If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, he's only one place to go might bite up with your hosts. Sal de Stefano Adam Shaffer and Justin
Andrews in this episode of Mind pump the Mind pop. So then we get this question all the time. What is the best form of cardio to burn body fat? Hmm. There's a lot of different forms of cardio different modalities. You have high intensity interval training type cardio. You have low intensity steady state type cardio, then of course, there's different ways to do cardio swimming rowing biking running. We dive into it deep we break it all down. What are the pros and cons of each types of cardio. So like what's the what are the pros of high intensity interval training? What are the cons were the pros of low intensity steady state? What are the cons? What are the pros and cons of not doing any cardio? How should you take cardio and inject it into your routine and does car?
You'll burn body fat and effective ways. We answer all of these questions and more in this dedicated episode to cardio and in regards to burning body fat. Now before we get into the episode. I want to tell everybody that map's split our very advanced muscle building Body Sculpting program. So if you're Advanced and you can handle a lot of training volume, I'm talking six days a week in the gym and oh I can handle the volume that you want to get this program. It's awesome. And it's 50% off just go to Maps split.com. So ma PS s plit.com use the code split 50s plit 5:04 the discount and if you want to check out our other Maps programs and say you're not super Advanced or your goal is a little bit different. We got other Maps programs at Maps Fitness Products.com.
Don't forget to come to I do but what the hell is it?
Remember that shaft? No.
You remember that dude that show your kids hack on PBS. I don't remember three two one contact. It was like to what contact it was like a science show for kids on PBS you guys watch PBS when your kids Justin Bieber have course G, you know, you really just in is equally as nerdy I
am I suppress it though because I wanted friends. Yeah apart and sell just gave all the way. He's
got more friends. You got more knowledge. My mom used to my mom loves to tell a story where I was I'll be a kid and I'd be in the living room and I'd be reading I don't know about something platypus or something in the encyclopedia and the door and then the doorbell would ring and I'd look at my mom and be like, tell him I'm not here.
She'd open the door Ernie.
She'd open the door a little bit invested in this and she kind of put her head out and then you can Sal come out and play.
I'm sorry, honey. He went with his father to something something and then she closed the
door and firecrackers and if she did whatever she
get mad at me like that you make me lie all the time, but she did because she knew that you know, I mean that one day those skills are coming in. They have they had a red yet. It
had captain of the earth is Almanac this podcast would not survive without all of your random knowledgeful Gyan Harbor sure. This
stuff is gone and Justin just remembers all the commercials. Yeah. Yeah, which is not important at all. Also
horn to the podcast but he helps here.
Yeah, and that's I mean it definitely pays off now they used to have kids commercials used to be pretty damn. Awesome. Yeah. Well when we were kids, they're not as good anymore. They all had
jingles and they had like memorable qualities to them where now like they don't put any effort into it like they used to you know, like it was like you just get into it and leaving you think we lost that and advertising.
I didn't think so. I think it's different. Yeah, like how do kids kids aren't we were forced to watch commercials like you
Boyle kids didn't even know I had to walk options. I had to sit through a commercial in order to watch my whole show. So if it was a 30 minute cartoon and valid more commercials liked was like 20 minutes of
crazy. It's crazy. They had for commercial breaks in a 30-minute show you one so you really got about 15 minutes to show y'all just getting into it and then boom cut.
Yep. Yep. And I remember the the GI Joe commercials and the Transformer commercials. You know, what they were never that cool though, like in real life. We haven't had any PSA sense even though it's that. Whoa. Yeah. Yeah. I used to be a big thing. Yeah. Hey
kids, you know don't put your hand on the stove
noted. Thanks. Thanks man,
Snake Eyes. Thank God Snake Eyes, you know educating those
be all you can be no knowing is half the battle is only half the battle now, you know, and no no Joe is half the battle.
