Chapter 8: Cardio Crash Course 121
Activity 15 min. 30 min. 45 min. 60 min.Tennis, singles 116 232 348 464Tennis, doubles 43 85 128 170VersaClimber, 100 ft./min. 188 375 563 750Walking, 20-minute miles, flat 60 120 180 240Walking, 20-minute miles, hills 81 162 243 324Walking, 15-minute miles, flat 73 146 219 292Walking, 15-minute miles, hills 102 206 279 412Water aerobics 70 140 210 280Following a Cardio Plan to Maximize Your Fitness .................................
When you get the hang of this exercise thing, you may find that you want
more of a challenge. Instead of being satisfied with a boost in energy and a
decrease in heart-disease risk, you may want to test yourself in a 5K run or
a weeklong hiking tour of Canada.Bernie Kalkbrenner, a funeral director we know from Duluth, Minnesota,
smoked 2^1 ⁄^2 packs of cigarettes a day for 25 years. One day, Bernie realized
that if he didn’t get his act together, he was going to become one of his own
customers. So he quit smoking and took up bicycling. At age 51, he cycled
3,230 miles across the United States in less than seven weeks. “I’ve never felt
this good in my life,” Bernie said upon finishing. “To be able to pedal my butt
up a hill without any shortness of breath — that’s exhilarating.”How can you get in shape like Bernie? In Chapter 10, we offer specific tips on
how to train for several outdoor sports, including cycling. The following sec-
tions also give you some general tips for getting in really good cardio shape.
Be sure to increase your training gradually; don’t go longer, more often, and
harder all at once. Otherwise, you really increase your chances of injuring
yourself. In other words, it’s not a great idea to do three 20-minute workouts
one week and then jump to three 45-minute workouts the next. It’s more sen-
sible to increase the time of just one of your workouts to 25 minutes and keep
the others at 20.The best approach is to increase no more than 10 percent each week. So, if
you walk 150 minutes one week, walk no more than 165 minutes the next.