Fitness Program

Cardio Fitness Is Your Best Weapon Against Fat
By Darren McLaughlin
When you're looking to lose weight, the primary exercise you need to engage in accomplish your goal is cardio training. If you devote yourself exclusively to strength training, you'll likely end up getting even bigger and weighing more, especially in the beginning, which might serve to demotivate you. You want to build muscle, but it's much more important initially to cut fat through cardio training. You will also become more healthy overall through increased cardiovascular exercise, which can only aid you in your weight loss efforts. Cardio training is your current and future key to success when it comes to winning the battle of the bulge. Not only will you improve your capacity to burn fat, you will also become leaner. This is the formula for not only weight loss, but for sustained weight loss, as well.

How much training will you have to do to achieve cardio fitness? The American College of Sports Medicine recommends that you do cardiovascular training for 20 minutes at your target heart rate up to a maximum of one hour for a minimum of 5 sessions per week. More than one hour is considered to be non-beneficial. Right here you can quickly decide on a course of action, as it relates to cardio training. If you do the absolute minimum, you can set aside 20 minutes per day. If you have more flexibility in your schedule, you may receive additional benefit by extending your workout time to one hour per day. But keep in mind you want to be as close as possible to your target heart rate, so expect some serious exertion.

Cardiovascular training is clearly the most important aspect of achieving fitness, especially for someone who's overweight. Strength training is beneficial, of course, but it runs counter to your basic needs of slimming. A few key components you need to consider concerning cardio training are:

1) Intensity - the intensity relates to the type of exercise you do, and how hard you do it.

2) Duration - the time your workout takes. For fat-burning, many fitness experts recommend a minimum of 45 minutes, 3 to 5 times per week

Strength training is also hugely important to fat loss for one big reason: it's estimated that one pound of muscle helps you passively burn 35-50 calories per day. You can see how quickly this could add up. This has the potential to be your secret weapon against bodyfat! If you gained 10 pounds of muscle, you would automatically burn 350-500 more calories per day while at rest! For this reason, you're best to try to balance both your cardio and strength training, so that you get the most out of each. If you overdo your strength training, it will probably come at the expense of your cardio training, and vice versa. If you are too intense about cardio, you might have a hard time keeping the muscle on. The best thing for you to do is to experiment until you find the perfect level.

Almost all of the modern equipment at gyms can target your heart rate, so using a LifeFitness, or similar cardio machine is recommended. This way, the guess work is removed. The LifeFitness unit will tell you your target heart rate based on a live reading, and will adjust it based on a constant reading from the sensors you hold. 40 minutes daily of the "fat burn" mode should be enough to help you kickstart your metabolism and help you shed those extra pounds.

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