Smart Cardio For Strength, Mass, And Fat Loss

Cardio training should be part of everyone's fitness regimen, but that doesn't mean you need to put in hours on the treadmill, stationary bike, or on the roads. There are better ways to train.

If you're a typical guy who loves to lift big weights, but considers anything over 3 reps to be "endurance" training, you might not be interested in this article. However, if you can bench press a Buick but get winded when you bend down to tie your shoes, maybe I have an audience.

Look, we all do what we LIKE to do, but only the most successful among us find a way to also do what we NEED to do. If you think you're in the latter category, listen up. I've got a quiver full of fun, challenging, cardio workouts that help you lose fat without losing strength or muscle.

Why You Need Cardio

Don't fall into the trap of thinking that cardio will turn you into a wispy, estrogen-soaked shadow of your former self- too many guys use this mindset as an excuse to avoid what they know they should be doing. In fact, the benefits of smart cardio training are too numerous to ignore. They include: Read more

Cardio Makes You Fat

Finally, the mainstream media is catching on to the cardio-for-weight loss scam.

... The awful truth for every would-be slimmer is that going to the gym is unlikely to make you thin. It may even have the opposite effect: it could actually make you fatter. This will have personal trainers chewing their smelly insoles in fury, but there is sound science behind the theory that gym-going could actually impede weight loss.

The problem is the kind of exercise most dieters favour. Most eschew the weights area, inhabited by its hardcore of scary looking men.

[...]

Dieters therefore tend to choose cardiovascular exercise, which works the big muscles of the body, for example the legs. It makes the heart work harder to pump more oxygenated blood to the muscles, so the lungs have to take in more air to provide this oxygen, which is why you feel out of breath.

However, while cardiovascular exercise might feel exhausting, the calories it burns are pretty pathetic. Thirty minutes on the rowing machine burns just 300 calories. That's 50 calories less than a 100g slice of pepperoni pizza. Read more

The Jump-Rope Cardio Workout

Men's Fitness tells how to burn three times as many calories with the single best piece of cardio equipment.

Old-time boxers knew what they were doing. According to the Compendium of Physical Studies, jumping rope for 10 minutes can burn as many calories as jogging at an eight-minute-per-mile pace. No wonder many fitness experts call the jump rope the best all-around piece of exercise equipment you can own. Here are five reasons to learn the ropes: Read more

Short Burst Exercise vs. Cardio

Workout routine and fat loss expert Craig Ballantyne explains why intense workouts work for fat loss while cardio fails.

Short burst workouts work for fat loss while cardio fails.

Why?

In each intense workout, you focus on applying an intense stimulus to the muscles. This creates “turbulence” in the muscles, and requires a lot of energy to repair and replenish the muscles before the next workout. And where does that energy come from? Your fat stores, of course! Read more

Commando Cardio Bodyweight Workout

Cardiovascular fitness is an important component of overall fitness, but cardio doesn't have to mean running, swimming, or cycling. If you don't like typical aerobic activities or they're inconvenient, you can use bodyweight exercises or calisthenics to get an equally good cardio workout.

This is the basic "Commando cardio" a full blown intense bodyweight workout! Remember...this is the easiest workout version.

If these body weight exercises have you confused, you can see most of them in video on our main exercise descriptions page. Read more

Working out without Weights

Though she believes that nothing beats throwing heavy weights around for building muscle, floridagirl outlines an all-bodyweight workout that you can do in a tiny college dorm room without so much as a heavy soup can. The only way you could not build muscle with this routine is not to do it. What I like about this routine is that it doesn't rely on high repetitions so much as it does on using more difficult bodyweight exercises.

... Before I give the routine, I'd like to offer a brief rundown of the pros and cons. Bodyweight exercises tend to recruit a vast array of muscle groups. This is great in terms of functional strength and learning to control your body. Additionally, bodyweight exercises tend to ensure that you work the full range of the targeted muscle. For example, barbell bench presses can allow your lower pecs to bear the bulk of the load, whereas a properly done push-up will recruit the upper pecs and pectoralis minor. But, while I still hold true to compound exercises, I think that it's good to be able to isolate certain muscle groups that just can't be fully tapped without weights, such as shoulders.

As far as building muscle, in my experience, nothing beats throwing heavy weights around. However, if you're just starting out, you'll make gains no matter what you do. Eventually, you WILL get to a point where you need to add weights, especially with lower body work. But when you're starting from nothing, you will certainly progress. This routine is also good for experienced weight lifters who are traveling or who periodize their routines to have light weight days.

