Have you lost weight, reached a plateau and not been able to keep the momentum going? A lot of you guys ask me about cardio. What’s the best kind of cardio? How long should you do it? When should you do it? Again, everyone is different but let’s start out with me. If you’re a member of my program or follow me on social medial you know that I LOVE super setting and I keep my heart rate up throughout my workouts with minimal rest. There are 2 different forms of cardio HIIT and LISS. HIIT is high intensity interval training and LISS is low intensity steady state cardio. High intensity is usually done for no more than 20 mins and it consists of bursts of 110% max effort followed by short rest periods. LISS is your typical wanna-kill-yourself-hour-on-a-treadmill-blow-your-brains-out cardio. A lot f people get addicted to steady state cardio because they get addicted to the number they see on the machine when they’re done. They see 600 calories burned on an elliptical after an hour and they think how in the world could I burn that in less than 20 mins? You might be surprised to know that you actually burn more at the END of the day with HIIT than you do with LISS which is one of the reasons I am such a huge advocate of it. Is there a time and place for both? Yes, of course. HIIT, again, involves full out effort. Ideally sprinting is a great way to do this but you can do it on any machine at the gym. You can up the resistance on the elliptical or increase the pace and level of the stair master. There are SO many different ways to do it. BUT because of this, I wouldn’t necessarily have someone who’s a fresh beginner go out and try to start sprinting on their first day and risk injuring themselves. You’ll want to take it slow at first but for the most part HIIT is superior to LISS. Side from the fat burning benefits HIIT saves you time! I personally don’t have 2-3 hours to spend in the gym and I’m sure you done either! Another downfall to steady state cardio is that your body adapts and plateaus with it. What does that mean? Ok so let’s say you’re just starting out and want to lose weight so you decide you’ll start with 30 mins on the treadmill. You start dropping weight, you get excited and then you plateau.At that point you might decide the solution is upping your cardio to an hour. You start dropping again and then guess what..you stop and then again increase your cardio now to an hour and half, and then 2 hours..get the picture? This is the infamous thing that happens with most weight loss programs. You’re given a plan where you’re barely eating and doing a ton of cardio and all your body does is keep adjusting and adjusting to less food and more cardio until you just can’t lose weight no matter what you try. I care about LONG term results when it comes to my clients and studies show that body composition and actual fat loss from HIIT is greater than LISS. Body composition takes into account lean muscle mass and weight is just a number on the scale that doesn’t quite tell the whole story. You can easily drop body fat and gain muscle and the scale might not budge but you still lost body fat which is what we care about. You can also weigh less but have a higher percentage of body fat. Why do we want more lean muscle mass? Because then we can eat more and everyone wants to eat more hahah! No but seriously, having more lean mass will rev up your metabolism and increase oxidative capacity. Your cells have these energy producing units called mitochondria and this where ATP or energy is made and fat is burned. So in short. More mitochondria = more oxidative capacity = more fat loss burned. If I haven’t convinced you look at a runners body and compare it to a sprinters. A sprinters body is much more muscular than a runners. This is NO offense to runners and if you enjoy running go for it! I care about you staying active more than anything else! In short, put in the effort and go through the treacherous 110% max effort and really push yourselves, get it done and out of the way in a short amount of time and then have the rest of the day to do whatever it is that you want to do! You don’t need to do this everyday either 3 days of HIIT cardio/week is great for anyone trying to lean down! Learn my ways and get started with my Jumpstart Transformation Program