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REPSTAX

Cardio Health

Equipment-Free Cardio

Three walks and two conditioning days a week, needing no equipment and no gym.

Days a week
5
A session
46 min
Sessions in it
5
Split
No-Equipment Walking Base + Two Conditioning Days

How it runs

The week delivers a hundred and fifty-seven moderate-equivalent minutes, and two thirds of that comes from the walking.

What you actually train

5 sessions, in order. Every movement links to how to do it.

  1. Day 1: Circuit - 4 rounds - Zone 3-4 - short

    12 movements

  2. Day 2: Walk 35 min - Zone 2 - full sentences

    6 movements

  3. Day 3: 3 x 4:30 hard - Zone 4 - 3-4 words

    9 movements

  4. Day 4: Hill Walk 30 min - Zone 2 - sentences

    8 movements

  5. Day 5: Long Walk 40 min - Zone 2 - sentences

    6 movements

Why it works

  • Eighty-five per cent easy, fifteen per cent hard, with a rest day before each of the two hard days.
  • Every movement is prescribed in its low-impact form — step jacks keep a foot on the floor, high knees can be a march — and the harder version is the substitution rather than the default.
  • The talk test is the only marker you have here, because nothing is reading anything back to you, and it is the more reliable one anyway.
  • Walk one fixed route once a week and note the time: that is the adaptation, visible without a watch that costs anything.
  • No kit, no subscription and no venue — the barrier this programme removes is the one that stops most weeks happening.

Aerobic work is half of what the guidelines ask for. The other half is muscle-strengthening activity on two or more days a week, and this programme does not contain any — run it alongside one of the Build Muscle programmes rather than instead of one.

What to expect

Expect the walks to do most of the work and the two hard days to do none of the volume.

Before you start

Five sessions a week with no equipment at all: three walks and two bodyweight conditioning days. The walks are where the minutes come from and the conditioning days are where the intensity comes from, and this programme is honest about which is which.

Every session has a warm-up and a cool-down built into it, the hard day is preceded by three rising build-up efforts so nothing hard starts cold, and there is not a single jump, sprint or plyometric anywhere in it.

Before you start, please read this one. Aerobic exercise is among the safest and most useful things most people can do for their health, and it is also the setting in which a heart problem nobody knew about is most likely to announce itself.

Get medical clearance before you begin if any of the following is true of you. Chest pain, pressure or tightness on exertion, including anything that comes on when you hurry, climb stairs or carry shopping and eases when you stop.

Dizziness, light-headedness or fainting, on effort or when you stand up. Known heart disease, a heart-rhythm problem, or a heart attack, stent, bypass, ablation or any cardiac procedure at any point in your life.

Or no regular exercise for a year or more, if you are also over 40, or you smoke, or you have high blood pressure, high cholesterol or diabetes, or a parent or sibling who had heart disease before 55 in men or 65 in women.

Any of those means speak to your GP before you start, and follow what they tell you over anything written here.

If you are waiting for that appointment because of the last trigger — no regular exercise for a year or more alongside those risk factors — and you want to start moving in the meantime, run only the three walking days of this programme, days two, four and five, and leave the two conditioning days until you have been cleared.

If you are waiting because of chest pain on exertion, dizziness or fainting on effort, or known heart disease or a cardiac procedure, wait until you have been seen rather than starting any part of it.

Or start on Daily Cardio Foundations, which contains no hard work at all.

Also speak to your GP or a physiotherapist first if you are pregnant or within a year of giving birth, if your blood pressure or diabetes is not currently controlled, if you have low bone density or osteoporosis, if you have a lung condition, or if a joint or tendon is flaring.

Stop the session and get medical advice the same day for chest pain, pressure or tightness; pain spreading into the jaw, neck, back or an arm; breathlessness far out of proportion to the effort; dizziness or feeling you might faint; a heartbeat that is unusually fast, slow or irregular; or a cold sweat with any of those.

Call emergency services rather than driving yourself. Nothing here is medical advice.

What you need

  • Bodyweight
  • Mat

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Train it, and keep the record

Import the programme, log the sets as you do them, and watch the numbers move week to week. Starter is free, with no card.

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