Conditioning and Cardio

Mark Brown

January 12, 2022

Conditioning and cardio are two things no human can really avoid doing. They are both important for athletes of all ages and skill level as well as for humans just surviving. They must be accounted for whatever training anyone decides to do long term. The biggest questions to me are figuring out which one is doing and why are they doing it. These are the central questions to answer because they will answer the question of how one goes about doing them. For me, the simple answer to the question of what is conditioning and cardio comes down to physiology: Conditioning is for muscles and/or lungs and cardio is for the heart and fat burning. Cardio could be described as conditioning for the heart and I doubt I would argue the person who presented that. The effect on the body, especially the organs in particular, drives the distinction between the two terms. In this first part, I will reach into what conditioning and cardio are then highlight some differences so they can be viewed properly. The second part will be to highlight the importance to programs and how it effects them.

My favored form of cardio is swimming. I like the way it doesn’t do more damage to my joints than I am already doing during lifting sessions. It forces the lungs do work in an environment that is not favorable to them. It’s also very possible I enjoy it a lot because I don’t do it that often. Most public pools in my area aren’t really destinations for swimming. In lieu of swimming, I will almost always choose walking on a treadmill. Yes, walking anywhere is good but treadmills offer speed and incline adjustments that help give the cardio a boost. In the past I would have put elliptical machines above walking on treadmills because it is far more of a full body workout but these days I am less interested in that after I’ve destroyed myself for 2+ hours lifting and working 8-10 hours. This is especially true after leg days because of the strain I have put on my knees via squats, deadlifts, leg presses, etc. I did my share of running/jogging 4-5 years ago and I did see a significant drop in weight but the focus on lifting in correlation with my diet going back to what it was saw it come back. Steady state cardio is perhaps the safest and best of the options because is doesn’t exert as much force on the knees. This kind of cardio is best described as the kind of cardio done throughout the day being active and being on one’s feet. While the heart very rarely gets into the “fat burning zone,” it never really gets to “rest” when one is being active so the heart rate stays just below the zone for an extended amount of time.

I prefer to do weighted conditioning because it forces my body to physically do more and that makes me more mentally stimulated. I lift heavy for a reason beyond getting stronger and more muscular. Conditioning is an act that everyone on a strength training program, regardless of the aims, does. This is because muscle is conditioned to accomplish more through lifting progressively heavier loads over time. The term lifters use for this as a concept is “progressive overload.” It is the core of most strength training programs, regardless of aim. This kind of conditioning puts a high level of stress on the body, especially joints, so rest becomes necessary to keep from breaking down quickly. Rest between sets is especially important for max effort and max intensity sets and lifts.

Heart rates during high intensity or high volume lifting sets regularly hit the fat burning zone for the duration of the lift and a few minutes after the set is complete. One can keep themselves in that zone if they severely limit rest times between sets. This “cardio lifting” tends to be heavier on volume and lighter on intensity. It is a very real strategy to use for bodybuilding. I have watched strongman contests where competitor’s heart rates were tracked and saw them higher than 200 beats per minute on deadlifts in the 800+ pound range. I have personally recorded heart rates in the 140-165 beats per minute range on my Apple Watch during my heaviest intensity and max effort sets, especially on squats and deadlifts. Cardio is occurring during heavy lifting sessions but muscular conditioning is the lead goal. Rest that allows the heart rate to dip back below the fat burning zone then back up into it during another set makes serious strength training interval training by definition. Dependent on the heart rates involved, it could be pretty damned high in terms of intensity.

I’m sure readers know where this next paragraph is going. One of the most misunderstood concepts in fitness: High Intensity Interval Training, aka HIIT. The concept suffers from the overstatement of one’s own effort level during training. It shares that in particular with another concept in the lifting community based on effort: RPE, Rate of Perceived Effort. It is extremely difficult to find out what someone’s true 100% effort actually is. It is the main reason why I work off percentages of my 1 rep max. It’s easier to track week after week. I have heard it stated by strength and conditioning coaches of all kinds that the idea of training is to get the maximum amount of growth with a minimal amount of effort. It is this idea that is the main concept behind HIIT. The best example I can think of for this is a person is planning to do 30 minutes of cardio on a treadmill. HIIT would have this person put that treadmill up at the max speed they could to keep up with the machine before it spins them off then rest for the next 4 minutes before they repeat the process 5 more times over the half hour. Chances are their heart rate stayed above the threshold for fat burning and they only actually did 6 minutes of work over that half hour. HIIT isn’t running at sub-max pace then walking for 4 and repeating that process over the period of time on the treadmill. Walking on a treadmill between running does not count as “rest” in this context because something is still being done. One isn’t giving enough effort for it to be called “high intensity” this scenario. If what I just described as theoretical HIIT sounds almost identical to what I did earlier regarding serious lifting, especially max effort and intensity, that’s because it is. Lifting weights just uses different equipment to do it. HIIT uses what is effectively conditioning to do cardio work.

The max effort conditioning that HIIT uses to accomplish keeping the heart rate high enough to burn fat without actually doing anything is the kind that is more commonly associated with the term “conditioning.” This is especially true for anyone who played a sport growing up in high school, or somewhere equally organized, that required constant movement like basketball, soccer, or football. This is the conditioning that focuses on developing a person’s wind capacity. It is dependent on the factors of effort given and the physical capabilities of the lungs in the person doing it. Smoking, vaping and other types of lung damage all play pivotal roles in one’s ability to increase their wind capacity. The benefits of higher wind capacity are nigh universal for every kind of athlete. They can go longer and harder than one whose less conditioned. This kind of conditioning is mostly sport specific but almost always involves lots of movement. For people whose activity will predominantly be running based, sprints will probably be the bread and butter. I remember those basketball practices in junior high very well. All of those wind sprints sucked, especially for 13 and 14 year old me. They’d still probably suck for 37 year old me now. Having higher wind capacity allows lifters to get in more reps during sets. It helps one be able to practice longer and get more high quality work in. Making progress in a chosen sport or fitness path is very difficult because the steps forward are incremental and the steps back are generally less so.