The Dark Side of Cardio

Are you aware of the dark side of cardio? Did you know that long, slow, boring workouts on the treadmill or elliptical machines don't really burn that much fat? That you can get real fat loss in shorter, more intense interval workouts?

You can go to any healthclub in the country and find plenty of people who put hours in each week doing long, slow cardio workouts. They do the same workouts every week, for weeks on end, never changing their routine. And most never see any change in their bodies.

Because of putting these long hours in and not seeing much, if any change, many give up or never get started in the first place, because they don't have the time. What if there was a faster, more efficient way?

Take spinning classes for example. While they are okay, you still have to put extra time in for your upper body - extra time equals inefficiency if you're not training for an endurance competition, such as a marathon or triathlon.

If you're not looking to compete, don't use the same routine as someone who is. Research has shown that short, but intense workouts burn more fat than long, slow cardio routines. By combining your strength training and interval fat loss work in one session, you raise your metabolism for several hours afterwards, creating "turbulence."

Seems to make more sense, if you have limited time and don't like exercise in the first place - work hard and get it over with, then go on with the rest of your life. Your body adapts very quickly to traditional cardio workouts.

Then to see further results, you are forced to do something different - either increase the length of time you exercise (inefficient) or increase the intensity - exercising at a higher heart rate level. When you do interval fat loss routines, your heart rate stays elevated, increasing your calorie burn - not just during the exercise, but for hours afterwards.

When you do steady state cardio using the same pace the entire time, your metabolism returns to its resting level shortly afterwards. Fine, if you are an endurance athlete who has to train at a fairly intense level for great lengths of time. They will burn many calories when combining all their workouts for the week.

But for the average person without all that time or who doesn't work at that intense a level, they will get better workouts by concentrating more on their interval strength workouts and interval cardio workouts.

Isolation exercises in the weight room are also inefficient, unless you are a steroid using bodybuilder. By using multiple muscles and joints doing exercises like pushups, pullups, and lunges with bodyweight or dumbbells, you will build a lean physique without spending hours to do so. You can also do these workouts at home with little to no equipment.

If this sounds interesting, Craig Ballantyne's Turbulence Training for fat loss may be what you are looking for. He is running a special that expires tonight at midnight, so head on over and take a look!

Click here for Turbulence Training