Episode #13

Summary

In this episode, Coach Kyle and Dr. K discuss the topic of cardio and its effectiveness. They start by defining cardio as exercise that increases heart rate and explain its goal of training the cardiovascular system. The hosts then explore the benefits of cardio, including improved mood and longevity. However, they also debunk the myth that cardio is the best way to burn fat, highlighting the hormonal effects that can make weight loss more difficult. They recommend focusing on strength training for fat loss and provide a step-by-step guide to building a health and wellness program. The hosts also emphasize the importance of considering individual factors, such as stress levels, when determining the appropriate amount of cardio. Finally, they reassure listeners that cardio is not mandatory and share personal experiences of achieving weight loss without traditional cardio exercises.

Takeaways

  • Cardiovascular exercise, or cardio, is exercise that increases heart rate and trains the cardiovascular system.
  • Cardio can provide mental health benefits, such as improved mood, and contribute to longevity by increasing VO2 max.
  • Contrary to popular belief, cardio is not the most effective method for fat loss. Strength training is more effective in increasing muscle mass and metabolic rate.
  • A structured health and wellness program should prioritize strength training, with cardio added as a supplement.
  • Individual factors, such as stress levels and age, should be considered when determining the appropriate amount of cardio.
  • Cardio is not mandatory for achieving weight loss; other forms of exercise, such as walking, can be effective.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction

00:39 Trigeminal Neuralgia Side Note

02:21 What is Cardio?

03:52 Think before you run!

05:50 Cycling

07:54 Swimming

09:36 VO2 Max

10:38 Cardio Simplified for Longevity

12:17 Fitness Myths: Cardio for Burning Fat

15:47 Strength Training

17:53 Where and How to Start

20:03 Allostatic Load for a Health Lifestyle

21:16 “You don’t have to run”

22:00 Conclusion

Sponsors

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Sources

People

Peak Performance 

Dr. K 

Coach Kyle 

Transcript

Kyle Hulbert (00:20)

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Peak Performance Podcast. I’m Coach Kyle.

Ben Kosubevsky (00:25)

And I’m Dr. K. Thanks everybody for joining us as we dive into exercise cardio. Is it actually worth it? Is it a myth? Should you just sit at home and sit on a couch and eat potato chips? Tell us more.

Kyle Hulbert (00:39)

I would love to, but before we dive in, I want to address my eye. So if you could see the video, I’m not sure how good the quality is going to be. It’s a little red and that’s because right now I’m suffering with a little thing called trigeminal neuralgia. So I have nerves that are coming right here that are just causing pain. this is something I’ve had for years. it pops up like once every year or so. Um, and then in two weeks it goes away. I’m lucky because a lot of people have to deal with it chronically.

Dr. K, have you seen anybody else with this?

Ben Kosubevsky (01:10)

It’s pretty rare. I haven’t personally seen anyone with it.

Kyle Hulbert (01:15)

So apparently I’m blessed with this nerve pain because it’s rare. But yeah, you gotta reframe it. But I just wanted to run through my stack real quick for the audience of what I’m doing to attack it. So I have for the symptoms of the pain on the face, I’m putting a lidocaine like spray on it. So I have to spray it in my hand and rub lidocaine which kind of numbs and takes that pain down. I’m also doing a red light, a juuv panel on it.

Ben Kosubevsky (01:20)

There you go. That’s how you can think about it.

Kyle Hulbert (01:44)

for 20 to 30 minutes a day. And then yesterday I went and saw my chiropractor who worked on the jaw and the atlas. And then I saw a PT for myofascial release in the face muscles. All of that actually helped dramatically and it’s probably like 50 or 60% better than it was a couple of days ago. So that’s my stack and that’s kinda how I attack things. I’m not a guy that likes to do one thing in isolation. I like to do a lot of things and then pull them off to help see what works.

