P&P#40

P&P #40. Current Obsession With Cardiovascular Training Constitutes a Cardiovascular Doctrine and Not Scientific Fact

The Western world seems obsessed with cardiovascular training as the cure for most cardiac ills and problems associated with ageing or inactivity. Virtually every medical or fitness organisation stresses that cardiovascular fitness plays a far more important role than any other kind of fitness in enhancing quality and quantity of life, especially of the heart and circulatory systems. Aerobics is regarded as the fashionable and correct way of remaining fit and healthy; if resistance exercise is approved, if it is done with lighter loads and endurance as a primary goal, rather than with heavy loads for strength.

Some of the most extensive studies of the effect of exercise on health, however, implicate 'anaerobic' or resisted exercise. For instance, Paffenbarger's impressive study of longshoremen clearly revealed the health benefits of regular exercise, but what was not spelled out is the fact that longshoremen daily LIFT HEAVY LOADS, HOLD THEIR BREATH FORCIBLY while handling these loads, drink alcohol and do virtually no aerobic exercise. Admittedly Paffenbarger deduced that it was their elevated energy ('calorie') expenditure which was probably responsible for the health benefits.

However, this did reveal that ANY FORM OF EXERCISE, even heavy weight lifting, can provide health (and cardiac health) benefits if enough of it is done regularly. No research has yet shown that prolonged endurance exercise via running, walking, swimming or cycling is significantly better or safer than any other form of cyclic or acyclic, resisted or unresisted forms of physical activity of adequate intensity and duration.

If we are to accept evolutionary development of the human, then we have been hunter-gatherers, stalk-stop-start-sprint-lift creatures rather than cardiovascular endurance beings. When we started to build shelters and cities, we became even more reliant on load bearing, non-aerobic processes. In other words, were we not de signed more for 'anaerobic' life than aerobic life, so that it may be an aberration for us to become more 'aerobic'? Is our obsession with the heart just a latter day form of reverence for the heart, the ancient centre of our beings, A REVIVAL OF A PRIMITIVE URGE TO SANCIFY THE HEART, a symbolic act emerging from our Jungian collective unconscious? Or is our cardiovascular obsession scientifi cally warranted?

TOP