What is the best type of Cardio for fat loss?
It is a very common thing for fitness professionals and medical doctors to prescribe low intensity aerobic training for people trying to lose weight or prevent heart disease. The most common prescription is 30-60 min of steady pace 3-4 times a week. But before you give in to this belief and waste hours of your time doing mindless cardio consider some new scientific evidence that has come out.
Don't get me wrong some kind of cardio is better for you than no cardio at all, but for you to lose the fat and strengthen your heart this might not be the best method of cardio for you. Recent research suggests that physical variability is one of the most important aspects to consider in your training. This physical variability can be best seen in nature as animals almost always use stop and go motion instead of steady motion. In fact, humans are the only species that participate in endurance type physical activities. A good example of steady state training and stop and go training is to examine the physiques of marathon runners and sprinters. Most Sprinters have lean, muscular, and very powerful looking frames where as a marathon runner has a skinny almost sickly looking frame.
Scientists know that excessive steady state exercise increases free radical production in the body, can degenerate joints, reduces immune function, causes muscle wasting, and can cause a pro-inflammatory response in the body that can potentially lead to chronic diseases. By comparison, stop and go training has been linked to increased anti-oxidant production in the body, an increased anti-inflammatory response, a more efficient nitric oxide response, and an increased metabolic rate response. Also steady state training only trains the heart at one specific heart rate range and doesn't train it to respond to various every day stressors. On the other hand, stop and go training teaches the heart to respond to and recover from a variety of demands making it less likely to fail when you need it.
The one aspect that makes stop and go training superior to steady state training is the rest period between the bursts of activity. That recovery period is crucially important for the body to elicit a healthy response to an exercise stimulus. Think of cardio the same as you do when you lift weights. You don't lift a light weight a hundred times to get huge muscles, so why would your heart get a lot stronger by doing lengthy exercise as well.
In conclusion, to get the best results use stop and go training in your workouts to get the most beneficial response in terms of heart health, fat loss, and muscle maintenance. Some examples are wind sprints, most sports such as basketball, hockey, football, tennis, racquetball, etc. Do these types of exercises 3-4 times a week and then you can start seeing the results. Try it out, and you can thank me afterwards.
Don't get me wrong some kind of cardio is better for you than no cardio at all, but for you to lose the fat and strengthen your heart this might not be the best method of cardio for you. Recent research suggests that physical variability is one of the most important aspects to consider in your training. This physical variability can be best seen in nature as animals almost always use stop and go motion instead of steady motion. In fact, humans are the only species that participate in endurance type physical activities. A good example of steady state training and stop and go training is to examine the physiques of marathon runners and sprinters. Most Sprinters have lean, muscular, and very powerful looking frames where as a marathon runner has a skinny almost sickly looking frame.
Scientists know that excessive steady state exercise increases free radical production in the body, can degenerate joints, reduces immune function, causes muscle wasting, and can cause a pro-inflammatory response in the body that can potentially lead to chronic diseases. By comparison, stop and go training has been linked to increased anti-oxidant production in the body, an increased anti-inflammatory response, a more efficient nitric oxide response, and an increased metabolic rate response. Also steady state training only trains the heart at one specific heart rate range and doesn't train it to respond to various every day stressors. On the other hand, stop and go training teaches the heart to respond to and recover from a variety of demands making it less likely to fail when you need it.
The one aspect that makes stop and go training superior to steady state training is the rest period between the bursts of activity. That recovery period is crucially important for the body to elicit a healthy response to an exercise stimulus. Think of cardio the same as you do when you lift weights. You don't lift a light weight a hundred times to get huge muscles, so why would your heart get a lot stronger by doing lengthy exercise as well.
In conclusion, to get the best results use stop and go training in your workouts to get the most beneficial response in terms of heart health, fat loss, and muscle maintenance. Some examples are wind sprints, most sports such as basketball, hockey, football, tennis, racquetball, etc. Do these types of exercises 3-4 times a week and then you can start seeing the results. Try it out, and you can thank me afterwards.
