Ask-A-Coach: What is Conditioning and Why Does it Matter?

Conditioning is an important piece to the puzzle when it comes to your health & fitness. Simply put, conditioning is designed to improve an individual’s ability to perform specific physical tasks, recover from them, and can be performance or body composition focused.

Unfortunately, the significant benefits that are associated with doing regular conditioning are all too often reduced to the scope of just weight loss. While conditioning can be an effective strategy for weight loss, the other benefits it provides are even greater.

The hope of this post is to inform you of its critical role in expanding your health span, inspire you to make it a part of your regular routine, and to help put the conditioning back into “Strength & Conditioning”!

Why EVERYONE should be doing cardiovascular conditioning:

Reason #1

Cardiovascular disease is the #1 cause of death in the world

• VO2Max is an indicator of one’s cardiovascular fitness level and can be improved by doing consistent, regular conditioning.
• For every 1 MET (3.5 ml.kg/min) increase in VO2 we reduce our Cardiovascular Disease risk by about 15%!

Use It or Lose It!

• After the age of 30 the average person’s VO2 drops 4-5ml/kg/min per decade
• The rate of decline will continue to accelerate after midlife

(What this means – if you’re not trying to fight it, you’re risk of cardiovascular disease is probably going up by 15% every decade)

• The Vo2max of a sedentary 50yr old is equivalent to a trained 80yr old!

• As Cardiorespiratory Fitness drops, activities of daily living become more challenging.

• Vo2Max of about 15 is the frailty threshold – where you can’t really get through your daily life without assistance – the higher you start and the more you fight, the longer you can maintain your independence.

Reason #2

In the U.S…

• 50% of Adults have High BP
• 50% are overweight or obese
• 40% are pre-diabetic
• Alzheimer’s / Dementia is the most rapidly growing disease

Conditioning improves all of these!!!

Reason #3

It can be done in as little as 4-10 minutes 2-3x/wk and the intensity is specific to each individual and their current fitness level.

Here at Fitness Together, we customize and progress conditioning for each of our clients and recommend they do it following their personal strength training sessions.