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By: Rusty Moore
Here Are The Two Main Cardio Workouts If your goal is to burn body fat, you have a few different approaches to chose from. The majority of trainers recommend you take the low intensity approach to cardio. The idea behind doing cardio at a low intensity level is that most of the calories burned will come from body fat. Many people believe that if you workout too hard, you are burning carbohydrate energy in the body and not targeting fat. Many people make the point that more total calories are burned if people exercise at a higher intensity level. They reason that if you simply burn more calories than you consume in a day, you will lose body fat. So now we will look in more detail at each school of thought. Low Intensity Cardio Workout Approach This lower intensity cardio workout is what you will see in most gyms. It is a great way to burn body fat, since it targets the fat directly. No wonder why it is so popular! There have been numerous university studies that prove the effectiveness of performing aerobic exercise at a low intensity level. If done properly, it is great for directly targeting body fat. It is important to choose cardio machines that can track your heart rate. It will let you monitor your heart rate during your cardio workout to allow you to hit the ideal intensity level. After about 10 minutes or so, you should be close to reaching your ideal heart rate. Staying within that target heart rate for at least 30 minutes is what is recommended by most experts. The Effective, But Less Popular High Intensity Cardio Workout This form of aerobic exercise can be tougher to perform than the lower intensity version. Although not as popular, this is a very effective way at burning tons of calories. The calories burned in high intensity cardio workouts come from both carbs stored in the muscle (glycogen)...as well as stored body fat. When you burn more calories in your cardio workout than what you consume, you create a calorie deficit. If you burn a more calories during the day than what you eat in food, you will lose weight. The Imperfections of The 2 Versions of Cardio Workouts It takes about 10 minutes to get your heart rate into the fat burning zone, with the low intensity cardio workout. It is great once you reach this point, but those first 10 minutes or so are kind of a waste of time. The problem with high intensity aerobic exercise is that it is really hard to maintain for a long time. Things really get tough after 10-15 minutes if you push hard. A Great Cardio Workout That Combines Both Levels of Intensity Why not start out at a high intensity level for the first 10-15 minutes and end with low intensity for 20-30 minutes? If you think of the two approaches...this completely makes sense! You are making the first 10-15 minutes of a low intensity cardio workout productive. Instead of wasting those first 10 minutes, you are burning a ton of calories...after 10 minutes you are burning a ton of body fat! What you want to do is find a cardio machine like a treadmill or exercise bike. After 2 minute warm up, push yourself really hard for 10-15 minutes. Set it at a level where it is tough to push past 10-15 minutes. You should be breathing hard and sweating at after 10 minutes if done properly. At this point, back down to a slower comfortable pace and keep it at that level for 20-30 more minutes. You will burn a bunch of calories as well as a bunch of fat. I use different variations of this cardio workout year-round to keep at a low body fat level.
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