Despite using no weights, this routine is NOT simple. Chances are it will kick your butt! Read more

The Ultimate Burpee Ladder Workout

If you think you're in pretty good physical condition, then try this workout, which I call the "Ultimate Burpee Ladder." This workout will separate the contenders from the pretenders, and leave the pretenders puking their guts out.

The Ultimate Burpee Ladder consists of one classic exercise, the "burpee." This exercise works your chest, arms, front deltoids, thighs and abs. The burpee is a six-count exercise:

1) Stand with your feet shoulder width apart and your hands raised over your head. Then squat down and place your palms on the floor by your feet.

2) Kick both of your legs back so that you're in push-up position.

3) Bend your elbows and lower your body until your chest touches the floor.

4) Push yourself back up.

5) At the end of the push-up, quickly pull both knees into your chest while keeping your hands on the floor. You're jumping back into the squat position of step one.

6) Stand straight up by straightening your legs and throwing your hands in the air over your head. You're now in the position that you started in. You can make the burpee more advanced and increase the explosive power in your legs by jumping into the air as you stand up.

To do the Ultimate Burpee Ladder workout, go to a football or soccer field, a track, or some other place where there is a clear area at least a 100 meters long. If you thought the Ultimate Burpee Ladder workout was only going to be burpees, you were so, so wrong. In between sets of burpees, you will be doing 100 yard sprints.

Take 5-10 minutes to do a light warm-up. If you're going to be doing the workout on a football or soccer field, position yourself at the goal line. Sprint the length of the field to the other goal line and then immediately do 10 burpees. Then sprint back to where you started and do 12 burpees. Continue sprinting and increasing the number of burpees in each set by two until you reach 24. By the way, notice that I did not say jog or even run; I said sprint. Sprint means "to race or move at full speed." The workout ends when you can't complete a set of burpees without stopping to rest, or you can't sprint.

The Ultimate Burpee Ladder workout consists of 136 burpees and eight 100 yard sprints--not huge numbers. It's doing each set and sprint one after the other with no rest that makes this the Ultimate Burpee Ladder.

If you couldn't complete the workout on your first try, join the club. To improve, you need to do the workout once a week. If that's too scary to contemplate, try this modification to lessen the pain a little while you improve your conditioning. Do your sets of burpees and your sprints separately--even on separate days if you need to at first. Allow 15 seconds of rest between sets of burpees, and 30 seconds of rest between 100 yard sprints. The same rules apply: when you have to stop in the middle of a set of burpees, or you can't maintain a sprint, the workout is over.

Many of you will be afraid to even try this workout. Others will be afraid to try it a second time. But for those of you who believe that "pain is just weakness leaving the body," completing the Ultimate Burpee Ladder workout will be a challenge that you just can't walk away from. Oo-Rah!

For a free mini course on how to simultaneously improve strength and conditioning while burning fat, click here. Read my review of the two best bodyweight exercise courses you can choose.

Working Out for Extreme Fitness

Many people think about building muscles as abandoning life outside the gym and devoting hours in the gym like a monk in a monastery. Perhaps the only way to chisel the body into a hot muscular physique is by toiling hour by hour over the rusty iron day in, day out and year in, year out.

This need not be so. Although hard work is truly required, extreme fitness doesn't demand one to be a slave of the iron weights. Full-body workouts can make one progress, and they easily fit in one's schedule. This is very convenient if one is looking forward to achieving extreme fitness but finds it hard to hold on to a single workout routine.

Genuine full-body workouts done by athletes with an aim in mind makes for maximum muscle contraction using heavy weights, makes room for full recovery so one can actually grow and continue to train hard plus it also prevents burnout which is inevitable due to excess training.

So if one is ready for extreme fitness, here is all there is to know about full body workout:

Full-body work out is a time saver. The biggest plus about having the whole body trained all at once is probably having to go to the gym less frequently; perhaps around two to three times for every seven days would be enough.

Another advantage of working out the entire body all at once is that one need not spend two or more hours of strenuous exercise in the gym for every session; one only spends one hour in the gym for every session. So that's just three to four hours per week in the gym right? With full-body workouts, it is all about the quality of exercise one does for session and not the quantity, nor even the amount of time you allot per session.

A full-body workout boosts the cardiovascular system for extreme fitness. One must allot two to four sets for every body part into the one hour session. Jam packed with exercising, each one hour session then gets the heart and the rest of the cardiovasular system pumping and up to speed in a flash.

Now feeling pumped up, next find out what rules does one have to follow when engaging in full-body work outs:

Training commences only once every two to three days. This is so easy isn't it? What is great about this is that there is time spared during rest days so that one can indulge in a few cardio exercise sessions instead of depending on cardio execises one normally does at the end of each workout session which are ineffective due to fatigue.

