The PACE Cardio Plan

(This a cardio related plan from Allen Sears M.D.
It makes a lot of sense to us as a format
to place whatever exercise activities you like into.)

“Have you seen the late-night commercials for those 90-minute “extreme” fitness programs? You may have felt a rush of excitement as you watched super-fit and attractive models jump around with their six-pack abs and bulging muscles.

Let me tell you about everyone I know who bought one of those DVDs and watched them at home… They came to a very disappointing conclusion:

They couldn’t do it!

The people in those videos are all professional athletes or trainers. They make it look easy. You have to be an athlete or trainer to make it look that easy because those exercises are tough to do the right way without hurting yourself. And that defeats the point, doesn’t it? If you can’t do it, what good is it to you?

You need something that can start you off at your level of fitness. Something that’s easy and accessible. Something you can do right away, without a lot of stress and anxiety.

I’m going to show you how in just a few minutes a day you can get noticeable results by doing the opposite of what all the fitness “gurus” have been saying for years. You see, much of what you’ve heard about getting fit, protecting your heart and dropping weight is pure myth, with little to no evidence to back it up.

Even if you did those long cardio workouts, they wouldn’t give you the results you want

Those 90-minute workouts build on aerobics and “cardio,” and then add an “extreme” factor that makes them longer and more difficult. I call it 90 minutes of “Cardio Hell”.

In fact, even when you do these kinds of aerobics at a more reasonable level, it won’t give you a stronger heart, bigger muscles or a leaner waistline. It’s a failed idea because your body was not designed to move this way.

Our bodies evolved over millions of years, and for almost all of that time we were living as hunter-gatherers. Our lives centered on hunting wild animals, gathering nuts, fruits and root vegetables, and avoiding getting hurt by other predators.

That means our physical activity was focused on short bursts of exertion followed by rest. The only thing “extreme” about it would have been the rare time you would need to run for an hour straight. And you would never have jumped up and down repeatedly like Richard Simmons.

When hunters hunt, they walk for hours, and only when they are moving in on their prey or confronted by another predator do they run, sprint or fight. And these bursts of exertion are short-lived and followed by rest.

It’s true in the animal kingdom, too. When animals fight or run, it’s a short burst of energy. It’s never an extended, medium-intensity effort, like when you’re jogging.

All of your body’s mechanics are tuned
to this short burst of activity.

That’s why jogging, cardio and aerobic activity ultimately leave you fat, slow and injured. Because your body is not designed for long-duration activity, your heart and lungs lose their ability for maximum, peak performance.

This is the trade-off you make when your body has to adapt to this unnatural type of exercise. Your body stores fat and loses muscle as it tries to cope with running for long periods or other types of cardio or aerobics.

When you exercise within your aerobic limit, you don’t improve your aerobic capacity. That’s because it trains your heart, lungs and muscles to work at a certain level. But it does nothing to improve their conditioning or help you build real strength.

And if you exercise at medium intensity, you’ll never hit your maximum exertion level – and that’s where you get the greatest benefit from your exercise. A study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine shows that men and women who exercised with short bursts of exertion followed by rest had:1

Lower blood pressure
Lower triglycerides (blood fat)
Higher HDL (good cholesterol)
Less body fat

What’s worse is that working out in your “aerobic zone” causes “shrinkage” – smaller muscles, smaller heart and smaller lungs. This wipes out the reserve capacity in both your heart and your lungs. Reserve capacity is vital to protect, energize and strengthen your heart and give it the extra “pumping power” it needs in times of stress.

For your lungs, it means being able to get the oxygen you need during high-exertion efforts. PACE puts you back in line with what your body was designed for: short bursts of activity followed by rest. Not only is this easier to do, it gives you results you can see and feel. PACE gives you a lean, muscular body with a strong heart and robust lungs like our ancient ancestors.

Build real heart strength without doing “cardio” or aerobics

In spite of getting the advice to do aerobics or cardio from your doctor or trainer, there’s one simple problem with this generic exercise prescription. It doesn’t work! In fact, long-duration exercise is a waste of your time, and can actually cause other health problems. This type of exercise makes the heart and lungs more efficient, but reduces their reserve capacity.

Simply put, your reserve capacity is your body’s ability to respond effectively to sudden demands you place on it. For your heart, reserve capacity is crucial. It can mean the difference between a long healthy life – and sudden death from a heart attack.

When you exercise continuously for more than 10 minutes, your heart adapts by becoming more efficient. It achieves this efficiency through downsizing. Long-duration exercise makes the output of your heart, lungs and muscles smaller so that they can go longer with less energy – but there’s a trade-off.

The cardiovascular system becomes very good at handling a 60-minute jog, but it gives up the ability to rapidly provide you with big bursts of energy for short periods. Far from protecting your heart, this loss makes you more vulnerable to a heart attack.

You can strengthen your heart by building reserve capacity with a specific program I developed through years of working with athletes, trainers and patients. It only takes a few minutes a day and you can start from anywhere.

It’s called PACE, a fitness revolution that overturns the bad advice accepted as today’s fitness “fact.” Truth is, much of what you’ve heard about getting fit, protecting your heart and dropping weight is pure myth, with little to no evidence to back it up.

