The Best 5 Tools for Cardio.
We often see people visit their gym, plug in their headphones, change the TV channel, and blissfully pedal away on a recumbent bike or standing elliptical. It often seems like the only effort required is the actual time, as patrons mindlessly coast through a low-intensity cardio session pre or post workout. While innovative machines have made fitness more accessible for people of different abillity levels, some machines don’t improve functional cardiovascular endurance in the same way that these training tools can. For this list, there were different attributes of the cardio tool. Some questions considered were:
How easily can you manipulate the intensity?
Is it closed or open chain?
Does the technique have a huge learning curve?
Is there significant impact?
Is it manual or automated?
Skip the nonsense, and do cardio that treats your body right, and gets the job done. Stop wasting time with toy cardio machines. Before you select one of the choices, take a look at the diagram from IdeaWorld shown below. Check out the aerobic system. That’s the only one that uses fat and adipose tissue as a fuel source.
It's great to test yourself in different energy systems to improve your fitness, but the most common purpose of cardiovascular fitness is to burn fat and improve body composition. Find one of these, keep a steady state, and put the time in to get lean.
1.Water
As the owner of a classic comedically bad freestyle stroke, I’m not specifying swimming as the best cardio tool, though with good technique it would certainly be that. Not everybody has a substantial level of swimming ability to actually be able to swim for long enough durations to reap the benefit of the cardio session. While there are numerous other benefits of swimming, possibly enough to write a whole article about, the water alone can be an excellent cardio tool even for those without a solid stroke. Calisthenics and plyometric drills can all be done in the water, and with reduced impact throughout the movement. If you want a full body, steady state cardio experience in the water, try a half hour workout consisting of these, in medium depth.
High knees sets of :30-1 minute
Jumping jacks sets of :30- 1 minute
Tuck jumps sets of :30-1 minute
Butt kicks
Lateral hops
Uppercuts and other shadowboxing moves.
River-dancing
Pretend your shuffling at EDC…
You can even simulate some of your favorite free weight or machine exercises in the pool using noodles, buoys, or other flotation devices. If you are comfortable with swimming, you can performance exercises like chest presses, woodchops, and tricep kickbacks in between laps in the pool. Water is a limitless tool for circuit training.
Do any safe calisthenic (bodyweight exercise) and do it with a focus on speed and movement quality. Alternate the moves, and you can easily make a half or full hour workout out of this. Train your body to fire at full force, with the water to catch and cushion the fall. You will meet resistance in every direction of movement. This will build strength, and prevent some of the injuries associate with resistance training. There is not the same focus on eccentric contraction in water exercise. Eccentric contractions are typically the ones the cause soreness after. There’s a reason that many elderly fitness enthusiasts participate in water aerobics and aquatic training, but the workouts that can be done in the water can be beneficial at every age!
2. Hills
This isn’t running alone in particular, because not everybody has excellent running technique to manage the impact of hard surfaces correctly. Whether conditioning an elite athlete or an average Joe, you don’t want the actual skillset itself to be too difficult to learn to use for an effective workout. Unless the focus itself is on the sport of running, swimming, speed-skating, or any other endurance sport that requires a substantial amount of safe technique, choose something simple and effective for cardio. Running may not be safe for everybody, but a smooth, incline hill prevents some of the risks of running flat. The hill requires you to climb, forcing you to run slower, and shorten the path back down to impact, softening it. If you don’t have any access to cardio equipment, any hill can entertain your steady-state heart rate for hours on end. Walk it, run it, just keep on adding to the number of hills climbed. If you’re in the flat lands of the country, sorry, but there are more options.
Yes, stairs can be an alternative, but they are not as risk averse as the hill. Stairs are hard, patterned, and aren’t equal for everybody. If you had to choose a machine to simulate it, get on a treadmill, and jack the incline up to 20%, or the machines max if it won’t go past that. Don’t worry about the pace, it’s okay to walk slowly. Remember, fat is burned at a brisk aerobic pace, not a sprint pace. The incline will actually soften the impact, because the heightened surface catches your foot, shortening the distance of its descent. Your quads and glutes will get worked to exhaustion. if you want even more quad focus, you can backpedal on the treadmill slowly. Just keep your hands ready, and walk carefully.
If you want to climb Maslow’s pyramid, prepare for the incline.
3.Airdyne
Most rowbikes, the generic name, are an effective training tool right out of the box. While they make these row bikes more and more durable as human performance improves, this manual machine is an old staple that has no need to retire. Requiring both pedaling, pushing, and pulling simultaneously the row bike guarantees a full body workout. Sit in the saddle, out of the saddle. Use the arms, or skip the arms….or do intervals of only arms! These row bikes come set at one difficult resistance level, and won’t be an easy push for any athlete. Even if you only want to have a steady-state, long slow cardio session, you can do it with the air dyne instead. Steady-state is all relative, so you can push that bike as slow or fast as you need to for an optimal fat burning heart rate. It’s all manual exercise too. That machine won’t move unless you put the work in. What could be better than burning fat and protecting the environment?
Some rowbikes come with spin cleat attachments, but try training without them. The cleats limit movement and need for stabilization in the hips, but it would be better to develop that on your own! While more difficult, skipping out on the cleats during a row bike session will give you a stronger lower body, and preserve your joints while doing it. This may upset some diehard cycle fans, and that’s fine.
If you are training for a cycling race or triathlon, train how you would race. Wear the cleats, go aerodynamic. Fortunately, you won’t have to row bike your way to the finish line. That being clarified, a row bike race is an event that should get every cardio junkies heart racing. The calorie count would put Peloton users to shame.
