Love Your Heart

This morning I delivered a VFitFest #7 special event class, 6AM PST, called Love Your Heart Cardio Blast.

The idea with Love Your Heart was to serve double duty during our live session, by delivering an epic 30 minute cardio workout, and also educate everyone on the importance of cardio and the different training zones.

(YOU can do the full workout replay here)

The Four Cardio Training Zones Broken Down

Training Zone	Metabolic Marker	RPE Rate of Perceived Effort (1-10)	Description	Myzone Range
1	Below VT1	3-4	Light to moderate movement Can easily carry on a conversation	Light Grey/Medium Grey
2	VT1 to Midpoint	5-6	Challenging to hard movement Difficult to carry on conversation	Blue/Low Greens
3	Midpoint to VT2	7-8	Vigorous to really hard movement Can only get out short phrases	High Greens/Yellow
4	Above VT2	9-10	Super hard to maximal effort Basically just grunts or single words	Red

Your Ventilatory Threshold

This biomarker, VT for short, is your ventilatory threshold. This helps measure is your intensity in terms of your breathing during a workout, and denotes when lactate starts building up in your bloodstream.

VT1 is when your body is burning equal parts fats and carbs as fuel. This is also when your aerobic system is working for you.

VT2 is that point in your workout when glucose becomes the main source of energy for your body. This also is the phase where you enter anaerobic training.

Workout like your life depends on it, because it does.

Maria Sogard

Benefits of Getting Your Cardio On

While prepping for the Love Your Heart edition of my Cardio Blast class, I went through several studies, course documents from my NASM personal training course, and blogs on the myriad benefits of cardiovascular training.

Some of the TOP benefits of Cardio:

• ❤️ Increase blood flow and lowers blood pressure by helping increase good cholesterol and lowering bad cholesterol
• ❤️ Helps regular blood sugar and reduce risk of diabetes
• ❤️ Improve circadium rhythm, sleep patterns, lung capacity, energy levels
• ❤️ Boost brain health by slowing tissue loss, improving memory, and increasing executive function which helps us organize, interpret, and take action
• ❤️ Aid in lowering RHR (resting heart rate) which in turn improves efficiency of the heart in pumping blood through the body
• ❤️ Decrease the following: risk of stroke and heart disease, depression symptoms, and stress

While this list is not exhaustive, it likely may shed some light on some areas you may be surprised to see.

What I hope is that this post and workout helps you rethink wanting to skip on your cardio each week.