PACE stands for Progressively Accelerating Cardiopulmonary Exertion. You can forget about working out for hours at the gym. You can build a strong heart to handle your life’s demands more effectively with PACE. This simple-to-follow system takes only about 12 minutes a day.

Thousands have already built heart capacity and functional strength by using this tried-and-true program. If they can do it, you can, too. And in little time, you’ll begin to see and feel the results. Now, let’s get to the program.

PACE Boosts Your Cardiopulmonary Fitness in Just Minutes a Day

PACE will gradually challenge your heart, lungs and blood vessels to build their strength. (“Cardio” means heart and “pulmonary” means lungs.) But you don’t have to face the pain and intensity that those extreme workout programs will put you through. PACE allows you to start from where you are, even if all you can do is walk.

Over time, you’ll develop strength, reserve capacity and more lung power. And over time, you’ll be able to do more. But at first, you can start with what feels comfortable to you. To accomplish this, you will do a series of short bursts of activity, and rest in between. As you get used to these brief challenges you will gradually increase their intensity.

Let’s get started: your 8-week pace plan

When you start PACE, remember that you can start from any level of exertion. If you don’t feel strong enough to run, then don’t. You don’t have to. If all you can do is walk, that’s fine. Over time, you’ll get stronger and will be able to do more.

Progressively doing a little more each time is central to PACE. You don’t have to torture yourself to make progress. Build your exercise program around any activity that gives your heart and lungs a workout. Swimming, biking, stair-stepping, sprinting and elliptical machines are all good exercises for the heart and lungs.

What you chose will depend on your preferences and your level of fitness. You might want to alternate the various types of exercise to keep your routine fun and lower the chances of overuse injuries. You are most likely to stick with your program when you choose exercises you enjoy.

Here is a week-by-week outline of the PACE plan:

Weeks 1 and 2

Begin by developing an exercise routine based on activities you enjoy. Your goal is to perform this exercise for 20 minutes at a time at low intensity. If you can’t exercise for 20 minutes without stopping, rest as needed. As you’re starting out, write down what you do. It’s helpful to determine your current level of fitness to use as a baseline to track your progress.

In the second week, begin experimenting with the pace. Push yourself a little harder and then ease up a bit. Vary your pace as much as you feel comfortable. As you play with the pace, begin to develop an internal scale of how intensely you exercise. Use a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 or 2 is a leisurely pace, all the way up to full throttle at 9 or 10.

Week 1:

Exercise for 20 minutes at a comfortable intensity level of 2 or 3.

Week 2:

Exercise for 20 minutes at varying intensity levels, recording your pace and how hard it feels.

Weeks 3 and 4

In weeks three and four, increase the amount of work you do in the same amount of time. If you exercise on a treadmill or cycling machine, push yourself to cover more distance in the same time.

Your workout now consists of two intervals, with a rest period in between. During the periods of rest, you don’t have to be completely inactive. You will do better to keep moving at low intensity while you recover.

Week 3:

Exercise for 9 minutes at intensity level 3
Rest for 2 minutes
Exercise for 9 minutes at intensity level 4

Week 4:

Exercise for 8 minutes at intensity level 4
Rest for 4 minutes
Exercise for 8 minutes at intensity level 5

Weeks 5 and 6

In weeks five and six, exercise more intensely during three somewhat shorter intervals.

Week 5:

Exercise for 6 minutes at intensity level 3
Rest for 2 minutes
Exercise for 6 minutes at intensity level 5
Rest for 2 minutes
Exercise for 6 minutes at intensity level 4

Week 6:

Decrease each exercise period to 5 minutes, while you increase the intensity by one level. Since you are working a little harder, allow yourself 3 minutes of leisurely-paced rest to recover between intervals.

Weeks 7 and 8

It’s time to put the “accelerating” component of your PACE program into play. Your goal is to take less and less time to reach the point of your greatest effort. The result is that you complete more intervals during the same time and you increase the level quicker.

The shorter your intervals of greatest intensity, the faster you condition your body for maximal capacity.

Week 7:

Exercise for 4 minutes at intensity level 4
Rest for 2 minutes
Exercise for 3 minutes at intensity level 6
Rest for 2 minutes
Exercise for 2 minutes at intensity level 7
Rest for 3 minutes
Exercise for 3 minutes at intensity level 5

Week 8:

Now you will shorten your first interval a little and increase the intensity of your second interval a bit. You are “accelerating” your challenge with your highest effort occurring earlier.

Exercise for 3 minutes at intensity level 4
Rest for 2 minutes
Exercise for 3 minutes at intensity level 7
Rest for 2 minutes
Exercise for 3 minutes at intensity level 7
Rest for 2 minutes
Exercise for 3 minutes at intensity level 5

As you continue to pick up the pace, increase the intensity of your workout and the number of exercise intervals. At the same time, shorten the length of your exercise sessions.

You may be doing three five-minute intervals with two three-minutes rests. As you progress, shorten the length of your exercise intervals to four, three, two, and then one minute. Work a little harder during these shorter exercise sessions.

When you get used to PACE and use it to your full advantage, your workout sessions usually last less than 12 minutes.