The reason for writing this post stems from me reading a blog post by Charles Poliquin on his personal blog. Poliquin’s post is a commentary on a recent study on endurance athletes (la Gerche et al, 2011) and a more or less generic assault on endurance training per se. Yes – this man actually claims that endurance training, cardio, is bad for you….

This is very, very problematic for two reasons: 1) because there is an overwhelming likelihood that his claims are wrong, and 2) because Charles Poliquin is an international fitness guru and the owner of one the strongest fitness communication and certification brands in the world, making him extremely influential. When someone this influential makes claims like these, this will almost certainly push some individuals towards making some very poor decisions regarding their health and training and therefore most likely result in a net negative effect on public health. Therefore it crucial that claims like these are met with qualified resistance, even though mine probably won’t generate the same impact with my few thousand readers compared to his (probably) ranging from the hundred thousands to millions of readers ;o)

Before i get to my rebuttal, let me state that I think a training approach where multiple fitness parameters are stimulated is favorable to any approach just including “classic” cardiovascular endurance training. ACSM has defined fitness to include strength, muscular endurance, cardiorespiratory fitness, flexibility and motor skills – which I think of as a very decent definition and that ideally one should aim to target all of these. Furthermore, I fully acknowledgde that a lot of people use cardio in a wrong way considering the existing stress factors in their lives, e.g. putting spinning in a tightly packed schedule in a body with existing sympathetic overstimulation. But this does not justify making false claims against a physical activity that everything indicates is very healthy.

Take a deep breath…

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