Actually, it's not I knew a lot still doing it
secretly that was all propaganda for you to get you into the army and stuff like that, right? Although. Yeah,
I snuck that in. Yeah, except the military is nothing like GI Joe not at all every time a plane gets shot people. Don't just jump out and survive. They're the real people. They're not just
like, you know, these look half like snake people. Did
you remember remember realizing that as a kid where you were you would watch these battles on TV and you're like, wait a minute. Nobody ever dies. Yeah, it's always like I'll be back again next time we're going to fight again. Like why kill them one cartoon over you win anyway,
so we've been getting tons of requests with since we've been doing these. I think it's now this is probably the fourth or fifth episode in the last 60 or 90 days that we've done where we've got a single topic that we focused on and then went kind of deep into that and I have had a request then that was a question that I keep getting asked in my DMs and I brought the Doug Doug says hey this would be
Great episode. I think a lot of people would benefit from that and that's the best cardio to burn fat. I think that first of all a lot of people gravitate towards pieces of cardio for the intention of burning body fat and then the next thing that I get is, you know, what is better what type what style you hear about hit cardio you hear about like steady state or what they call list cardio and then you have all the different types of pieces of cardio. Like what is the best cardio to burn
fat? Yeah. It's well before we get into that. I think it's important to talk about what needs to be happen in order for your body to want to tap into its stored energy also known as just really what that is. Yes, because so your body stores body fat as a way of storing energy in case you don't you're not able to consume enough energy to survive and maintain your current level of activity. That's what body fat is and so in order to lose body fat
You have to consume less calories than you're burning or stated differently. You have to burn more calories than you're taking in. You have to have that energy imbalance. Okay, so to put it more plainly if you were burning 3,000 calories a day, which includes your amount of calories your body needs to stay alive plus all the activity that you do anything less than that. So let's say you eat 2000 calories anything less than the amount that you're burning means that your body has to make up the difference in the way it does. So or the way that you trying to get it to do so is by tapping into it's stored energy, which is body fat. So if that doesn't happen, okay, if you don't burn more calories than you take in or if you don't take in less calories you burn you will not burn body fat in it and how you work out and what you eat doesn't make a difference and it right it is a law of thermodynamics.
Now, there's a caveat to that because our metabolism is a free-flowing thing and I
Don't think a lot of people realize this a lot of people think. Oh, I either have a fast metabolism or I have a slow metabolism. But what many people don't realize is that it's more free flowing in its ever-changing on a very pretty regular basis. So you may be somebody who had a metabolism. Let's just say for argument's sake that burns 2500 calories a day. So every day your body Burns 2500, so to your point Sal if you consume more than 2500 calories your body going to put body fat on if you eat less than 2500 calories your body will lose body fat, but what people don't or what people fail to explain deeper into this point is the body starts to adapt. So your body may have been have a calorie maintenance of 2500 calories and then you decide you're going to do whatever cardio it is you decide to do and you do it consistently for weeks on end. And then what ends up happening is what used to be your twenty five hundred calorie maintenance.
Now becomes twenty three hundred calorie maintenance. So you then have to either one restrict even more calories or to increase more activity. And this is a very dangerous race to get into when you're you have a large goal say I need to lose 20 30 or 40 pounds of body fat and I'm getting in this rat race of constantly adding more exercise or constantly reducing calories, right? Especially if you're not in a position where you're eating an ideal amount of calories like you're already in a restricted amount in your trying to shave this down and then also add more activity to that that can be, you know, pretty tough place to dig yourself out
of yeah, it's obviously there's a limit to that right? Obviously, you can't keep dropping calories. Obviously, you can't keep trying to burn more calories. There's a certain limit but a lot of people ask at this point like, okay. Well, what can I do, you know to prevent that from happening and why does that happen in the first place? Like why does my body start burning less calories in the first place if I'm doing this?