Oh yeah, that’s my eye. So if you could see it, that’s what’s going on, but we are going to talk about cardio today. So why do I do cardio or why don’t I do cardio? but first, before we get into that, I want to basically explain what most people’s definition of cardio is. So cardio is, basically a way of exercise that the main goal is to increase your heart rate. So this can be opposed with strength training.

where the main goal is to activate your muscles and cause an adaptation to increase strength or muscle mass. Cardio on the other hand is basically training, strength training for your heart. So the goal is to get your heart rate up in order to make sure your cardiovascular system is functioning at its optimal point. Now, this leads to a lot of different conflicts of whether it’s good or bad or who likes it or what types of the best and we’ll get into that a little bit.

but the main reason it’s called cardio is because of the increased stress on the cardiovascular system, leading to improvements down the line. But there are limits to that. Is that a good overview, Dr. K? Did I miss anything?

Ben Kosubevsky (03:23)

No, that’s a pretty good introduction to it. I think, you know, most people don’t really think about what the word cardio means. They just know they have to go out and do it and, you know, run a few miles and then, you know, where do you go from there?

Kyle Hulbert (03:35)

Yeah. So, I mean, I’d like to start with like the different types of cardio and run through them and just go quick pros and cons on it. when people think cardiovascular training, they think running. That’s the thing comes to mind, right? Running. and this is a double edged sword because running can be good for you, but the vast majority of people don’t know how to run. So we run around as kids and then we go to high school and college and we go to work.

and we don’t run for a decade. And then one day when we’re 30 something, we decide to put on our shoes, lace up and go run a 5K. It doesn’t work like that. And maybe you can physically, but there’s issues with it mechanically. So you have forgotten the skill to run if you haven’t run in years. And so those biomechanics are actually extremely important. So when you’re running and you haven’t actually mastered the form of running, which is a very strange concept for a lot of people, you’re leading to causing

knee pain, joint pain, hip pain, back pain, all kinds of issues if your form is incorrect. So if you haven’t run in a very long time or you didn’t grow up in track and field or you haven’t run throughout your life, I highly suggest working with a running coach or a technique specialist before you get back in. Don’t just lace up and head out. You know, the benefits to running is all you need is a pair of shoes. I mean, that’s, it’s really easy and you could do it anywhere, anytime, basically. There’s treadmills all over the place.

So that’s running. Dr. K, do you like running?

Ben Kosubevsky (05:05)

You know, I did track and field in high school and you know, the day I finished high school was probably the last day I went for a run. So no.

Kyle Hulbert (05:13)

So if you were to go run now, your form would probably be terrible. It would be a bad idea for you to go run five minutes.

Ben Kosubevsky (05:20)

Oh, definitely, five miles, are you kidding? I could probably run like a quarter mile.

Kyle Hulbert (05:23)

Yeah, I personally do not run at all because I know my form is not where it needs to be. And also have a history of lower back pain. And when I do run my lower back pain just comes right back. It’s very quick and it’s not fun. So that’s not one for me. Next is a cycling. A lot of people think about, cycling when it comes to cardio here, you’ve got your, your Peloton, you’ve got my AI bike back there.

You’ve got road cycling, mountain biking, and this is a good low impact form of cardio that works for a lot of people. The downsides here is mainly postural. So there’s a lot of tightening of your hip flexors and bend forward position, which usually over time can lead to lower back pain also if you’re not careful. So cycling probably needs to be paired with some sort of hip flexor deactivator stretches.

and in glute work to make sure that the opposing muscles are actually strengthened and your hip flexors are not just tight all the time. Cycling can be taken to the extremes, you know you see the guys on the little road bikes, my dad does that like that, where they go down. That has even led to carpal tunnel and all kinds of other structural issues because of that weird hunched over position while applying force.

Ben Kosubevsky (06:42)

Not to mention the prostate issues with the guys.

Kyle Hulbert (06:45)

Yep. And that’s a huge thing. I think, I think it’s pretty common in the cycling community of prostate issues and decrease of testosterone and, and testicular injury actually is not uncommon because of so much time in that saddle. the benefits overall though, low impact. it’s a little more intensive than, running because you need a bike obviously. but there are some great solutions out there where like this.

