Cardio Exercises

Cardio exercises helps to speed up your fat loss. You are required to perform some form of cardio workouts, in the morning, on an empty stomach, for 30-45 minutes while keeping your heart rate at about 140 beats per minute. This cardio workouts may not seem like a lot, but it is the ideal range for fat loss. If you have a high metabolism, you will also be eating up muscle fast!

What exactly is Cardio?

Cardio exercises can be considered any type of exercise or activity that strengthens the cardiovascular system. Some of the indoor cardio exercises are elliptical trainer, stair climbing, treadmill, stationary bicycle.

Why Morning?

Studies have shown that cardio exercises in the morning will help to burn more fat, because you will not have eaten for that eight hour period that you are asleep. Your muscles will have used up just about all of their glycogen (sugar used for energy) stores. Once this happens, your body turns to using stored body fat for fuel.

Cardio exercise benefits :

The point of doing cardio exercises is to increase metabolism, which causes you to burn more body fat.

Cardio exercise that trains your heart to rapidly increase and rapidly decrease will make your heart more capable of handling everyday stress.

Highly Variable Cyclic Training

Highly variable cyclic training teaches the heart to respond to and recover from a variety of demands making it less likely to fail when you need it. Exercises will make your heart more capable of handling everyday stress. Stress can cause your blood pressure and heart rate to increase rapidly. Steady state jogging and other endurance training does not train your heart to be able to handle rapid changes in heart rate or blood pressure.

Some of the potential benefits of variable cyclic cardio training compared to steady state endurance cardio training are as follows: improved cardiovascular health, increased anti-oxidant protection, improved immune function, reduced risk for joint wear and tear, increased muscularity (versus decreased muscularity with endurance training), increased residual metabolic rate exercise, and an increased capacity for the heart to handle life’s every day stressors.

Stop-and-Go Training

Most competitive sports such as football, basketball, volleyball, racquetball, tennis, hockey, etc. are naturally comprised of highly variable stop-and-go motion which trains the heart through a higher range than just steady walking or jogging.

One of the absolute most effective forms of variable intensity cardio training to really reduce body fat and bring out serious muscular definition is performing wind sprints. Wind sprints can be done by sprinting at near max speed for 10-30 seconds, and then taking 60 seconds to walk for recovery before your next sprint. 6-12 total sprint intervals is usually a very challenging cardio workout for most people. There are so many different and fun non-traditional training styles out there helps to get lean ripped body that you've been looking for.

Interval Cardio Training

High intensity interval cardio training (varying between high and low intensity intervals on any piece of cardio equipment) is yet another training method that utilizes exertion and recovery periods. For example, an interval cardio training session on the cardio equipment like treadmill could look something like this:

• Warm-up for 3-4 minutes at a fast walk or light jog
• Interval 1 - run at 8.0 mi/hr for 1 minute
• Interval 2 - walk at 4.0 mi/hr for 1.5 minutes
• Interval 3 - run at 10.0 mi/hr for 1 minute
• Interval 4 - walk at 4.0 mi/hr for 1.5 minutes
• Repeat those 4 intervals 4 times for a very intense 20-minute cardio workout.

Alternatives Exercises

What are the alternatives cardio equipment like treadmills and elliptical trainers? Here are some of favorite types of the alternative cardio exercises:

• Jumping Rope - great mind / body connection (try speed jumping, crosses, double jumps once you get skilled at it)
• Bodyweight Training - Bodyweight squats, pushups, lunges, jumps, bear crawls, rock climbing, planks, and the list goes on and on
• Outdoor Wind Sprinting - The ultimate for a rock hard ripped body... just look at the chiseled powerful bodies of world class sprinters, and compare that to the weakling withered physique of a typical marathoner.
• Hill Sprinting - Yet another classic cardio workout for a rock hard powerful body.
• Rowing Machine - The rowing machine is actually a great full body workout that actually uses resistance.
• Heavy Bag Punching / Kicking Workout, Speed Bag, Rebound Bag... all great forms of training and much more interesting than boring cardio machines (requires an intense mind / body connection)

Full-body strategically-designed resistance training programs along with high intensity cardio training programs guaranteed to strip off body fat when combined with a healthy diet are included in the book Truth about six pack abs, this book is a must-read.