"Useless Cardio"? Try Tempo Training

These days, cardiovascular training is getting a bad rap. Some of it comes from the usual cyclical swing of exercise preferences (most proponents of HIIT today don't know that endurance cardio training became popular 40 years ago as a reaction to the overuse of HIIT training during the 1960s), some of it is due to new research which has popularized the long-known benefits of high-intensity training, but it also comes from the fact that many people actually DO large volumes of low-level cardio without sufficient focus and without incorporating other elements into their training.

However, there IS a form of cardio training that is anything but "mindless" and can kick your program into a higher gear. Between "endurance cardio" and "HIIT" is a form of cardiovascular training that can dramatically increase fitness performance--and can burn a bucketload of calories to boot.

It's called "tempo training", and it should be part of your training routine. It is mostly associated with running, but can be adapted to most cardio routines.

Tempo training has been the cornerstone of my workouts for almost 40 years. It was something I learned intuitively in my running days, years before I went back to school to study exercise physiology. I always enjoyed running, and I enjoyed running hard and fast, so I often pushed the pace during my training runs. I found that these hard runs seemed to result in a lot more improvement than even my interval training.

What is tempo training? It means working at an intensity that is "hard, but sustainable". Not all out, but a pace that is right on the edge and that requires that you stay completely "in the moment"--monitoring pace, breathing, keeping stride relaxed, etc. Sometimes when I am doing one of these workouts indoors, I lose track of everything -- the game on TV, the music on the iPod -- but the workout.

And it means sustaining this intensity for a longer period of time--a continuous 20 min for example, or a series of longer intervals with shorter recovery times.

How does tempo training work? A quote from a 2007 Runners World describes the physiology:

Tempo running improves a crucial physiological variable for running success: our metabolic fitness. "Most runners have trained their cardiovascular system to deliver oxygen to the muscles," says exercise scientist Bill Pierce, chair of the health and exercise science department at Furman University in South Carolina, "but they haven't trained their bodies to use that oxygen once it arrives. Tempo runs do just that by teaching the body to use oxygen for metabolism more efficiently."

How? By increasing your lactate threshold (LT), or the point at which the body fatigues at a certain pace. During tempo runs, lactate and hydrogen ions--by-products of metabolism--are released into the muscles, says 2:46 marathoner Carwyn Sharp, Ph.D., an exercise scientist who works with NASA. The ions make the muscles acidic, eventually leading to fatigue. The better trained you become, the higher you push your "threshold," meaning your muscles become better at using these byproducts. The result is less-acidic muscles (that is, muscles that haven't reached their new "threshold"), so they keep on contracting, letting you run farther and faster.

In an even older article in Runners World in the late 1970s, they describe tempo training as "aerobic, but delivering energy aerobically at a faster rate", While that might not be precisely correct, I always felt it was a good, simple description.

For runners, a tempo pace would be approximately 30-40 sec/mile slower than recent 5K pace, or 15-20 sec/mile slowerthan 10K pace. For non-runners, heart rate will be around 85%-90% of HRmax, breathing should allow you to give a brief (2-3 word) answer to a simple question, but not carry on a conversation (or even pay attention to one).

To build this into your routine, you can start with 5x3 min intervals with 60 seconds recovery (exercising, not rest) in between. Build this up until you can do 20 min continuously.

You can also do some "narrow intervals" where you keep a high average tempo, but change the workload up and down within a narrow range to give youself a little mental break. For example, today I alternated 2 min at 7.2-7.4 mph running with 60-90 sec of running at 6.8 mph--just enough to take the edge off and let me maintain the effort longer.

What specific advantages does tempo training provide over some other types of cardio training? For one, you can burn 20% more calories than you would for a comparable endurance cardio workout. Because of the higher intensity/duration, there is a bit of an "afterburn" -- extra calories burned during recovery. And you will experience notable increases in fitness level--which will allow you to sustain a higher workload during your other workouts and burn more calories during those as well.

I also think that many people are doing what they think is HIIT, but is not really. To get the most benefit from a HIIT workout, you have to go "all out" during the work intervals. Otherwise, you are just doing a very short interval workout. A lot of people THINK they are going "all out" but they are often only at a 80%-85% effort--which is great, but which is not necessary going to provide the level of benefit they are expecting. Not everyone--and especially not beginning exercisers-- is capable of working at 100% of max, despite their motivation and dedication.

Like all good things, with tempo training, more is not better. High tempo workouts put more stress and strain on joints and can push you into a state of overtraining if performed too often. Twice a week is more than suffiicient for this type of workout.

Tempo training results in a high calorie burn, great conditioning, and even a little EPOC, while being (IMO) more accessible and attainable for beginners to advanced beginners than all-out HIIT. Before you completely ditch cardio, give it a try and you might be pleasantly surprised at the results.