This Carol bike here, I talked about it before on another episode. It’s a REHIIT exercise. So it does reduced exertion, high intensity intervals. So basically you do two 20 second intervals at above your maximum. So the whole workout is about seven minutes, including the warm up and the cool down, so you’re not going to get over tightening of the hip flexors or anything like that, and it gets your, get your VO2 max up and we’ll talk about that in a minute. So that’s cycling. You know, the next one is, is swimming.

swimming is probably my favorite form of cardio that I would recommend. Although it’s a little more difficult to do because you’ve got a pool. you know, you need goggles, you need a place to swim and depending on where you live, it could be cold outside. You got to find an indoor pool and it’s just a hassle sometimes. it is the lowest impact and usually most beneficial for your body because of the stretching and the reaching motions and the fact that you’re using all of your body, it’s very good at moving lymph fluid throughout your body.

And it’s fairly decently easy to learn the form. Although I do work, suggest with working with a form coach here too. So those are the three main that jump out. Dr. K, is there any kind of cardio that you think I should talk about that is another hot button for people?

Ben Kosubevsky (08:28)

No, I think you’ve covered what most people do. You know, a lot of people, they play basketball or tennis or whatever, just to get their cardio. And I think those are the big topics. But okay, so you’ve talked about, you know, cardio that you can do, which I think most people know about the types that they can do. But you touched on a topic earlier of why and how should you. Do you wanna elaborate on that?

Kyle Hulbert (08:36)

Yeah.

Why and how should you? Yeah. So cardio is good for essentially one thing. Well, two things. I’ll give it two things. A lot of people get mental health benefits from cardio. So they find that the cardio releases feel-good endorphins. And so they have this improved mood and stability throughout the day.

They feel a lot better when they do cardio. So that’s one main benefit. And the other benefit is really training your cardiovascular system. So a good predictor of longevity and how well you’re going to be able to live as you age is your VO2 max. So your VO2 max is basically a measure of how much oxygen that your body can consume. And that is a, that measurement is basically correlated with.

how well and efficient your system is at performing cardio. So that is kind of what the professional cyclist or the professional runners use to measure how well their cardiovascular system is, how efficient it is at using oxygen. So the VO2 max is a very important concept for cardio because that’s what confers most of your longevity benefits. So for longevity, you know, there’s a few ways you would wanna go about approaching it.

But the key here is not to overdo it. So you don’t want to overdo cardio. there’s a lot of people out there that have certain plans on how exactly you should accomplish it. But really when it boils down to it, if you’re going to make it as simple as humanly possible, it’s optimal to do two types of cardio. Each week, 120 minutes of zone two and zone two is low intensity. So this is like a walk where it’s not hard for you to

talk or breathe, you’re just cruising a hike and a fairly easy hike. I’m not talking like up a mountain face, but 120 minutes of movement, basically minimum per week. So you can break that up however you want. And then some sort of high intensity training to increase your VO2 max. Um, that high intensity training, um, recommendations vary from one to three times a week. I’m a believer if you do your zone 2

And you do one bout of high intensity training per week. That will be sufficient for longevity benefits. So that’s a kind of synopsis of, of why you should do it. in my opinion, should I get into why you shouldn’t?

Ben Kosubevsky (11:14)

Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think that’s really the burning question most people have is, everyone thinks cardio is good for them. So where does it not apply?

Kyle Hulbert (11:23)

this is where it gets fun. especially because I don’t actually like cardio. I don’t like to run. It hurts my back. I do like to cycle. I cycle every once in a while. I use my bike, not too frequently, but I do use it. and I swam very, very occasionally. but for the most part, I don’t engage in what people would typically refer to as cardiovascular exercise. and the reason I don’t do that is because my current goals are around body composition.

And this is probably the largest fitness myth out there that cardio is the way to burn fat. And this is pretty interesting because when you think about, Hey, I need to lose weight. The thing that comes to mind is move more, eat less. Right. So, essentially it is about energy balance. So you do want to burn more calories than you’re, taking in to lose weight, but cardio is not the answer because of some of the hormonal effects it has.

