Cardio for Weight Loss

Lately i've been reading some outlandish claims about cardio (aka aerobic exercise).

Now I was one of the first mainstream fitness experts to shout about replacing cardio with intervals, and I maintain that to this day you will get more results in less time from intervals than you will from slow cardio.

I also believe that too much cardio will lead to an overuse injury in most cases, and that cardio is an inefficient way to lose body fat. It can work in some (mostly young men), but in my experience it doesn't work as well as most people think.

That said, I've recently read medical experts state...

1) cardio can decrease your health

2) cardio causes your body to store more fat (huh?!)

And other trainers are spouting these claims as though Moses himself brought down an 11th commandment stating, "Thou shalt not do cardio unless you want to store fat".

Puh-leeze.

Here's the bottom line about cardio:

1) It can and will improve your health.

2) You might be able to lose fat with it, but it will take you twice as long per session as interval training - and intervals have, in my experience, a much greater success rate.

3) Too much cardio can quickly cause injury.

4) The fat burning zone is the biggest cardio myth of them all.

5) You don't have to do at least 20 minutes of cardio before your body starts burning fat (again, huh?!)

6) Research is starting to show marathon running puts an awful lot of stress on the heart, resulting in an extreme inflammatory state (Am J Clin Pathol. 126:888-893, 2006). There is a risk (albeit a very a small one) of having a cardiac problem during a marathon.

(Personally, I think the benefits and prestige of marathon training and participation are highly over-rated - but that's just one man's opinion - and I cringe when an overweight person makes that their main goal - that's just a recipe for a visit to the physiotherapist.)

So that's what science and experience show about cardio. The day that a study shows cardio causes you to store more fat, believe me, you'll be the first to hear about it.

But until then, hopefully trainers will lay off the "sky is falling" claims about cardio, and stick to what the latest research is showing us. There are just too many merits about interval training, that we don't need to go around making up B.S. claims about cardio to prove our point.

Intervals are great, plain and simple, and cardio leaves a lot to be desired.

I don't make up the rules of physiology, I just follow them,

CB

P.S. What are the other experts saying about cardio and intervals?

At www.TTmembers.com, I've interviewed two trainers who are among the best at combining practical experience with scientific research to come up with the correct way of using cardio for fat loss and health.

Here's a sneak peak of Tom Venuto's thoughts...

"TV: Slow cardio has never worked very well for me. But we shouldn't take that out of context and I don't think we should completely knock low intensity cardio. We have to..."

And from Christian Finn, MS, his thoughts on the biggest fat loss cardio myth...

"CF: Probably the main one is that cardio in the so-called "fat-burning" zone is the best way to lose fat.

I had one guy e-mail me the other day asking if he should exercise at 30% of his maximum heart rate in order "to mobilise MCTs." At 33 years of age, 30% of my maximum heart rate is around 56 beats per minute, which isn't too far away from what it is at rest! Crazy!

There's also the idea that..."

To read everything that Tom & Christian have to say about cardio, intervals, fat loss, and health, become a TTMember today.

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