Heavy lifting is strongly advised. Contrary to popular belief, especially among athletes, t is not true that it is good to train lighter than one actually could so as to conserve energy for the other body parts that will come later in the routine. What is true is that one cannot achieve optimal progress if one is not training heavy, no matter which program that person is doing.

Do one exercise only per muscle group. This is very easy to follow and is also important. Doing basic exercises which are also intense means you do not have to do another different exercise for that body part.

Keep your workout short. Resistance training affects the natural hormones of the body connected to muscle building. Intense exercising boosts the testosterone levels and long workouts increase those of catabolic cortisol. Sixty minutes of work out allows you to get the best of both worlds.

Now with this convenient and powerful work out regimen, one can now truly experience extreme fitness.

Cardio or Strength Training First?

Many people need to do their cardio and strength training in the same exercise session because of their schedule or need to use fitness center facilities and/or equipment. Even experienced exercisers sometimes ask the question: should I do cardio or strength training first? Unfortunately, no one answer applies to everybody. It all depends on what your goals are. Once you've set your goals, though, it's easy to decide which to do first.

If you're a runner, swimmer, or cyclist (or all three) and strength training is intended to improve your sports performance and prevent injuries, do your cardio before your strength training. If you do strength training first, you will deplete the tremendous amount of energy you need to do hard endurance training. Training for endurance sports is so taxing, in fact, that many athletes don't feel like doing strength training afterwards. Don't go to that extreme, but you do have to be realistic. Your weights and reps are going to be less than what they would be if you hadn't done cardio exercise first. As long as you're putting forth your best effort and making progress, just relax and accept it.

If you're a strength athlete, such as a weightlifter, football player, or thrower, and cardio is intended to give you more endurance for your lifting or throwing and control your weight, do your cardio after your strength training. Your goal is to lift the most weight, the most times that you can, so you need to save the cardio for after your strength training. Doing cardio before will sap your strength.

If you're preparing for a military or law enforcement physical fitness, you need to find out the order of events in the test. Are the strength exercises done before the run and/or swim, or after? Whichever it is, do your workout in exactly the same order as the test is given. If for some reason you can't find out the order of the test, do your cardio after strength training. That's the typical order.

What if you're training for all-around fitness? In that case, alternate doing cardio before strength training and doing cardio after strength training. That will ensure equal development of both cardiovascular fitness and strength; plus, it's more realistic. Primitive humans, who were always in excellent physical conition, usually walked and jogged to the hunt or battle. Then they sprinted and did strength work (spear throwing, fighting, wrestling, etc.). However, often they would have to chase game or enemies (or run from them) afterwards too. On the other hand, sometimes they were surprised by an animal or ambushed by enemies and had to do their strength work first to defend themselves, and then do some cardio afterwards to get away. To be fit the way humans were meant to be, you need to be able to do either cardio and strength training when you're partially fatigued.

I hate it when authors say you have to decide for yourself and won't give a definitive answer, but you can see that this is a question that you really do have to answer for yourself. To put it simply, decide which activity is most important to your goals: cardio or strength training. Do that one first. If it's neither, then alternate doing one before the other. Is that definitive enough?

For a free mini course on how to simultaneously improve strength and conditioning while burning fat, click here. Read my review of the two best bodyweight exercise courses you can choose.

Bodyweight Exercise Cardio "Deck of Cards" Routine

Bodyweight exercises can be used to develop an almost ideal cardio routine. They can be done indoors or outdoors, are safe for most people to perform, and require little or no equipment. However, many people who have never wrestled competitively or served in the military are unsure of how to construct a bodyweight exercise routine. The "deck of cards" routine is the answer to this problem. The "deck of cards" routine can be adapted to almost any level of fitness, can be completed in 30 minutes or less, and, best of all, will increase your muscular endurance, and cardiovascular fitness in a relatively short amount of time. The only equipment needed is an ordinary deck of playing cards.

The most basic "deck of cards" workout consists of assigning black cards to push-ups and red cards to squats. Start by shuffling the deck and drawing a card. If, for example, you draw a black seven, do 7 push-ups. Similarly, drawing a red nine would mean doing 9 squats. All face cards are assigned a value of 10 and aces a value of 11. A well-conditioned athlete should be able to complete the deck in 20-30 minutes if little or no rest is taken between exercises. However, unless you've been doing bodyweight exercises regularly, you will probably not be able to get through the entire deck at first. That's okay. Start out with the 2's, 3's, 4's, 5's, and 6's (or as few or as many as you need to) and add an additional card every week or two until you are doing the entire deck. Since this is cardio, it's more important to keep the amount of rest between exercises to a minimum than to increase the number of repetitions.