So as you perform cardio, it actually is an increased stress response. So it increases your cortisol and what this does over time. If you keep increasing and doing your cardio regularly is it trains the body to be very good at using fewer calories. You become efficient. Your body is excellent at conserving calories and storing them for later because it’s like, Oh my goodness, we’re doing all of this cardio. We might have to run across a continent to kill the bore.

to bring it back. We can’t burn 4,000 calories doing that because we would die. We wouldn’t have enough food. So the body learns to adapt and become super efficient at using your calories, making it harder and harder and harder to lose weight as you continue. That’s why you’ll see a lot of people when they start, they drop their calories down and they increase their cardio, they’ll lose 10, 15, 20, 30 pounds, and then they hit a plateau hard. And then that plateau just seems to stay there until eventually they burn out.

They gain all the weight back. And then in a year or two, they try it again. And they only get three quarters of the way as far as they did the last time. And it’s this cycle of move more, eat less. But what was really happening is you’re only training your body to be more efficient with your fat reserves. and keep them because of the type of exercise you’re engaging in. So for body composition, for fat loss, there was actually a study. We’ll put it in show notes. It compared strength training.

With strength training and cardio and, cardio only for fat loss. And the results were, pretty interesting. So, straight training was the clear winner for fat loss, strength training only, no cardiovascular training. Then it was quickly followed by strength training with some cardio. And then the cardio group was way worse in terms of fat loss. So this study essentially proved that.

If you were going to try to optimize your body composition, increase muscle mass and lose fat mass cardio is not the answer. and I think a lot of people just, don’t realize this or it just hasn’t been in the rhetoric. What do you think about that? Dr. K.

Ben Kosubevsky (14:26)

I mean honestly I even have to say I haven’t really thought about all of what you just said because yeah it’s the common trope of yeah I’m gonna run until I lose all the weight I’m gonna I’m gonna lose and I can stop running or maybe run sometimes and yeah people don’t realize that your body just starts adapting more and more and more and unfortunately the caloric intake stays the same throughout all that or maybe they’re even

eating more just because you know, their exercise is not even more hungry. And that’s where a lot of the weight issues start to come from. Yeah. So I want to speak.

Kyle Hulbert (14:56)

Yeah. So I want to speak because we, we talked about why cardio doesn’t work well for fat loss and it’s that hormonal reaction, that adaptation to sparing calories. But the reason strength training works well is because of the same reason. It’s the adaptation. So when you’re strength training, what you’re doing is you’re sending the signal to your body to build muscle, build strength. So this is like, Hey, I’m a construction worker thousands of years ago. I’ve got to go get these blocks and I’ve got to move them.

from here to there all day. And I need a lot of strength to do this. And so the body signal is build muscle. When you build muscle, there’s this giant cascade of effects that happen in your body, hormonally, and in terms of metabolic rate. So your metabolic rate increases drastically as you build muscle. And this is something that people debate all the time, because if you isolate like out a pound of muscle, and you say, how many more calories will I burn at rest

with a pound of muscle on my body. People will come up with a figure anywhere from 20 calories to 120 calories more per pound of muscle. But it’s not that simple because there are other effects in the body that are happening hormonally and how you use your muscles on a daily basis. it’s very common for people when they put on five pounds of muscle mass that they see that they can eat 500 to a thousand more calories per day and not gain any weight.

And so this signal that we’re sending to adapt to build the body is increasing our muscle mass, which is increasing the metabolic rate, which means you can burn more calories doing nothing. So your body becomes less efficient at burning calories. And over time, as you build more and more muscle, your body will become less and less efficient with those calories, using them quickly. And then when you go to reduce your food intake, then the weight comes off very easily because you have that.

the high amount of muscle mass and that high metabolic activity.

Ben Kosubevsky (16:49)

You know, that makes a lot of sense. You know, thank you for breaking that down in the way that most people can understand.

