Making your Cardio Consistent and Motivating: a Notion Cardio system template
Cardio is an important part of any training program. It doesn’t matter what kind of training you do, you should devote at least a small portion of it to some form of cardio exercise. After all, the heart is the most important muscle. But I understand that cardio isn’t everyone's favourite form of exercise: I personally find steady-state cardio to be monotonous and boring, and like most meatheads, I prefer weight training, yet cardio is still a great warm-up exercise, so I created a simple system that makes cardio both interesting and allows me to get fitter with each session.
The system
It works for different cardio exercises. As you will see it is most suited for cardio on machines like treadmills, stationary bikes and ellipticals. My cardio exercise of choice is running on the treadmill. I start by creating what I call a Base Run which is just a 3km run split into 6 parts. Each subsequent part gets progressively more difficult with the last part being pretty much an all-out sprint.
On the first day, I do the Base Run and then each training I try to make it slightly more challenging, part by part. The important thing here is to make as small a change as possible and to only change one part at a time. This is why it’s so useful to use this system on a cardio machine because you have the control to make granular changes to things like speed, incline and distance. And of course, you could also do something similar with a fitness tracker.
How to progress
For example, on the second day I would increase the speed on Part 1 by 0.1km/h to 12.1km/h; and then on the third day add 0.1km/h to Part 2 taking it up to 12.6km/h; and so on. By making these minute changes my body hardly notices any difference between each workout, If you try to make too big of a jump with each training you will eventually hit a brick wall and your progress will quickly plateau. This way I give my body more time to adapt. I realise that my progress will eventually plateau (simply due to physical limitations); I have no delusions that after 300 runs I will turn into Usain Bolt. But the height of my plateau will be much higher and take me much longer to get there, than if I made more aggressive changes. You want to be like the tortoise in The Tortoise and the Hare. Consistency is key.
It is extremely satisfying and motivating to know that I am getting better with each run. Although gradually, I am making progress. The numbers don’t lie!
I use a Notion template to track all my progress.
In the first column, I record the date of the run. In the second, I record the run number and the improvement I made: you can see that I was a bit ambitious with the first few runs by making improvement to multiple parts of the run (this was a mistake). Columns four to nine have the details of each part and the last column has the stats from each run which I get from the treadmill. The two main changes I make day to day is increasing the speed of a part or slightly increasing the distance of the last part of the run, eventually, I will start increasing the incline.
After 20 runs, the runs feel the same as if I’ve just started and I am really happy with my progress and I can’t wait to see what my running log will look like after 100 runs.
How to replicate the system
1.Pick a cardio exercise that you can make gradual changes to. Again, this works best if you do this on some cardio machine, as you would have precise control over speed and distance. If you do use something like a treadmill at the gym, then try and use the same treadmill each time. There can be slight unobservable differences (like in the speed) between treadmills, depending on the model and how long the machine has been in use.
2. Create your own Base Run. This means splitting the workout into parts. Make it your own. Where you want to start is up to you. Here are two tips: Increase the difficultly with each subsequent part of the Run and don’t make it too difficult: Think “challenging but doable”.
3. With each workout, make small improvements to each part. The smaller the improvement; the better. A few ways to make improvements:
- Increasing speeds
- Increasing the distance
- Decreasing the distance of prior parts and increasing the distance of subsequent parts (like decreasing Part 1 by 10m and at the same time increasing Part 2 by 10m).
- Increasing the incline
4. Record your progress. Using the template makes this easy: I just need to duplicate the previous run and then change the appropriate parts. You can download a copy of the template I use here.
With this system, I no longer dread doing cardio. I look forward to improving with each run and cardio becomes a highlight of my training.