I have a very specific question. I am trying to lose the fat layer covering up muscles. I normally do about 20 minutes of high intensity cardio 4-5 days a week such as kickboxing with intervals, mock skipping rope, or plyometrics. I'm not seeing much change and I've been at it for over a month. Before I start blaming diet and trying to cut out more carbs or something (I already eat pretty strict) I wondered if I am doing the wrong type of cardio.
I heard from a friend that doing longer periods of moderate intensity cardio got him better results, and I read in a book that doing endurance cardio twice a week along with intervals once a week is best. So I'm thinking of trying to add 40 minutes to and hour of walking or jogging to schedule as often as I can.
Is high intensity cardio with intervals really the best way to go or is it only beneficial when combined with an existing lengthier cardio workout such as jogging on the eliptical?
High Intensity vs. Moderate Intensity
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Re: High Intensity vs. Moderate Intensity
The high intensity stuff is good, but you can always swap 2-3 days of what you curently do for things like intervals or HIIT and see if that works, or even sprints.
Diet may be an issue though if you undereat, you body won't get rid of fat, because it will enter into a starvation mode, so don't be too ready to shelve calories if it means undereating and be prepared to be patient. You may have also gained a small amount of muscle during this time so weight may have stayed largely rhe same, but the muscle to fat ration may have improved slightly as well, which is always a good thing.
Diet may be an issue though if you undereat, you body won't get rid of fat, because it will enter into a starvation mode, so don't be too ready to shelve calories if it means undereating and be prepared to be patient. You may have also gained a small amount of muscle during this time so weight may have stayed largely rhe same, but the muscle to fat ration may have improved slightly as well, which is always a good thing.
Re: High Intensity vs. Moderate Intensity
I've been doing 1 hour of working out, 5 days a week. 3 days a week I do both; 30 minutes of moderate intensity (usually just walking or jogging on treadmill) followed by some sort of 30 minute high intensity workout (sometimes the workouts are only 12 minutes long (like the exercises on Bodyrock) so I do two of their workouts ), and then two days a week I do just 1 hour of moderate (walking/jogging).
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Re: High Intensity vs. Moderate Intensity
First thing you need to do is vary your workouts, sameness is your enemy. Second high intensity burns more fat in the long run,(up to three times more) so says every study. If you can do more than a 5 minutes warm-up and 20 minutes of high intensity then it's not high intensity. You need to to add full body resistance circuits for best results, cardio is great, but won't get it done. Lastly, you need some carbohydrates and healthy fats in your diet too, so I recommend 30% fat, 30% protein and 40% cabohydrate.
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Best,
Los Angeles Personal Trainer
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Re: High Intensity vs. Moderate Intensity
You do not specify in your post what it is exactly that you're trying to accomplish such as getting stronger or increasing endurance. If you want to increase your endurance, you should do cardiovascular exercise at a moderate to high intensity level for 30 minutes or more several times a week.