Kyle Hulbert (16:55)

Yeah. So that’s cardio, why to do it and why not to do it. so from an average person’s perspective, if they’re like, Hey, it’s the new year or whatever. I want to get healthy. I would not start at cardio That’s not where I would start. I would start by implementing a strength training regimen. and for most people, I would just start once a week, just one time a week.

Strength training, find a good planner, a good coach, a personal trainer who knows what they’re doing is worth their weight in gold. And just start it once a week. And then once you become comfortable with that, and that’s a habit, go to twice a week. And then you can go to three times a week if you want. But the vast majority of people, 90 plus percentage of them, will probably never need more than three days a week strength training. Once you’ve established that rhythm of strength training, then I think it’s a good time to make sure you add in

your zone two and your HIIT in that order. So once you have your strength training established, I would start sprinkling in your long walks on the weekend or hike, make sure you’re getting your movement. Just make sure you’re getting your heart rate a little elevated to make sure you have that longevity benefit. And then once that’s a habit, I would throw in the once to twice a week HIIT workout. And that can be stacked on your strength training. So you can finish your strength training while you’re in the gym. You can go to the air bike and do a Tabata set.

which will take you seven minutes, something like that. So I think that’s how you should build out a health and wellness program and what this looks like in time wise. So if I say January 1, I wanna get healthy, you know, with my clients, I try to get them to three days a week of strength training within about four months and then establish that habit for another couple months. Then we work in the zone two over month six to seven to eight. Then we start working in the HIIT. So the HIIT and everything is

basically a habit by the time we get to 10 or 11 months through the year. It’s a slow process. So if you’re not doing anything, going to everything is just not sustainable. You want to step it up slowly so your body can adapt. You get used to it and then you increase it until you get to the place where you want to stay for the rest of your life.

Ben Kosubevsky (18:47)

That’s a really good tip for a lot of people and, you know, a really reasonable goal that most people can actually start with.

Kyle Hulbert (18:53)

The other thing to consider when you’re trying to make sure you have a healthy lifestyle is your, it’s called allostatic load. So this is the stress in your life. How busy you are. Do you have issues with your significant other? Are you writing your thesis? Do you have four kids under three years old? All these factors can come into play. Are you advanced age? Are you 80 plus?

And so not everyone is going to be doing strength training three times a week. and then zone two cardio for two hours. So with someone who’s, who’s older or has a ton of stress in their life, this might look like strength training once a week or like one exercise five days a week, just do one exercise five days a week. and then you work in those walks with the kids or with the

and things like that.

So your allostatic load, all the other things in your life can also dictate how much you can tolerate and how much your body is willing and able to adapt positively to your exercise routine.

Ben Kosubevsky (19:48)

Okay, very cool. Is there anything else that you want to mention about cardio before we wrap it up?

Kyle Hulbert (19:55)

one last point, cause a lot of people don’t like to do cardio. and I had someone, I was working with a client and she said, “I really just don’t want to run. I hate running. and I think I probably do have to run to lose the weight, but, I just don’t want to.” and I just want to tell you, if you really don’t like cardio, you don’t have to do it.

If you do a structured buildup program, like I said, and you just focus on, instead of strictly cardiovascular training, getting your steps in for a day. you don’t actually have to do cardio.

Ben Kosubevsky (20:22)

Fair enough. You heard it from the man himself. Don’t do it.

Kyle Hulbert (20:25)

There we go. And as an antidote, I’ve lost, in the past year or so, well, I’ve gone through a bulk, but about six months ago, that year period, I lost 70 pounds without doing any cardio besides walking. So very easy to accomplish with a structured regimen and strength training. Well, thank you guys for joining us. I’m coach Kyle. And if you guys have any questions or.

Want me to go deeper on a specific topic or give more science or less science? either way, just let us know. Please send in a message on our Instagram or email us at, Kyle @ peak performance podcast.online. you can find me on Instagram at toxin free Kyle.

Ben Kosubevsky (21:03)

and I’m Dr. K or @ the osteodoc on Instagram. Thank you everybody for joining us and we’ll see you next time.

Kyle Hulbert (21:10)

See ya.