Many believe the best cardio for fat burning is 45-60 minutes using the ‘fat-burning’ zone on equipment. While others swear by long, endurance style cardio sessions of 60 minutes plus. The truth is neither endurance training or setting the treadmill or elliptical to the ‘fat-burning’ zone is the way to your desired body. You don’t need to spend hours in the gym or even one hour for that fact. With the right combination of exercises and high intensity intervals with short recovery periods you will be well on your way to the body you have always wanted.

There are many studies that have shown when you decrease the time you spend training but increase the intensity through interval training or circuits you increase the effectiveness and your results. One study in Australia from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, showed that after only 20 minutes of interval based training, individual had a higher rate of spiking fat-burning hormones then a different group that performed 40 minutes of cardio at a moderate continuous pace.

Start with 20-30 minutes 2-3 days per week. Yup, only 2-3 days per week! Remember form yesterdays article, that the BEST way to lose weight, firm up and actually change the shape of your body is going to come through your weight-bearing exercises in combination with the right intensity of cardio down for the most productive amount of time.

Here a few sample workouts that are home based or to be completed outside:

 Option #1 Power Walk with Jogging Intervals

Warm up with 5 minutes of moderate paced walking, use your arms to pump up some extra action

Power Walk for 4 minutes and jog for 1 minute, totaling a 5 minutes set.

Repeat this 5 minute set 3-5 times.

Cool down with 3-5 minutes of moderate paced walking.

Option #2 Jogging with Running Intervals

Warm up with 5 minutes of power walking

Jog for 3 minutes and Run for 2 minutes

Repeat for 3-5 sets

Cool down with 3 minutes jogging and 2 minutes walking

Option #3 Stairs, Skating & Suicides

This one is to be done at home, grab your runners and you are good to go!

Warm up 5 minutes running on the spot, knee ups, jumping jacks, ‘skipping’ and knee ups in that order for 1 minute each.

Run the stairs for 1 minute

Power skate form side-to-side 1 minute

Run on the spot with heel-butt kicks 1 minute

Suicides – running from one spot to about 6-10 feet away hit the ground and run back to the other side and hit the ground for 1 minute

All outs – open your feet wider than hip width, squat down slightly, arms in front, now run it on the spot as fast as you can.

Repeat this entire set 3 times

Cool down with 1 minute of stairs, some side to side shuffling, walking on the spot and some good old breathing!

Stay tuned for my best yoga tips and video just for you!

Jenn

www.simplicityyoga.ca

Follow Jenn on twitter @simplicityjenn and on Facebook – Jenn Pike

To purchase her book ‘The Simplicity Project ~ A Simple No-Nonsense Approach To Losing Weight & Changing Your Body Forever’ visit www.amazon.com to order

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