardio exercise, you have a comparatively limited range of choices. For example, there are over 50 different kettlebell exercises and probably double that amount for bodyweight movements. In contrast, you can count the number of reasonably accessible cardio exercises on two hands: 1) running; 2) swimming; 3) rowing; 4) cycling; 5) skipping; 6) cross-trainer; 7) ski-erg; 8) cross trainer; 9) airdyne cycling.
Cardio programme
The third and final secret ingredient to enjoying exercise involves scheduling a ‘programme for pursuing the activity’ and committing ‘yourself to following it for at least 6 weeks.’ A short-duration training program provides you with time to form a friendship with the cardio exercise (after all, you’ll be spending a lifetime together). In addition, six weeks is enough time for those all-important physiological adaptations to take place.
Related: Get started with this Plan to Row a Marathon >
Best way to improve cardio #2: Keep consistent
I started with enjoying exercise because enjoyment and what it promotes is a prerequisite of consistency, the single most important factor for developing cardio. Mark Finch, who is an endurance training expert, brings our attention to this fact when he reminds us that ‘Half an hour every day is far better than one hour every second day.’ A similar sentiment is stated more emphatically in the NSCA’s Essentials of Tactical Strength and Conditioning. ‘The greatest benefits of aerobic endurance exercise are achieved through consistent, long-term participation.’
Several reasons explain why the little-and-often approach to cardio training is superior to the long-and-infrequent approach. I’ll briefly explore the two most salient reasons.
Short cardio workouts are less intimidating
Shorter duration sessions – between 30 to 45 minutes – are far less daunting than those of a longer duration – between 60 to 90 minutes. What would you rather do right now, a 3.5-mile run or a 7-mile run? No doubt you opted for a 3.5-miler. Why? In addition to requiring a lot less effort, the 3.5-mile distance is more manageable. The more manageable a workout is, the more likely you are to engage with it – which improves participation levels and consistency.
These factors feed into the second reason that supports the little-and-often approach to cardio training.
Improving cardio fitness is a result of multiple advantageous adaptations to our cardio-respiratory system. According to Daniel Liberman, author of Exercised: The Science of Physical Activity, Rest & Health, regular participation in aerobic exercise will result in a structurally larger and physically stronger heart. Also, the diameter of veins enlarges which facilitates greater blood flow. That’s not all. The number of capillaries increases which in turn increases the availability of oxygenated blood to the working muscles. An impressive range of adaptations I think you’ll agree. Yet we’ve only scratched the surface of the benefits of cardio.
But the point I want to make is that these adaptations don’t take place overnight. They are the gradual and progressive culmination of consistent participation in cardio exercise. Taking frequent breaks from training disrupts this process. If the breaks become frequent enough, this can result in three outcomes: 1) progress slows; 2) stagnation – no improvement takes place; 3) regression or ‘involution’ – any fitness gains accrued are lost and hypertrophy gives to atrophy.
How to keep consistent
Now that we’ve assessed the importance of consistency, the obvious next question is: how do we remain faithful to our training routine? Faithful enough so that we can bag some of those physiological adaptations.
Below, I’ve outlined three tips that can help you improve consistency. The tips draw from tried and tested methods for maintaining persistent participation.
Tip #1: Start a training programme. As well as providing you with a structured routine to follow, a programme can remove the burden of having to continually create new workouts. (If you need a cardio programme, 80/20 Running provides a wealth of resources and important training advice.)
Tip #2: Make your reasons for exercising explicit. Whatever your reasons are for wanting to improve cardio, writing them down and placing them somewhere prominent can help fuel motivation.
Tip #3: Access extrinsic accountability opportunities. For some people, intrinsic motivational factors are not quite compelling enough to keep them on the straight and narrow. But outsourcing motivation (and accountability) can make all the difference. Popular extrinsic (external) factors include exercise clubs, paying a personal trainer, signing up for an event – such as a half marathon – forming a fitness friendship, making public pledges (backed by a wager), and raising money for charity.
Best way to improve cardio #3: Set goals
Goal setting serves a similar function as the consistency tip above. However, the power of goal setting is arguably greater because it combines both intrinsic and extrinsic motivational factors.
For example, a training goal is typically the manifestation of a perceived desirable outcome. That is, the desire to be healthier or to progress toward a body composition that aligns with your idealised self-body image (or just to show off at the beach).
The external power of a training goal is that it provides you with a means of measuring progress. While health is hard to measure, fitness and improved body composition are not. Setting yourself the goal of losing, say, 14 lbs in six months, provides an objective target to aim for.
Furthermore, if you used a training programme to help reach that target, you can divide your main goal (to lose 14 lbs in 6 months) into smaller sub-goals or ‘milestones’ (to lose 2.2 lbs every month). These milestones would be spaced evenly across your programme. The feedback from this method enables you to monitor changes in body weight and, if required, make adaptations to your training routine (and lifestyle).
The power of goal setting
As far as I know, goal setting is the best way to improve cardio. The reason is that having a goal to aim for boosts motivation which in turn promotes exercise participation. In addition, goal setting involves many other training mechanisms and processes that together compound its effectiveness.
For instance, as mentioned briefly above, goals work best when incorporated into a structured programme. Also, goals can be written down and posted somewhere prominent. (According to Charles Duhigg, author of Smarter, Faster, Better, making your goals ‘visible’ is a pillar of the positive habit formation process). And, if your goal is audacious enough – say to run a marathon dressed as a rhino – friends and family members (and perhaps even strangers) will be willing to donate money to a charity if you achieve it.