Same amount of activity through cardio over and over again and what you need to understand with any type of activity is it's also sends us not only does it first off it burns calories. Yes, every time you move your body needs to burn calories in order to produce that movement, but that movement also sends a signal to your body to become more efficient at said movement and cardiovascular activity requires little strength and it requires stamina and endurance. And so what it's asking your body to do is become efficient with calories since it doesn't need a lot of strength. It doesn't need a lot of muscle. So your body says well, we compare muscle down to maintain this cardiovascular activity and slow its metabolism down and that's what you want to kind of avoid. You want to avoid that because that's the Trap people get into in the do too much cardio talk about the example the hearts of
tribe and what they found in terms of like you'd think that you know, this this this group of people who have to still hunt and gather food, you know would be burning an insane amount of calories right to be able to
Run all the time and to track these animals down when they actually felt found the opposite.
Yeah, they found they found that their bodies adapted because it didn't make doesn't make sense for you to just burn tons of calories all the time through activity your body starts to become more efficient. And this is the Trap that people can get into with cardiac. Well
explain why this was evolutionary advantageous for us. Right? Right because that's this goes all the way back to Evolution why this happens because somebody's probably going like that's crazy. Why is why would our
bodies do this? Well calories for most of human history calories were hard to come by so forget the fact that you live in modern times and forget the fact that there's food everywhere to the point. Now where more people die of obesity than of starvation for most of human history. You're out in nature and high calorie foods ran away from you and flew away from you. Like you couldn't just walk up upon something that was high calories my twinkie and or they fight back right you could have just walked.
Up to food and eat it. It would either fight back or would run sort of acquired a lot of energy to get it required a lot of strategy. It was very dangerous. And so for most of human history calories were just hard to come by and but in order to get the calories you need to expend a lot of energy and so the body became very very good at becoming efficient. Now what we're what you want to do is you want your metabolism to speed up in order to speed it up on the best ways. You can do that as building muscle which is why we talk about resistance training all the time. Now, we're not going to talk about resistance training in this episode, but that's definitely an important part of your routine because that will help prevent the slow down. The other thing that can prevent the Slowdown is utilizing cardio the right way doing it the right way, but I think before we get into how to do cardio how to use it the right way what it's good for like what is cardio like what makes something cardio and what makes something resistance training
for though. We have a cardio threshold and it's a point and everybody's is unique.
Different but it's a place where your heart now gets elevated to a certain point and you switch over system. So now your body is going and that's going to be everyone's in a Range anywhere from you know, some people as low as probably 132 as high as maybe 170 is where your heart is beating, but because we're constantly constantly beating anywhere between 50 to a hundred as we're walking around doing our normal stuff. That's not considered cardio that's considered neat. That's non-exercise activity thermogenesis. You're just moving around your body still is utilizing calories. But at one point you push the body to a point where the heart elevates and then it switches over into the cardiovascular system really training the heart in this process morning
you are and what you're doing is there's you're using aerobic energy which means with oxygen to produce the type of energy that you need resistance training is anaerobic where you're burning energy that does not require us oxygen. So it's two different types of energy systems.
You cross over into them with different workouts and what determines whether or not you doing cardio largely as the type of activity and your current Fitness level. So to use Adams example of walking somebody who's really deconditioned walking could definitely become cardiovascular activity for that person right for most of us. It isn't so that's kind of the breakdown of you know, what car do does now what cardio does benefit wise better than other forms of exercise is first off it's very very good for your cardiovascular system. It's good for the heart. It really does condition the heart well if the long it's very good for the lungs it increases lung capacity your ability to take asks oxygen utilize oxygen every time you take a breath of course from a personal level. I know when I have decent cardio Fitness, I just feel healthier doing everyday activities. Yeah, you feel like you can get up and
go like a little more energized like you got the stamina to really, you know do something that's labor intensive for a
Duration, well, would you would you refer to cardio like strength training for the heart? Sure. I mean, it's a muscle sure and you training it and pushing it to elevate come down Elevate come down as just like you training a muscle and you're getting it stronger. So it becomes more efficient at pumping and circulating blood through your body.
