Well, it is official. The summer is finally here. Living in San Diego we get summer weather pretty much all year round, but it just seems to be better during the summer months. With summer here, the beaches are going to be filled with people enjoying the sun. If you aren't quite ready for the summer or would like to see a little less bulge coming out of the bathing suit than it is time to take some serious action.
If you have been following my posts you no that I am not a big fan of cardio. I would always recommend focusing on strength training for your workouts. I also know that not everyone enjoys strength training as much as I do. If this is the case you can still perform cardio workouts and burn a lot of calories. The trick is performing the right type of cardio exercise.
If your primary goal is to lose weight you first need to ask yourself, "what have I been doing for cardio?" If the answer is nothing, then it is easy. Do something. Start any continuous activity that you can do for at least 30 minutes. If you answer was that you perform 30-60 minutes of cardio 3-5 days per week then it is time to introduce intervals. If you are already doing intervals then you might need to look at the work to rest ratio and change it up a bit or the length of time you are working out.
If you are not doing intervals currently then you are really selling yourself short. More studies are clearly demonstrating how many more calories you will burn using high intensity intervals compared to steady state aerobics, which 95% of the people I see at the gym are doing. High intensity intervals may not be for everyone. Like I previously mentioned if you are not doing anything right now you must start with some basic conditioning. After a few weeks of that you can try implementing intervals. To demonstrate my point just look at these numbers you could see with intervals. These are numbers are estimated using a few different studies, but they are going to be typical results. Actual calories burned will depend on the person's weight, age, sex, and lean muscle mass. Here are some estimates though:
All workouts were for 30 minutes.
-Walk at 3.5mph will burn approximate 126 calories with no significant increase in metabolism for the next 24 hours.
-Jog at 5mph will burn approx. 228 calories with no significant increase in metabolism for the next 24 hours.
-Run at 6mph will burn approx. 273 calories with an additional 160 calories burned over the next 24 hours.
-Intervals of 20 seconds at 9mph and 40 seconds at 5mph burned approx 298 with an additional 200+ in the next 24 hours.
With the amount of time working out being the same, interval training burned almost 5 times the amount of calories as walking. This means the interval people will lose 1 pound every week just from exercise (assuming their caloric intake is at the right amount) while the walking group would lose 1/4 of a pound. To me this is a no brainer. Workout harder and burn much more fat. Now something is better than nothing so if all you can do it walk then walk but if you can involve intervals than there is no reason not to. You can start to see why it baffles me that still so many people are sticking to walking or jogging for their cardio and why they are surprised when they just don't see that great of results. So with summer time upon us you don't have much time to get into that bathing suit. If you are looking for the absolute fastest way to burn fat and lose weight, you NEED to perform interval workouts. To give it a try you can start simple. Try performing 30 minutes of intervals using a 1:1 work to rest ratio. Try going hard for 1 minute than easy for one minute and repeat for 30 minutes.
You Stay Healthy San Diego,
Mike Deibler
San Diego Personal Trainer
My Workout Creator
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