Cardio exercises like jogging is not the most effective way to lose fat and improve the strength of you heart. The fact is, it can be harmful to your health.
Obviously, many experts will scoff at this idea but it is a concept which is rapidly gaining credibility in the fitness world. More and more true fitness experts are pushing the concept of conditioning your heart by doing short burst of intense exercise rather than doing long, boring cardio.
Your body wasn't designed for long, repetitive exercise. For that matter, it can make you more susceptible to disease. This type of long continuous, strenuous workout, without rest, mimics stress and causes your body to adapt in a way that is counterproductive to your health and longevity.
Our ancestors didn't run marathons or jump around for an hour doing aerobics. Plus, they didn't sit in front of television or the computer all day long. They moved around a lot at a low level of exertion. And sometimes they had to exert themselves at close to 100% of their capacity - hunting prey or escaping from it. This pattern of doing short intense movements, followed by rest, and lots of lower level activities is implanted into your genes. Your muscles, bones and organ systems are reflections of this genetic design. The way they work together is the formula for strength, vitality and long life.
Your body is not a machine - it's an adaptive organism that has its own intelligence. Nature has designed your body to adapt to whatever environment it encounters. If you ask it to perform the same activity over and over again, it will gradually switch the systems involved to meet the challenge more effectively.
Endurance exercise causes your heart and lungs to adapt for endurance. But these organs are already endurance machines. Your heart beats continuously and your lungs expand and contract with every breath you take. Forced, continuous, endurance exercise prompts your heart and lungs to "downsize."Reducing to a lesser capacity lets you go further, with more efficiency, and less rest and fuel.
But shrinking the output of your heart and lungs means you've traded reserve capacity - which you might need in an emergency - for overall efficiency. Heart attacks don't occur because you lack endurance. They occur when there is a sudden increase in cardiac demand that exceeds your heart's capacity. That's why you need some output to spare.
As far as losing fat, specifically belly fat, short intense bursts of energy is the way to go. While the long cardio workout may burn more calories while you are jogging the workout that incorporates short bursts of energy will increase your metabolism so that you are burning those excess calories long after the workout.
An extra advantage to doing the short bursts of energy as opposed to cardio is that it takes less time and isn't boring at all.
An example of this kind of workout would be running sprints, but don't let that scare you off. It can be adapted to any form of exercise. You could swim intensely, as hard as you can for 30 seconds and then take a break for 2 minutes and the repeat it 5 more times and you get a fantastic fat burning, heart building exercise.
You could also adapt this type of exercise to whatever gradient is needed. If you aren't able to walk around the block once without keeling over you have to scale it back to start out. In that case, you may only walk rapidly for 15 second and then stop to catch your breath and repeat. The important thing to concentrate on is to gradually do a little more in each of your workouts even if it's only a few steps.
If you can change the way you think about having to do cardio and can start doing your workout as described here you will begin to lose fat and get into much better shape in general.
Obviously, many experts will scoff at this idea but it is a concept which is rapidly gaining credibility in the fitness world. More and more true fitness experts are pushing the concept of conditioning your heart by doing short burst of intense exercise rather than doing long, boring cardio.
Your body wasn't designed for long, repetitive exercise. For that matter, it can make you more susceptible to disease. This type of long continuous, strenuous workout, without rest, mimics stress and causes your body to adapt in a way that is counterproductive to your health and longevity.
Our ancestors didn't run marathons or jump around for an hour doing aerobics. Plus, they didn't sit in front of television or the computer all day long. They moved around a lot at a low level of exertion. And sometimes they had to exert themselves at close to 100% of their capacity - hunting prey or escaping from it. This pattern of doing short intense movements, followed by rest, and lots of lower level activities is implanted into your genes. Your muscles, bones and organ systems are reflections of this genetic design. The way they work together is the formula for strength, vitality and long life.
Your body is not a machine - it's an adaptive organism that has its own intelligence. Nature has designed your body to adapt to whatever environment it encounters. If you ask it to perform the same activity over and over again, it will gradually switch the systems involved to meet the challenge more effectively.
Endurance exercise causes your heart and lungs to adapt for endurance. But these organs are already endurance machines. Your heart beats continuously and your lungs expand and contract with every breath you take. Forced, continuous, endurance exercise prompts your heart and lungs to "downsize."Reducing to a lesser capacity lets you go further, with more efficiency, and less rest and fuel.
But shrinking the output of your heart and lungs means you've traded reserve capacity - which you might need in an emergency - for overall efficiency. Heart attacks don't occur because you lack endurance. They occur when there is a sudden increase in cardiac demand that exceeds your heart's capacity. That's why you need some output to spare.
As far as losing fat, specifically belly fat, short intense bursts of energy is the way to go. While the long cardio workout may burn more calories while you are jogging the workout that incorporates short bursts of energy will increase your metabolism so that you are burning those excess calories long after the workout.
An extra advantage to doing the short bursts of energy as opposed to cardio is that it takes less time and isn't boring at all.
An example of this kind of workout would be running sprints, but don't let that scare you off. It can be adapted to any form of exercise. You could swim intensely, as hard as you can for 30 seconds and then take a break for 2 minutes and the repeat it 5 more times and you get a fantastic fat burning, heart building exercise.
You could also adapt this type of exercise to whatever gradient is needed. If you aren't able to walk around the block once without keeling over you have to scale it back to start out. In that case, you may only walk rapidly for 15 second and then stop to catch your breath and repeat. The important thing to concentrate on is to gradually do a little more in each of your workouts even if it's only a few steps.
If you can change the way you think about having to do cardio and can start doing your workout as described here you will begin to lose fat and get into much better shape in general.
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