Suggested “Cardio 2.0” Workouts, Part 1

My 2025 book titled Born To Walk presents a compelling argument to rethink the importance of steady state cardio and expand your perspective of what it means to be truly fit. Here are some important assertions: 

• A pattern of steady state cardio at medium-to-difficult intensities can easily become exhausting and counterproductive to health

• Cardiovascular endurance is only a small sliver of total-body functional fitness for longevity

• All types of physical exercise are technically “cardio,” because the cardiovascular system responds to all kinds of muscular demand. 

The recent rise in popularity of so-called hybrid athletes offers great inspiration to broaden your perspective beyond racking up miles in a straight line. Furthermore, your endurance performance will likely improve when you build complementary fitness attributes like muscular strength, mobility, and sprint competency. Here are some suggested workouts: 

Jogging 2.0: Instead of a humdrum steady state session, you can mix jogging with brief medium-to-high intensity running technique drills, dynamic stretches, jumping drills, balance and agility drills, or core or leg strengthening movements–followed by walking for recovery between efforts. After a 5-10 minute warmup jog, you can initiate your first set of drills.

Focus on executing perfect form and being crisp and explosive. After 15 seconds, stop and walk for 30-60 seconds, then do a few more sets of drills lasting 15 seconds each. Walk for a couple minutes to recover, resume jogging for a few minutes, and throw in additional sets of drills or challenges as desired over the course of the workout. Perhaps tackle a challenge en-route, such as step-ups onto a bench, pushups, or par course apparati. 

Visit the Peluva YouTube channel for instructional videos of Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced running technique drills, such as the popular “skipping” drills and many variations performed by track and field athletes. Brad Kearns Jogging 2.0 on YouTube offers some ideas to spice up a trail run.

Walkabouts: Instead of staying on the beaten trail or path, do some off-roading to purposely negotiate rough, varied, and/or uneven terrain. Even the most urban-dense pedestrian trails offer opportunities for brief detours onto varied terrain. The idea here is to purposely challenge your proprioception and foot functionality by walking on a rockbed or natural debris, up or down steep slopes, diagonally across a steep incline, or any other variation you can find in your environment.

Mix things up! Our brains and lower extremities desperately need these challenges and variations to function optimally and maintain all-important balance skills throughout life. Warning: Don’t try this in regular athletic shoes, you need Peluvas for full functionality and range of motion!

Benchmark Workouts: Design a template workout with numerous disparate and measurable performance standards and conduct it on a regular basis to measure your fitness progress. CrossFit is known for such “WOD” (workout of the day) sessions, with nicknames like MURPH, FRAN, LINDA, and CHELSEA. For example, the MURPH is running one mile, doing 100 pull-ups, 200 pushups, 300 squats, and running another mile for time. You can simplify this to running a mile for time, or doing your best single set of pushups or pull-ups, and repeating it every 4-6 weeks.

You can also establish benchmarks for outdoor adventures that you aspire to complete 10, 20, or 30 years from now. Can you climb the trail to the highest peak in your state, or swim across the lake at your summer vacation spot? Keep it going!

Walk-Jog-Walk-Jog Fax Max Workout: Instead of pegging your heart rate at fat max for the duration of your aerobic workouts, consider starting out at your typical jogging pace, then slowing to a walk when your heart rate reaches fat max. After 1-2 minutes of walking, your heart rate should drop significantly and you can break into a jog once again. Repeat the cycle–always slowing when your heart rate reaches fat max.

Remember, there is no rule that you need to maintain a steady pace to get a good aerobic training session. Also realize that the longer the duration of your workout, the slower your average pace must be in order to remain at or below fat max. This is due to “cardiac drift”--cumulative fatigue causing the heart rate to drift higher. The walk-jog-walk-jog pattern may be more appealing than feeling frustrated that you have to transition from jog to walk due to fatigue.