Different variations of the basic workout can be constructed. For example, you can substitute sit-ups or leg raises for squats, or instead of two exercises, you can use four exercises--one each for diamonds, clubs, hearts, and spades. An example of such a workout would be squat thrusts, push-ups, squats, and sit-ups. Below are four sample routines you can try:

Routine 1
Push-ups
Squats

Routine 2
Squat thrusts
Push-ups
Squats
Sit-ups

Routine 3
Push-ups
Sit-ups

Routine 4
Mountain climbers
Push-ups
Front kicks (Kick your leg in front of you as high as you can.)
Leg raises

Making up your own routine is easy. For a two-exercise routine, choose an upper body exercise (push-ups, dips) and an abdominal exercise (sit-ups, leg raises, crunches) or a leg exercise (squats, lunges, front kicks). For a four-exercise routine, choose a calisthenic exercise (squat thrusts, mountain climbers, jumping jacks), an upper body exercise, a leg exercise, and an abdominal exercise. Squats are the most cardio intense of all these exercises, so be sure to include them regularly.

Though it's almost statistically impossible that you would ever repeat a routine exactly in lifetime of exercising, it's still important not to use just one "deck of cards" routine for all of your cardio. Instead, use at least two or three routines and rotate them. Alternately, rotate the "deck of cards" routine with another form of cardio. This helps keep your body from adapting completely to any exercise or routine and prevents reaching a plateau in your progress. That's how to consistently challenge your body and continually increase your fitness.

For a free mini course on how to simultaneously improve strength and conditioning while burning fat, click here. Read my review of the two best bodyweight exercise courses you can choose.

Bodyweight Exercise Cardio Intervals

Do you dread going outdoors to jog in bad weather? Is it getting to be too much time and trouble to drive across town and work out in a crowded gym? Would you rather do a 10-20 minute total body workout in the privacy of your home? Fitness expert Coach Eddie Lomax has developed a workout called Bodyweight Exercise Cardio Intervals that requires no weights, takes only 10-20 minutes, and works out virtually every muscle in your body.

Bodyweight Exercise Cardio Intervals turn the calisthenics and bodyweight exercises that you probably remember from gym class or boot camp into a cardio circuit. To set up your circuit, you select a calisthenic exercise (jumping jacks, mountain climbers, squat thrusts), an upper body exercise (dips, push-ups, pull-ups), a lower body exercise (squats, lunges), and an abdominal exercise (crunches, sit-ups, flutter kicks). Use a low number of repetitions for each exercise (probably 5-10) and do the circuit continuously until you complete the time you're aiming for. The continuous motion is what keeps your heart rate up and builds muscular endurance.

Let's set up a sample circuit of 10 reps of jumping jacks, 5 push-ups, 10 squats, and 10 crunches. You would start by doing the jumping jacks, and then go on to the push-ups, squats, and crunches. When you finish the crunches, go straight back to the jumping jacks and continue doing the circuit as many times as it takes to reach the time you're aiming for or until you can't do the exercises briskly with good form any longer.

Coach Lomax suggests 10 minutes of Bodyweight Exercise Cardio Intervals for beginners, 15 minutes for intermediates, and 20 minutes for advanced workout warriors. However, if you haven't been doing bodyweight exercises, you may find that you can't even complete the 10 minutes suggested for beginners. No problem. It just shows what you've been missing in your exercise program. Start where you're at and add about 10% to your exercise time every week or two. In other words, if you start at 5 minutes, add 30 seconds every week or two. If you start at 10 minutes, add 1 minute, and so on. If you keep at it, most people will eventually reach the intermediate or advanced level.

Do Bodyweight Exercise Cardio Intervals 1-3 times weekly to partially or completely replace your current cardio routine. Don't do Bodyweight Exercise Cardio Intervals more than 3 times weekly. Alternate Bodyweight Exercise Cardio Intervals with another cardio routine if you want to do cardio more than 3 times a week. No matter what exercise routine you do, if you do the same routine every day, you will eventually develop overuse injuries.

Another great thing about Bodyweight Exercise Cardio Intervals is that you can change routines as often as you wish, or you can do a different routine every day of the week that you work out. If you get bored with the program you've been using or have maxed out, change to a different or harder routine. Bodyweight Exercise Cardio Intervals put an end to the problem of boring, inconvenient, or expensive cardio routines. Try Bodyweight Exercise Cardio Intervals yourself and have fun getting into the best shape of your life.

For a free mini course on how to simultaneously improve strength and conditioning while burning fat, click here. Read my review of the two best bodyweight exercise courses you can choose.