With that said, follow the three simple steps to setting a training goal. Then, get going!
Three steps to goal setting
Step #1: Decide what goal you want to achieve. A goal can involve fitness development, health improvements, and/or making positive lifestyle changes. Avoid setting too many goals to begin with – perhaps just one from the list. However, cardio is unique in the sense that it encompasses fitness, health, and lifestyle. Here’s an example:
Fitness: To be able to improve my 5-mile run time by 5- minutes (from 45 minutes (current) to 40 minutes (end programme target).
Health: To lower blood pressure from 137/90 (current) to 125/75 (end programme target) and cut out ultra-processed foods.
Lifestyle: To implement and sustain a running routine (current: ad-hoc; end of programme target: 3 weekly sessions).
Step #2: Once you’ve decided on a goal, you now need a starting point. Using one of the examples above, let’s say that you want to run 5 miles in 40 minutes. This is an admirable fitness goal but, depending on your time horizon and current 5-mile time, it might not be achievable. To make a goal both achievable and challenging, it helps to use the SMART principle. (For a more detailed over of SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timed – see our other post How To Develop A Strength Training Programme >)
Step #3: Now that you’ve established a SMART goal, you can further break it down into bite-sized chunks called milestones. If you’re using a training programme, milestones would be set two to four weeks apart. When you reach a milestone, this suggests that your programme is working and that you have advanced one step closer to your goal.
Best way to improve cardio #4: Vary your training
Varying our cardio training is of paramount importance for three reasons. First, ‘varying training modes can reduce overuse injuries that might result from extended use of a single modality,’ (NSCA’s Essentials of Tactical Strength and Conditioning).
If you only ever participate in one form of exercise, such as running, you impede the body’s ability to repair damaged tissue. Over time, damage accumulates eventually culminating in acute trauma – such as a pull, strain, or tear.
The second reason to vary your training is to avoid boredom. While boredom is unlikely to result in a calamitous outcome on par with overtraining, it can erode motivation which decreases exercise consistency. And as the NSCA informed us earlier, ‘The greatest benefits of aerobic exercise are achieved through consistent, long-term participation,’ (NSCA’s Essentials of Tactical Strength and Conditioning).
One of the most effective ways to maintain high participation levels is to vary your exercises and mix up your routine.
Engage more components of fitness
The final justification for variation has to do with broadening the scope of physical stimulation. Each CV exercise ‘requires the body to move somewhat differently, presenting unique stress to the muscular and cardiopulmonary systems,’ (NSCA’s Essentials of Tactical Strength and Conditioning). This triggers a host of additional positive outcomes.
Mixing exercise modes not only activates a wider range of muscle groups but also enables you to access a broader spectrum of the components of fitness. For example, in addition to activating every muscle in your body, a complex skill-based aerobic exercise (such as swimming) promotes endurance, agility, balance, and coordination. Contrast that to a simpler exercise (such as cycling) and it becomes apparent why it is important to vary your training.
Yet, irrespective of how functionally divergent each exercise is, they still ‘task the cardiopulmonary system to provide energy in an effective and efficient fashion.’
Tips to vary your cardio workouts
As I discuss in this Cardio Gym Workout, spicing up CV sessions requires a bit of creative thinking – certainly more so than it does for resistance training. Not only is there a fraction of the number of cardio exercises, but the scope of training configuration is comparatively constricted.
One simple way to mitigate boredom during your cardio workouts is by changing exercises frequently. To stimulate the CV system most recommendations advocate a minimum workout duration of ‘20 minutes of vigorous aerobic activity,’ (NSCA). As far as I am aware, there’s no rule stating that for those 20 minutes, you must remain confined to the same cardio exercise. You could split the time across two or four different stations. Example: 10 min skipping → 10 min rowing = 20 minutes; or 5 min skipping → 5 min rowing → 5 min running → 5 min cycling = 20 minutes. There is one rule for this method though. The transition time between stations should not exceed one minute.
Other effective methods of mixing up your cardio routine include fitness testing, organising competitions, using different training methods (such as fartlek and high-intensity interval), joining clubs, setting goals and training targets and entering an event (5k, 10k run → half marathon → marathon → triathlon (sprint, Olympic, half, full distance) → and the list goes on!).
Best way to improve cardio key takeaways
There’s no one best way to improve cardio.
Elevating aerobic fitness requires the consideration and implementation of multiple factors.
For example, enjoying cardio can contribute to improved levels of participation.
Selecting appropriate exercises will engage the right energy pathways and physiological systems.
Modulating training volume, frequency, and intensity can amplify adaptations thus enhancing the effectiveness of your exercise regime.
Neglecting any one of the previous factors will attenuate progress.
For beginners, the thought of integrating those factors into a training programme can be overwhelming. But initially, many of them can be discounted.
At the top of your list of priorities to improve cardio should be enjoyment and consistency. Until you get a regime up and running, so to speak, the rest will count for nothing.
Why procrastinate any longer?
After following these two steps – Step 1) Select a cardio exercise that you will enjoy (or at least can tolerate); Step 2) boundary three 20- to 30-minute weekly workouts (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) – start improving your cardio >
Never be without a workout
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About Adam Priest –
A former Royal Marines Commando, Adam Priest is a content writer, college lecturer, and health and wellbeing coach. He is also a fitness author and contributor to other websites. Connect with Adam via LinkedIn or info@hungry4fitness.co.uk.
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