These days you can’t flip your ponytail without hitting an “article” by a “fitness professional” claiming that cardio is good for women. This once-obese personal trainer is here to set the record straight.
Ladies – think twice before including cardio in your workouts. Here’s why:
1- ARD (Acute Rhythm Development).
If you’ve never been one to clap to the beat, the repetitive tempo of most cardiovascular exercise carries a serious risk of ARD (Acute Rhythm Development). Want to keep drawing attention to yourself and making other folks uncomfortable at live music events? Then avoid doing anything with a predictable, repetitive rhythm – especially cardio.
2- Sweat is icky.
Sure, everyone sweats, but that doesn’t make it OK. Any reasonable lady would rather overheat and die than be caught with pit stains 1 – in or out of the gym. If you’re committed to maintaining the facade of the ageless, rose-scented, bodily-function-free female, then cardio is a serious no-no.
3- Your time is precious.
You have important things to do, amiright? Conversations to rehash, years-old mistakes to agonize over, co-workers and family members to correct and educate (if only in your head), abstract worry wormholes to fall into like a tedium-obsessed Alice in a bitterly-disordered and manic Wonderland… You don’t have time to waste on frivolous BS like your own health and well-being. Please.
4- Cardio is a little too much like sex.
Heart pounding. Drenched in sweat. Breathless. Rhythmically moving up and down – slow, then fast, then slow again – focused on your body in the present moment. Then, after it’s over, settling into a period of calm, quiet satisfaction, enveloped in the soothing, subtle hum of sensual exhaustion.
Seriously, though, who has time for that crap? (See #3) 2
5- Therapy, ruined.
Think about it. If you do cardio – or any exercise, for that matter – early in the day, then everything you do for the rest of the day will feel easier. If everything feels easier, 3then what the heck are you gonna talk about in therapy? 4
Take that, SoulCycle. 5