I realize we could have a long debate on this issue. My feeling is pretty clear and it is as follows:

For the VAST majority of people, excessive cardio will cause damage to the body.

For the vast majority of overweight people, any cardio may ultimately cause damage to the body.

For a select group of people, they can, for the time being, perform a lot of cardio and not suffer breakdown – yet. Ultimately, most bodies are not made to perform the same repetitive exercise over and over and over again.

If I had to make take a position, which I have, I would never have people perform classic cardiovascular exercise for more than a few minutes to warm up, if necessary.

We all have to walk. That’s a given, and I do walk a lot. But I never count it as exercise, I always try to have the right shoes on when I do it and I almost never do so in areas with poor quality air or heavy traffic.

I realize you are taking the position that not all cardio is bad, but I have to ask you, were is the data that the elliptical trainer is good for your joints? I have yet to find any.

Where is the data that all this cardio is NOT causing damage. I don’t see that either. Again, the vast majority of people I know performing cardio are all injured to some degree and practically none of them are losing weight, and weight loss is so much what this is all about.

Jim

What do you mean by “punishing” cardio? Do you feel there are certain types of cardio that “punish” joints are is it all “punishing” to some degree?

It really depends on your predispositions, joint alignment, training type, frequency, duration, etc. We musn’t make blanket statements that cardio = bad for joints while resistance = good for joints – it’s not that binary.