Well, I hope you haven’t overdone your cardio for fitness program here.

If you are one of those people that are used to doing 1-2 hours of the slow to medium cardio a day, then you might have a problem.

I see this all the time for so called fitness gurus also.

They always want to increase the time frame.

I mentioned that you can greatly shorten the amount of cardio time if you alternate fast paced cardio with slow paced cardio.

I also brought up the point about sprinting to really rev up your metabolism.

Woman Sprinting

Yet, I see people saying oh, you need to do the high intensity cardio for 30- 60 minutes a day.  And sprint for 30 minutes.

I really hope you are not one of these people.

Look, you have to ask yourself, what is the point of cardio in the first place.

Is it to burn body fat?  Most people would agree with that.  Although you do get some cardio vascular benefits as well.

But, let’s just talk about the burning fat.

Once you start increasing the intensity, you have to decrease the time.  Otherwise you are going to burn out.

And not only will you burn body fat, but you will really start burning muscle tissue also.

Your body is a fine mechanism.  And since it is your body, you have to learn what works best.

What works best to get you looking and FEELING the best.

Many ignore the feeling part.  They might look great but feel like crap.  They have no energy.  And eventually this will show.

If you increase your intensity and try to increase the time as well, then you will start feeling lethargic and have no energy.

After that your body will start looking – not like a fitness model – like just a skinny person.  A skinny person with no energy.

This is not what you want.

So please.  Do not think about increasing the time when you start doing the higher intensity cardio and the sprinting.

If anything, work on increasing the speed and the intensity.

Yes, you want to vary the times of fast vs slow cardio.  And you will naturally do this as you adapt to the stress.

I mentioned before that the body is very good at adapting.  But, at a certain point it can’t adapt anymore and starts shutting down.

You and your coach have to find that point.

Now there are several strategies that you can use to maintain, to push, to get ready for a fitness show, etc.

And we will go over these in future posts.

In the meantime, use your cardio for fitness program to help you make progress, not to beat up your body.

That’s all for today.

Hi,

Yesterday we talked about how long, low intensity cardio is not really helping you in your quest to become fit. 

Sure, it will help while you are doing the exercise.  But, you have to do it for a really long time to get the fat burning effects. 

And those fat burning effects end immediately when you stop the cardio. 

Okay, so what can you do. 

There are two things.  The first is a modification of interval training. 

You alternate a higher intensity cardio phase with a lower intensity phase.

That is just a fancy way of saying you want to run for so long and then walk for so long. 

For example:  You can use a treadmill, a bike or eliptical machine at the gym.

First you warm up for 1-2 minutes.   Then you run at a fast pace for 20 seconds, walk for 40 seconds.  Continue doing this for 5 minutes. 

If you can’t go hard for 20 secs, start at 5 seconds.  The point is to start at some level and build up. 

As you get better, add a little more time to the fast pace and shorten up the recovery pace. 

Now you might not think you will burn as many calories doing this for 5 minutes versus 2 hours of low intensity cardio.  And you are right.

At least sort of right.  During the time of the exercise session, you will burn many more calories doing the longer cardio session. 

However, remember the burning of calories stops immediately after the session.  The burning of calories after the high intensity cardio can continue for up to 48 hours. 

This after burn will burn more fat in the long run than the the longer cardio sessions. 

If you remember from the previous post, just burning calories will make you smaller every where.  You will burn fat, but you will also burn muscle.

Which is something you don’t want.  Doing the high intensity cardio will help keep your leg muscles stronger.  And as you know a more muscular body burns more calories even in a resting state. 

In part 3 of cardio for fitness, we will take this a step further.