Every once in a while, it's a good idea to have a moment of gratitude for our most abstracted* organ: our humble heart.
That thing just works and works, valiantly pumping oxygen- and nutrition-infused blood all over our body. It reacts instantaneously to the shifting demands we place on it, and--most of the time--never takes a break.
But seeing it merely as a pump misses some it's magnificence, and obscures the ways in which it (like all the other tissue in our body) is constantly responding to stimuli and adapting accordingly.
If we make the mistake of seeing our heart (or any other part of our body) as a fixed, unchanging thing, we risk letting it whither slowly into dysfunction while we undermine it's incredible ability to transform.
So. While it's possible to get lost in the incredible minutiae of how our hearts work (trust me--I have, and it's a deep, dark Google-hole), I'd encourage each and every one of you to read and process what I'm about to describe about your cardiac muscle. I promise it will take about 5 min to read AND you'll finish knowing what you can do to properly honor that heart of yours.
Our hearts are responsible for one main job: sending 'spent' blood to the lungs (to get reloaded with oxygen) and then sending that newly oxygenated blood all over our bodies. That double pump that you feel/hear when you check your pulse is each of those separate-but-related jobs happening in quick succession.
But if we zoom in on what needs to occur for blood to get sent around, we'll see that the heart is actually engaged in a precise dance back and forth that requires both flexibility and strength: first, the heart must expand as it fills with blood, and then it contracts to forcefully send that blood wherever it's headed.
So that means that right after you hear/feel your heartbeat (the blood going out of your heart), your heart is actually relaxed and stretching to take in new blood. Or it should be.
The problem is that that's the piece of training our hearts that usually gets skipped.
For most people, when they think of "doing cardio" they think of the hard work that the heart does to actually pump the blood. Which is why they assume that getting your heart to pump faster must be better. Right?
Wrong! When the only way that you train your heart is to get it to beat faster and pump blood out with more force, you skip over the valuable chance to teach your heart to expand fully and fill with more blood.
This is why we continuously guide people to do the majority of their cardio training at a more moderate pace (Zone 2, or 60-70% of your Heart Rate Reserve), so that they can start training both functions of their hearts--the pumping and* the stretching.
This kind of training is not the kind that will leave you gasping and writhing on the floor after only a few minutes. In fact, we often describe the pace you'll want to find as "conversational"--as in, you should be able to have a breathless conversation with a friend while you do it.
But by improving the function of your heart as a muscle that expands and contracts, this kind of training will set you up for all those more intense levels of output that you might want to train or play with.
Now here's the kicker: Zone 2 training takes time, and there just aren't any short-cuts. (Remember, a main part of what we're training is the time that your heart spends in a stretch, while it's expanding.)
Which is why any strategies you can find to help you hang out in that Zone 2 and actually--gasp!--enjoy it are good-as-gold. So download some great podcasts, pick a beautiful route, and try out a few different movement options (ie jogging, hiking, biking, rowing, etc.... and here's a hint: go for the ones you enjoy but ALSO the ones that are most convenient). Basically, do what you can to make it suck as little as possible to start, and the endorphins you find at the end will do the rest.
I'll offer just one more strategy… the most useful thing I've found is to build a little community and intrinsic accountability around my training (somehow, my motivation is significantly impacted when other people see it--which probably says something about me ). Considering current shelter-in-place demands, that means we must look online for this too, but luckily we've found just the ticket with Strava.
Several of you jumped on board with this app when I first intro'd it a couple months back, and we'd love to have more of you; we even have a TFA group you can join once you set up your profile. We'd love to have you join us.
However you do it, I really hope you make some time to train your ticker!
Go be your own hero,
Coach Will
*WHY must hearts always be portrayed like a butt-triangle?? I think the actual thing is a pretty cool shape...
**Check out this article on how to figure out your Heart Rate Reserve
Image note: image is from Oakland School of the Art's 2019 Spring Benefit fundraiser event, accessed via https://thefoxoakland.com/events/osa-presents-heart-oakland (7/14/20)