I hate cardio, always have. It was never something that came easy to me. I had a sort of asthma when I was younger and had trouble breathing. While I stayed active, played sports, played outside, and ate a relatively healthy diet cardio was just something that I always struggled with. I grew up in the states I remember we did a fitness test where they had different standards that you could reach. Gold, silver, bronze, and unranked, depending on how you did. So for example if you could do thirty pushups you’d get gold, twenty five for silver, twenty for bronze, and unranked for below that.
Anyways I remember being excited for the testing day and thinking I’d beat all my friends. And I did…but then I didn’t. Started out great with the springs, the pushups, pullups, situps, and the like. Was ahead of all of them and confident of my lead until we got to the long distance running part. I think it was only a mile or so for one event and the other somewhere close to that. Anyways I took my ranking of pure gold and slammed it down to unranked. I was shocked and confused and honestly pretty angry.
Anyways because your overall rank was average I no longer had gold I don’t remember where I sunk down too but it was pretty low. And I felt low. I remember asking my parents about why this happened and my mom said she didn’t know and dad said I just needed to run more. But the thing was I ran all the time. Maybe not for miles but being a boy growing up in the country that was something that just came naturally.
And it didn’t stop there. Cardio issues plagued me throughout life. Again I grew up in the states and so played American football which is the biggest sport there. While I could hit hard and run fast for short distances my cardio would always catch up with me before the end of the game. This was even worse when I went from pure defense to special teams and had to run across the field. Despite doing this five days a week (mornings and after school) my cardio never managed to build all that much.
I remember it driving my crazy that team mates that smoked all the time were running past me without breathing heavy or tiring. Same with wrestling. If I ran out there, blitzed them, and got an early pin then I was golden. However if the match prolonged I’d quickly tire out and either get out pointed or pinned myself. When I re-entered boxing later in life I tried dedicating myself to cardio. Running every day, doing barbell complexes, tabata, and the like.
And while those things helped, I’d still gas out relatively swiftly and faster than those around me. Which again, drove me crazy.
However I soon found that there was at least a semi-answer to my cardio issues.
Fixing Your Cardio Issues Through Nutrition & Smart Dieting
So let me start by saying that what I’m about to lay out isn’t going to turn you from couch potato to marathon runner or anything of that matter. What I am saying is that it’ll improve your cardio and depending on a couple factors may do so by a very large amount. Or if you’re someone who has never really struggled with this then it’ll be a good outline to optimize it further. Not to mention that this is also good for overall health, hormonal optimization, and general living. So let’s get into it.
You are what you eat, literally. Food is not just fuel for your body but also the building blocks of it. Without proper nutrition we’d never grow or form to our maximal potential. Poor nutrition leads to lack of both mental and physical development, even when you’re far from starving. Unfortunately many of us have been convinced that so long as we’re not starving we are being provided with adequate nutrition, but this just isn’t the case. And when we’re not provided with adequate nutrition our bodies are not going to perform at their best.
So while I ate what I considered healthy meals of chicken, squash, and sweet potato growing up, the fact of the matter is I was still missing many things that would have helped my cardio, not to mention overall physical developments. But what things? Well let’s start with a study done by Benjamin K. Ershoff in a study done in the 50’s. Here’s the article that goes more in depth if you care to take a look but below are the parts most relevant to us.
Ershoff divided laboratory rats into three groups. The first ate a basic diet, fortified with 11 vitamins. The second ate the same diet, along with an additional supply of vitamin B complex. The third ate the original diet, but instead of vitamin B complex received 10 percent of rations as powdered liver.
A 1975 article published in Prevention magazine described the experiment as follows: “After several weeks, the animals were placed one by one into a drum of cold water from which they could not climb out. They literally were forced to sink or swim. Rats in the first group swam for an average 13.3 minutes before giving up. The second group, which had the added fortifications of B vitamins, swam for an average of 13.4 minutes. Of the last group of rats, the ones receiving liver, three swam for 63, 83 and 87 minutes. The other nine rats in this group were still swimming vigorously at the end of two hours when the test was terminated. Something in the liver had prevented them from becoming exhausted. To this day scientists have not been able to pin a label on this anti-fatigue factor.”
After reading this I started adding liver to my diet and noticed immediate improvements. I could spar far longer without getting tired, immediately and without changing my cardio. I continued doing this and now wouldn’t think about doing a sparring day without having my morning liver. But that’s not the only discovery I made.
I started reading about electrolytes and the importance of them for stamina. I remember reading something about how for long periods of training you lose so many electrolytes through sweat and water alone does not restore these electrolytes. So what I started doing was adding a teaspoon of pink Himalayan salt to my jug of water for training sessions. I used to a BJJ class followed by the Muay Thai class. I remember doing okay during BJJ and then gassing hard during Muay Thai. But once I started salting my water those long training sessions weren’t nearly as hard.
Sure I still got tired but I was able to stay with it much longer and I no longer got that almost sleepy feeling that’d I’d get before. Which I’m sure is easy to guess is not good to have during sparring. In addition to the two above I also started having 4-6 eggs every morning. I looked for the best ones I can find, which means those with orange yolks as opposed to yellow.
Look In Unlikely Places For Unlikely Answers
I’m not running a marathon anytime soon and I still struggle with cardio but what was a insurmountable mountain has become an annoying ass hill that I hate but know I can climb. Which if you’ve ever struggled with this then you know how good that feels. You go from drowning to just hating it. And obviously to maximize cardio there is plenty more that you need to do. Do your chosen sport as much as possible, do interval training, run hills, get blood flowing every day, and so on and so forth. But this is one big part of whole that many people miss.
On another note I would encourage you to never shy away from looking in unusual places for answers. If you see a connection somewhere then go for it and see what you uncover. You’ll go down many false trails but it’s only by going down false trails that we can find the right ones. Don’t be afraid to look for answers in strange places, you never know what you might find.
All The Best,
-Charles Sledge
If anything I said here interests you I’d highly recommend you check out The Ultimate Alpha Collection which is a compilation of 16 of my books for the price of 5. It covers everything from being a man to making money to getting the right mindset to getting girls to fighting and more and is a resource no man should be without. Pick up your copy today!
-Charles Sledge
