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Body Tempo

  /  Fitness   /  How much cardio do i need to do?

How much cardio do i need to do?

Firstly what is cardio? Cardio exercise uses large muscle movement over a sustained period of time keeping your heart rate to at least 50% of its maximum level. Such as biking, running, and walking, etc. Some of the tools can be found in the gym to be used for cardio: Treadmill, Bike, Stairmaster, rowing machine, and elliptical to name a few.

Cardio is one of the most Frequently Asked questions when starting a new workout regime. How much cardio should I be doing on top of my weights? I also believe that cardio is the most over utilized or misused tool for sustaining weight loss. Don’t get me wrong it’s hard to disprove some of the benefits of doing cardio. I am not saying don’t do any cardio at all. Lets do cardio smart in conjunction with some other ways of training to really sustain weight loss and also avoid plateaus.

Lets clear this up a little more. When clients first come to me doing cardio every single day and have for years. You would think they would be a shredded Goddess or God, but they are not, they’re stuck. (keep in mind their diets are pretty good) There is problem with doing your favorite cardio day in and day out. Our bodies are amazingly adaptable that they get used to that cardio with in a 6-12 week period. You would start to notice your results diminish. What also happens is that we need to keep doing that same amount of cardio to sustain our current weight loss. So you can see how you could get stuck in this vicious cycle. You have to keep doing tons of cardio just to stay the same. Sounds pretty lame doesn’t it. IT IS LAME! It’s not necessary to work your self to the bone to get short-term results.

Here is where I can come in to help stop this madness! Using cardio in a smarter way but also in conjunction weight training. Weight training will really help increase your lean muscle mass. When over doing cardio you can decrease your lean muscle mass which is your metabolism making it harder and harder to lose body fat. Metabolism (lean mass) helps increase your fat burning power allowing you to do less and less cardio and losing fat without even trying that hard.

People are always shocked to hear that I don’t do cardio year around and only when I compete. I did however have to do cardio to lose the fat mass initially.

If you are in a rut and working yourself to the bone and starting to lose your initial results please feel free to message me for a free consultation to get you closer, or if not to your goal.

Please feel free to email me info@bodytempo.com on what you would like my next article to be about!