Right cardiovascular activity is no doubt very healthy for us all forms of exercise are very healthy. But cardiovascular activity is one of the it's the one form of activity that the human body evolved believe it or not to do pretty. Well. Okay. So when you look at humans and you compare us to all animals, and you say Okay, physically speaking what humans do really well we're not very strong even if we lift weights and all that stuff like we're less hairy. Yeah, you put us next to most animals our size and we're just not strong. They're just much stronger than us. We do we jump high animals kick our ass in that do we have good Vision know a lot of animals see a lot better better sense.
Smell hearing what humans do really? Well, let's do things that we do really well. We throw with accuracy that's better than any other animal and the other thing is humans believe or not have a tremendous capacity for stamina incredible capacity for stamina. In fact humans can out track almost any other animal that lives. In fact, there's this one race. I think they still do it where they actually race a horse versus a human for distance and there's been a few years with or a human is one and it's our ability to just continue just to be relentless over and over again our body's ability to cool down and the way we use energy is very very efficient. So our bodies evolved to derive lots of health benefits from cardiovascular activity. Now, this is not I'm not telling you now to go just run every single day because the odds are you don't run very well and that's way too much for you, but I'm just trying to paint the picture that cardio has got lots of these health benefits. And so I think in sometimes I think our podcast people get the misconception
Another anti cardio, I think cardiovascular activity has a place in everybody's routine for health. Well, I think the intent of
you know using cardio specifically just to lose
fat that's the problem. That's
that's and we're just trying to highlight and paint that picture of more effective way to do that. But again, like cardio has its place. It's definitely going to build up your stamina is going to have a lot of health benefits to it. If applied appropriately it's just we're trying to get people to shift their thoughts towards it a little bit.
Now that being said when you compare cardio type activities to other types of activities on a Time comparison basis time for time, so like 60 Minutes of resistance training versus 60 Minutes of cardiovascular 60 Minutes of yoga versus 60 Minutes of cardiovascular 60 Minutes of pilates versus 60 Minutes of cardiovascular cardiovascular activity during the time. It's being done burns the most calories just the bottom line. You will not burn as many calories.
He's lifting weights in an hour that you will do cardio. And for those who are likeness not true. I do these crazy circuits with weights of okay, you're doing cardio with weights. That's what I'm referring to. So cardio Burns a lot of calories per time being spent can this be useful for fat loss goals if you use it, right? Absolutely if I want to create a deficit and I want to work on it and I want to do it manually 16. I got 30 minutes or 60 minutes and I'm just looking to burn calories cardio is a very very easy way to do it, which is why I think people get trapped sometimes in the all I'm going to do is cardio. Yeah, you know type
thing. Well, there's other factors that come into play here is yes, it's great in a very short window though. So our bodies K it adapts to anything we throw at it, whether it be sunlight or exercise like weight training or cardiovascular and the thing that it gets adapted to some of the fastest is actually just traditional cardio exercise. So just getting on a treadmill
Mill and running for 60 Minutes, you'll see within a week or two your body will make incredible improvements out that feels good and rewarding for the person who's getting on the treadmill and the first day they were like, oh my God, this is killing me and then by day 7 of doing it, they're like, okay find my groove. This is getting easy. The problem is that's a good thing for getting good at Cardio. It's a bad thing for somebody who is wanting the cardio to burn a bunch of calories and body
fat not over time, right especially if it becomes the only Soul way of your training now, if you include cardio in your Fitness routine and you do it, right can it have some pretty good effects. Absolutely. In fact, I recommend cardio to everybody including people who want to bulk so I know we're going to talk about and we're going to dive into how to do cardio to maximize fat loss. But even people who want to gain muscle and gain size cardio's got some benefits because it just makes you healthier and a healthier body is going to do everything better. It's going to try and build muscle better. It's going to try
You know hold a healthy amount of body fat better balances out hormones and all those different things. So I think we should go into the different types of cardio and what they're good for maybe the benefits of them the detriments how people misuse them. Yeah. Well
