How To Do Fat Burning Cardio

I don’t know about you but I’m always busy. I can always find something better to do than doing exercise, unless its a sport but thats a whole other issue.

If I’m going to train for a specific goal or work towards something, I want to get there the quickest way possible, wasting as little time as I can along the way. You should already know that metabolic strength training like our Bootcamp workouts are the king of fat burners, but what about the other weekdays?

If you want the fastest results for fat loss and an increase in fitness you should train 6 days per week with one day of rest. This rest day is essential to your recovery and results. For the other 3 days you should do some form of interval cardio.

Bodyweight circuits are great for fat loss but can be overly tiring sometimes, so we are going to add in some high intensity interval training.

We’re going to use running, fast walking, and bike riding, preferably outside or on an airdyne bike, but a spin bike will also be good. Rowing is great on a rowing machine, especially the concept 2. Swimming can be good too.

For our interval training work-rest ratios, we listen to what Alwyn Cosgrove is doing. He is one of the world’s leading experts in the field of fat loss and his facility is run like a lab. Every workout is recorded, analysed and tracked. His gym has been running since 2000. When he talks fat loss, everyone in the industry listens, so I believe what he says.

In 2009 he did a bunch of tests with his clients using different work and rest ratios for intervals. Here’s a quote from one of his recent interviews.

‘Last year I experimented with a bunch of different work to rest intervals. Basically, what I found is that the best fat loss results seem to come with 30 to 60s of work and 60-120s of rest. As much as I played around with it – I couldn’t really come up with anything that stood out as being superior.’

So we’re going to use the following work-rest ratios for our intervals.

30-60 (30 seconds hard and 60 seconds easy, etc)
30-90
30-120
60-60
60-90
60-120

For the work period, you go as hard as you can for the allotted time to your own ability and fitness level.

For the rest period, it doesn’t mean you stop, you just slow down you pace and get your breath back. If you need to stop, then stop. If you are really going all out then stopping may be your only choice.

To make it easy for yourself, use an interval timer if you have one, to follow the intervals above. If you don’t have one you can download the Gymboss Interval Timer app to your iphone, or use your watch or phone. It may have a countdown timer or you may have to watch the time yourself.

It doesn’t need to take long either. A five minute warm up and a 15-20 minute interval session followed by a five minute stretch should be plenty. If you want to do more, another 20 minutes of moderate activity will be fine.

Time to get to work.