Intervals or steady-state cardio for fat loss?

Want to drop some body fat? Do some low intensity cardio! Or should you?

While doing cardio at 60-70% of maximum heart rate several times a week has been the standard fat loss prescription for years, research, as well as imperical evidence, shows that this is far from being the best way to go about it.

Weight training and intervals are far superior to performing low intensity steady state cardio. Your body also doesn't adapt to it the way it does to steady state cardiovascular work. Lets break that down a bit.

When you're performing steady state cardio you're obviously burning some calories. However, this process lasts only during the time you're doing cardio. So if you did 30 minutes at 70%, you maybe burned 300 calories, but that's it. As soon as you stop, the fat burning process pretty much comes to a halt.

With weight training, however, your body not only burns calories during the actual workout, but continues to do so for hours, or days, later due to increased metabolism. Specifically, when muscles are being stimulated with higher intensity resistance trainig their individual metabolic rate is increased and they burn extra calories throughout the day, as much as an extra 50 calories per pound of muscle. Translation: if you sufficiently stimulate 20 pounds of muscle you can burn an extra 500-1000 calories during the next 24 hours doing nothing. That's equivalent to doing 2 hours of steady state cardiovascular work.

Research of interval training shows that doing intervals is up to 9 times more effective at burning overall calories than doing low intensity steady state cardio. What this baiscally means is that you can get the same benefit doing considerably less work, or alternatively significantly speed up the rate at which you're getting results.

So try this: instead of doing 45-60 minutes of cardio 3-4 times a week, do 24 minutes of interval training 3 times a week, in conjunction with a resistance training program.

To do intervals using cardiovascular training equipment, try one of the following two programs, depending on what works for you. (You can use a treadmill or an eliptical machine. I don't recommend using a stationary bike because it doesn't have the same full-body and core benefits as the other two machines.)

The key here is going at a rate that is impossible to sustain for longer than the 1 or 2 minute intervals specified. If you can perform at the same level for 5 minutes but are only doing 1-2 minutes, you're not going to get the results we're after. And of course, please make sure that you're in good enough health to perform high intensity work of this nature. Speak to your physician if needed.

Plan 1
Warn up and get your heart rate up.

Perform 1 minute of high intensity cardio that is impossible to sustain for longer than 1 minute.

Rest for 1 minute.

Repeat the whole process for a total of 12 cycles.

Plan 2
Warn up and get your heart rate up.

Perform 2 minutes of high intensity cardio that is impossible to perform for longer than 2 minutes.

Stop and rest for 2 minutes.

Repeat the whole process for a total of 6 cycles.


Have fun!

And if you need a handy little interval timer, check out the "Gymboss" banner on the right. It's a programmable interval timer and it works spectracular.