06/25/2026
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but cardiovascular exercise is one of the best possible things that you can do for your long-term health.
It’s insane to me that influencers are on here telling people otherwise and it’s gotten to the point where I’m getting asked if cardio is harmful pretty regularly now.
I know resistance training is having its moment and for good reason.
Resistance training is great for your muscles, bones, brain, and metabolism…
But it doesn’t strengthen your heart, lungs, and blood vessels and it doesn’t train your mitochondria (aka your body’s ability to convert oxygen into energy) in the same way that cardio does.
Not even close...
So if you care about your long-term health you would be doing yourself a major disservice to not regularly include some type of cardio exercise in your routine.
It doesn’t have to be running, it could be swimming, cycling, rowing, etc.
Any continuous movement that causes your heart rate and breathing to significantly increase for an extended period of time will have benefits.
It also doesn’t have to be a lot. You would get substantial benefits of cardio from just 2-3, 30-minute sessions per week if you are working at a challenging intensity and consistent with it.
Intensity is important here. You will see the biggest adaptations and get the most benefit from higher intensity exercise.
Lower intensity movement can be great too, but you are going to need to do 30+ minutes of daily walking to produce the comparable health benefits that you could get from a few days a week of more intense cardio (PMID:41057301).
Also, I know most people don’t enjoy cardio.
It’s okay do sometimes things that you don’t enjoy in the moment BECAUSE it’s good for you.
This is part of being a human and living in a body that you have the responsibility to take care of.
The other option is just letting your body deteriorate faster than it otherwise would…
Then you have to deal with the consequences of that choice.