"Seven Cardio Strategies Stop Holidays to Fat Gain"

Seven easy tips, anyone can follow them, let’s do it.

First thing, let’s look at our cardio program length, also referred to as duration. Want to keep it at 30 to 60 minutes. The body doesn’t even know what you’re doing until you hit 30 minutes. It is just figuring out, hey, you are doing more than usual. We want to get our heart rate up. We want to do this for about 30 minutes. And we can pick something based on our temperament. It can be non-impact it can be impact cardio. Non-impact would be mostly machines in the gym, impact would be out running, jumping, cardio kick boxing things like that. So again, first item is your duration and time.

Second area is your frequency. How many times a week are you going to do it? Three to four days all the way up to seven. It depends on the goal, depends on the person and their overall physical health. Someone that has got challenges with injuries of the knees, ankles, lower back, overweight, they may not need to do so much cardio. So we want to try to keep it at a level that is appropriate to the individual. Our suggestion usually is to start with a walking program then move into something a little bit more aggressive. For men, typically they can get away with fewer days than women due to the increased level of muscle tissue burning more calories per workout. You can also do a seven day a week cardio program if you do something that’s a little lower intensity like walking. But the higher the intensity, the greater the impact, there is a possibility that you may need to do less days. Now, some people in their line of thinking believe high intensity cardio is the best way. Yes, it is a good way to lose fat. But it is not for everybody right away. So, we can manipulate and go from low intensity to high intensity cardio once you established a good base.

The third area is to get that heart rate in a range of 120 to 180. You can check this easiest by getting a heart rate monitor, doesn’t matter who you use, we use Polar, been using them for a long time. Lots of cardio equipment has a device on it that will help you with calibrating where you are currently at that time. Sometimes they are not accurate and sometimes you’re doing outdoor cardio. So, having a heart rate monitor will be helpful. Use 120 beats per minute heart rate ranges as the low end of the speedometer (heart beats) and 180 is the high end for most people. Again, this depends on your particular condition. So if you have had challenges in the past with your overall health, get an examination by a doctor so you don’t do anything too aggressive.

But typically, we will have our clients start out and our goal with a heart rate monitor is get one that has a calorie counting device on it. So if you are a newbie to cardio one of the things to check is try and shoot for 5 to 10 calories per minute. That means in 30 minutes you are going to burn 150 to 300 calories. Someone that is more of an intermediate to advanced trainee we’re going to look for 10 to 15 calories per minute or 300 to 450 calories every 30 minutes. For my super advanced athletes anything above 15 calories per minute. That is pretty tough to do because they are usually really conditioned and they still have to get that high of a heart rate or that many beats per minute, it’s pretty tough. But it’s possible.

In any event, use those three ranges within the heart rate range grouping and also use the different speed limits or intensities. Fast pace and slow pace’s so we can break up the monotony of a program.

The fourth area that we might want to look at to increase the focus on our intensities is not only keeping it in the 120 to 180 range but we also want to look at maybe meeting or beating each cardio session by one or more calories per session per our heart rate monitor’s counting device. This is a tool to help you move forward in slow incremental jumps on intensity levels. If you did 300 calories today in your spin class, shoot for 301 or more the next time. If you did the treadmill you might shoot for 310 or 20. Just depends on the piece of equipment and type of cardio that you are doing. But meet or beat it by one or more calories each session until it becomes more difficult.

The fifth area that we want to look at is if you are impatient and you really want to make some major progress quickly, don’t limit yourself to one session a day, you could do two sessions a day. One in the morning, one at night and that would speed up your progress. The other thing that is common out there in the circles of health clubs, is what is better should I do it in the morning on an empty stomach? Me, personally, I can’ t do cardio on an empty stomach. Or do I choose not to. I just need some gas in the tank. So I am going to have a couple tablespoons of peanut butter and an apple. Other people have a full on breakfast. I usually find that people that are a little bit heavier they have a lot of sugar in their tanks. They eat some carbs. So they might have the energy to get up and go on an empty stomach. But for somebody that is already a leaner individual they’re going to need to eat something before their cardio session.

The other time to do cardio is immediately post workout . After you have done weight training you can get that cardio session in. And because you have already reduced the muscle fuel, you will have the opportunity to burn more body fat at that point. Again, this is an open subject that we can go around and around forever. But based on my experience over the last 30 years post workout is best for a majority.

The sixth area is a kind of harder. I call it “pay attention to yellow lights.” Are you the kind of person that when you go into the intersection and you see that the light has already been changed from red to yellow you want to see if you can time it to make it through the intersection. Sometimes people get t-boned in the intersection, right? When you’re doing cardio and your body tells you that there is something going on with it with aches and pains. Let’s be real about what we are feeling in our bodies and if we need to take a break or change the type of cardio or change the frequency to less days per week. Let’s pay attention to the flashing light letting us know maybe we need to change some things around. We always have time to get to the goal. But you have to kind of be aware of what is going on. Are we being lazy or is it the body is just letting us know, “enough, I’m getting ready to experience an injury.” What happens with an injury? Sometimes you need to stop, allow the body to heal and then restart again. Pay attention to the yellow lights.

Finally, build that fun factor in with cardio classes or go with friends. I have a class called super cardio on Sundays with a class of 10, 20, 30 people at a time. What happens? Crazy things occur and when there are groups of people, we get competitive. Once in a while my turtles will all of a sudden, since there are other people watching them, start to work a little bit harder. So it’s really good to get the most out of yourself and others as well when you do a group cardio, it kind of brings that factor back into it so that you can make that cardio work more effective.

My name is Emile Jarreau, Mr. FatLoss and M2 Fitness. Thank you very much. Have a healthy day.