when I think the when the ultimate goal and what we're talking about is the best form of it to burn body fat. There's really three options Option 1 is hit cardio option two is lists or steady state type cardio and then option three is actually no cardio and of those three, how do you know which one of them is best for you? Who's listening right now to burn high intensity interval training? That's it. Right then so less low intensity interval training and more steady state flow Interstate either way you want to say it. Yeah. And so then in the are not in which you know, you brought the example of neat or something, so there's ways to get activity, but it's not
Surly cardio rights. So what's the best option so hit being the high intensity interval training that's characterized by short bursts of high-intensity activity followed by slightly longer amounts of slow or low type activity. So like an example would be I'm on a treadmill I'm walking for 30 to 50 or 60 seconds. And then I Sprint for 15 to 30 seconds and then I repeat walk slow for 60 seconds Sprint for 15 to 30 seconds over and over again. That is the that's the intervals that we're talking about with high
intention all what you're what you're really doing because there's probably people listening that would argue the protocol that you're throwing out there cuz you're just using that as an example what it really is is you spike your heart rate really high like close to your max. Oh shit. Yeah, you are trying to get as close to your max heart rate in a short amount of time whether that takes you 15 seconds or 30 seconds to get it up there.
And then the goal is to walk or completely slow down to where you let the heart rate come back to its normal level before you spiked up and that's what interval training is. So there's a lot of debate under the time on which that looks like none of that really matters what really matters is because there's going to be such a individual variance of that is you're pushing as hard as you can and it should be a short explosive push to try and get your heart rate up as high as you can as quick as you can and then when you reach that kind of piqued it's coming back down and slowly letting it come all the way back down before you go back up again. Now, this is one of those workouts where I'm always trying to find ways to make it low more low impact if there's more options for me to be able to say I get on a bike where I can get more involved with my upper body and lower body at the same time and I can really output, you know at a high level but it's not going to be as damaging to my joints. I'm going to prefer to do something like that for a hit style
workout. So
Talk about some of the pros of that. I remember it was kind of how many years ago. Was it that that study came out and all the trainers like, oh crap hit cardio probably about
10 to 12 years or something like that. It definitely shook everybody that's been around for a long time. So it's not new science, but there was a study that came out that I think really started to make hit popular in the fitness
Community because up until this point. I remember when I first started professionally and fitness the only way people did cardio most people was the steady state former. That's the traditional type right you get on the elliptical and you just go at a regular pace for 30 minutes or you get on the treadmill or the bike same thing. You just go and you do your 30 minutes or whatever of cardio that was the way everybody did cardio before that's referred to as low intensity steady state. Then the study comes out and they compared hit cardio to list cardio and the study showed that the hit cardio burned more body fat and build muscle.
Built some muscle or preserve more muscle than the steady state and in less time and less time so they compared like 15 minutes a hit to like 30 minutes of list. I'll tell me how that's not appealing to like almost everybody. Absolutely and that's true. It's a hundred percent true like time for time hit cardio is going to preserve muscle more than less because it's intense high intensity. So it's actually more like resistance training than other forms of cardio. In fact, if you get really really good cardio the Sprint's themselves can become like muscle building. Like I know sprinters who have just
tremendous like more fast-twitch
action totaling it and it's less time needed so you're not in the gym for a long period of time so it's like wow, why don't we all do that? Why doesn't everybody do hit there's another side to it. There's a dark side to it, which is you have to have the first off the level of Fitness to be able to perform this effectively and most people don't just Bar None hands. It hands down most people's
prerequisites to it. I mean, there's there's you know the amount of
Impact, you know for your joints and the quality of your joints by building up your strength and overall control and stability within your body is is Paramount for you to be able to then pursue something like a hit style workout in order to you know, make sure that you know, your body isn't going to get damaged as a result.
