The Right Cardio For Fat Loss

"What kind of cardio is best for fat loss?" This is one of the more common questions I hear day in and day out. Just about everyone I talk to thinks that the key to fat loss is more cardio, more cardio, more cardio, and even more cardio. I've met with clients who literally go to the gym everyday and spend two hours going from one piece of cardio equipment to the next trudging along minute after long, slow, boring minute until they finally reach that magic "calories burned" number that they just know is going help them reach their goals. However, they soon find this approach is not very effective, they're more frustrated than before, and they're asking "WHY?!".

Two Main Reasons

#1)Creates very little metabolic disturbance- long, slow cardio doesn't burn a lot of calories, doesn't work the body very hard, and is easily recovered from

#2)Body adapts to it easily- your body adjusts very quickly to long, slow cardio and so it loses its effectiveness; you will begin to burn fat more efficiently which sounds good, but actually works against you for fat loss as I've talked about in previous posts

Effective cardio for fat loss is more about intensity than it is about duration, more about quality than it is about quantity. In other words, you need to burn as many calories as you can in the shortest time possible. To do this, high intensity, short interval workouts are the way to go. Interval workouts cause a lot of metabolic disturbance (i.e. larger overall calorie burn) and you'll automatically go harder as your body adjusts so there is very little problem with adaptation. The bad news about these types of workouts is they are hard and they hurt, the good news is they are short (about 20-30 min) and you only have to do them 3-4 times per week. So get a certified personal trainer to design a proper interval training program and start burning the fat!