Cardio Workouts to LOSE WEIGHT

As many of you already know (especially if you have been following my rants), I am not a big proponent of cardio. The reason is not because cardio is all bad, but because it is so easy to do cardio all wrong. Many women spend countless hours on the elliptical or the treadmill while putting their lifting workouts on the backburner. This is ALL BAD. Not to mention, it’s a huge time-waster. And we are all busy.

The reason regular cardio is wrong is not because it directly makes you fat, but instead because with regular cardio you are burning calories only WHILE you are performing the exercise.  There is a much better form of cardio which will make you burn calories for up to 24-48 hours AFTER performing the exercise. Imagine that, burning calories as you sit on your ass! This phenomenon is called EPOC or Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption. EPOC represents the amount of oxygen the body uses to return to its pre-exercise state. With what I am going to teach you, the oxygen that will be required for you to come back to normal will be a rather LARGE amount!

Let’s say you’re already lifting 3-4x per week and you have seen some results. Whether it be from your indicator jeans or your Fat Loss Monitor, you are confident that something positive is happening.

With your weight workout in tact you are now allowed to add some HITT (High Intensity Interval Training) cardio to put your fat loss into high gear!

The good news is that this kind of cardio only takes about 20 minutes. The bad news is that it hurts! As we all know, no pain no gain.

You could do this in the gym if you want. However, it will be MUCH more effective if you do it outside. It’s summertime, people! Get outside! The benefits of training outside in the the fresh air are countless and would require another article on the benefits of negative ions for your well-being (coming soon).

My favorite way to do cardio workouts to lose weight is to sprint. The beauty of sprinting is that you can do it anytime and anywhere. So NO EXCUSES.

Here is what you do:

1. Find a place to run– this could be a track, the street, a trail, etc.
2. Find the stopwatch feature on your phone. I know you have one.
3. Warm up for 5 minutes by doing an easy jog
4. Go to your starting point (this is arbitrary and can be anywhere)
5. Hold your stopwatch (phone) in your hand, set it to go, and EXPLODE
6. Run AS FAST AS YOU CAN for 30 seconds. Pump your arms hard.
7. Jog/walk for 1-2 minutes
8. Repeat 5-10 times. Whatever you can muster.
9. Try to add another sprint to each workout so you can progress until you get to 10.

Keep in mind that you can either return to the same starting point, or keep going forward to a new starting point as if you are on a regular run. Whatever is more fun for you.

BY FAR the most important thing about this workout is to run AS FAST AS YOU CAN. The faster you run, the more oxygen you need to recover, the skinnier you get. That’s the goal, right? Oh, and you’ll get healthy as a by-product.

Happy sprinting!