4. Versaclimber
Nobody on Earth enjoys this machine, and nobody on Earth can butcher the technique. The VersaClimber is closed chain, easily adjustable, and a simple manual machine that can put people through rigorous muscular endurance and cardio sessions. You mimic a climb throughout the exercise, except with the ability to change your stride length or resistance when needed. This one will be tough to do for long periods of time at first, but it can get you shredded. No body part is spared during a Versaclimbersession. It’s like doing thousand’s of reps of a light Pull-down or leg press. The machine measures your distance based on stride height and speed, you can adjust the resistance. To get started, set a timer for 15 minutes, and don’t.Stop.Moving. The initial sessions on the climber are challenging, but like any endurance event, the body will quickly adapt…if you keep at it. People use the climber for sprints, but a long trail climb will sear fat like nothing else, and at the cost of zero impact! Your quads will scream, be prepared.
To put it in perspective, a mile on the climber took me 36 minutes to complete. A mile of climbing feels excruciating compared to a mile of running, and will burn even more calories than the running would. Add time with high resistance on the climber, and you’ll feel like you completed a full body resistance training session. Trainers are often seen putting clients through quick intervals or sprints on the climber, but lower longer intensities can be done as well. Rise Nation has taken this concept and run with this, offering 30 minute Versaclimber classes at variable rhythms and resistance. It’s not impossible to stay on for that long, just very difficult. This will all be harder work than that same amount of time on the elliptical, but it will also get you in better shape than that half, or even full hour on the elliptical. Would you rather train the easy way, or the right way?
I wish I could suggest strapping on a bilet and scaling the side of a cliff, but as a Floridian, I know that’s not going to be convenient enough. Screw falling to your death, and hop on this machine.
5. Heavy Bag-Striking Practice
Start with this one carefully, and experience a full body cardio session with a boxing/kickboxing workout. Hitting things takes energy out of you. The best fighters of all kinds had to have some level of cardiovascular endurance, often brought about by long jumprope sessions, running, and striking practice. Learn some safe, basic punches and kicks, and starting working combos and strikes on a heavy bag. Boxing rounds are 3 minutes, MMA rounds are 5. Set timers and rest intervals to practice either one. Don’t be afraid to work shorter, harder sessions either. Along with a controlled 5 minute bag round, a hard 90 seconds can take you over the lactic threshold easily.
If you want to simulate the pace of an actually fight, you’ll have to try to match the rhythm of combat. A long fight will not be relentless intensity for the entirety of the rounds, unless you want to burn out quickly. While some fights are short, the endurance seeker should pursue being able to go the full length of a fight. Set times, set goals, and just keep putting work in on the bag at the pace of fight. Maybe you want to simulate 5 rounds, maybe you want to simulate 3. Whatever you strive for, the goal is to boost capacity. If you have both a punching bag and one of the pieces of cardio equipment mentioned above, you can create dynamic intervals out of these.
For example:
90 seconds of striking practice, 30 seconds of Row Bike, 1 minute rest. (2:1 Work-Rest Ration)
Or keep it sport specific.
75-90 seconds of light intensity strikes and technique work
Followed by
10-15 seconds of high intensity shots. Get the heart rate up
Repeat, then rest 1 minute.
Repeat that cycle as many times as needed, and track the total amount of on time. Take note of when performance collapses, and technique degrades. If you wanted to keep it similar to the sport, take a minute off every 5 minutes. If you operate on 3 minute boxing rounds, you’ll have to make those rest ratios smaller. The exchanges are much more frequent due to the shorter round time. Practice it like you are live.
Of all the options on the list, this one will be guaranteed to make you use Glycolysis or the Phosphagen system, energy systems that can’t be sustained for long periods of time, that produce high amounts of work . It’s hard to stay under the lactic threshold, where exercise is deemed aerobic, while you’re striking a bag. Because of this, keep in mind how easy it is to burn out. Don’t empty the magazine on round 1. Start slow, work the techniques of the strikes, and then ramp the pace as you begin to warm up.
Along with ensuring a safe level of technique and understood limitations, stay protected, and get some solid bag gloves and wrist wraps before you get started with cardio kickboxing on a bag. Hands and wrists are ridiculously easy to break. Don’t risk it with minimal glove, this isn’t a dive-bar.
Heart rate monitors.
One of these heart rate monitors might come in handy, for any of your training. This will give you an estimate of the intensity of your training, and leave no guessing to what energy system you are working in. If you aim for accuracy, get a heart rate monitor, chest strap preferred. Those are going to be the most accurate. Watches buckle and wobble around, which may lead to some inaccuracy in readings. Remember, less can be more! The fat burning zone is at a lower intensity, typically under 70-75% of your max heart rate. Those 90% and above cardio sessions are part of training, but shouldn’t be all of training.
For more information on proper Heart Rate based training, and access to some of the equipment mentioned in the article, you can train with Trainathlon at The Institute of Human Performance in Boca Raton, Florida. (Local clients only.)
References
Miller, Todd, PhD. "Bioenergetics." NSCA's Essentials of Tactical Strength and Conditioning (Electronic), by National Strength and Conditioning Association, edited by Brent A. Alvar et al., Human Kinetics, 2017, pp. 1242-529. 
David Corrado
David Corrado began his training career at age 18, volunteering as a fitness coach for students with intellectual disabilities in the Gainesville, Florida area. While at University of Florida, David became certified, and worked as a trainer and coach at the UF campus rec center. Having been certified through multiple curriculums including PTAG and the NSCA’s CSCS and TSAC-F certifications, David now trains in Boca Raton, Florida, specializing in functional strength training for working adults. He trains his clients at the Institute of Human Performance, in Boca Raton, Fl.