Right? And so if you have poor mechanics on a treadmill or on a piece of cardio and you want to now go super hard like as hard as you can get your heart rate up that's a recipe for disaster. It's a very high risk of potential injury, which is why I did not recommend hit cardio to most of my clients when they first start with me hit with something that would introduce later.
Now when you guys do recommend hit cardio what pieces of equipment do you typically lean towards for the average person who's just getting started into fitness if you're just getting started in to hit cardio. What do you not do and what you lean more towards?
Well. Yeah. I like kind of like briefly touched on it.
It's the assault bike. So it has two Handles in this
is this is
self-propelled tension. So you're actually like in control of that amount of intensity and effort you're putting into it. I like machines that allow you to dictate how intense you're going versus you trying to
keep up with them keep up with the machine so that
way it's just a safety thing and then also you can ramp up a based off of your ability versus, you know, just not really being sure where your level
is. Yeah, I would agree. I didn't rarely would do the treadmill because people terrible at running it's just a high-risk activity for most people bike or elliptical. I like the elliptical to because you would just increase the resistance and just go as fast as you could and it was relatively controlled for more advanced clients a rower because a rower like the arrows a great. Yeah like the are dying or whatever the harder you pull the more the resistance is there. Those are great. All of those are a little
bit more mechanically challenging. So I tend to not lean towards a rower.
Rowing is in his right? It's more advanced. Yeah, it's definitely little bit more technical. I like to bike. I like the elliptical and I like ropes ropes. Can this is where ropes I think are kind of cool sure and I think there's let your upper body with your arms within the Rope around less risk in comparison to like I definitely think jumping and running. No, so the ones that I would avoid our jump boxes, which you see your
comments should not be cardio right plyo,
right. So I'm not a fan of of any sort of jumping exercises for and I'm not a fan of running for the same reason that you guys are you just most people were 90% of the population has lower cross syndrome or some imbalances in their lower body and pounding on a treadmill or pounding on the ground outside only solidifies these problems and normally end up results in joints aching a knee pain ankle pain hip pain low back pain now, I do like circuit training to in terms of like styles of hit, but it has
Be the main thing is to be able to regain composure. So it doesn't you don't have a mechanical breakdown in your form. And so that's something that it definitely you're gonna have to learn how to compose yourself throughout the workout and like what that looks like. So it's a little more Technical and and challenging as like somebody that's not working with a trainer to do by themselves agreed. If you do
proper hit with weights like a good form good technique, you don't go to failure. You don't need your form breakdown type of deal, but you are training a high-intensity one of my favorite forms of doing it. But so one of the cons we said was with the pros obviously burns more body fat builds muscle or preserves much shorter time shorter time cons. Are you need to have a higher level of Fitness good form and technique. Here's the other con hit cardio is not recuperative. It is not restorative hit cardio for the client or person access.
Who has lots of stress and needs more recuperative type training bad idea. You take the you take the high-performing executive who's not getting a lot of sleep and not eating very well and working tons of hours and you throw them at hit on top of the weight training you're going to be detrimental to all their progress. It's just too much of a stress. It requires too much of the Body for those types of individuals. It's the last it's the type of cardio. I do not recommend for people that are in that high stress kind of borderline edging and it's not here's the thing. I don't even recommend it to certain athletes. Like if you're an athlete who needs to build lots of stamina and endurance sure if you're a bodybuilder, here's why I don't recommend hit for a lot of body builders bodybuilders are always just balancing on the edge of overtraining they're pushing their bodies so hard with weights their diet is like they're eating less calories into burning cause they're trying to get cut I'm not going to throw them at high intensity cardio. It'll take away from everything else the bodybuilder. I tend to put them on the steady.
Type stuff it's more recuperative more relaxing and discretion in you know stress the body too much.
So next we have lists so less cardio. So it's your low-intensity steady state which is where you're not allowing that heart rate to exceed up over into your max heart range. So you're not pushing on fact again. This is another one of those things where people can debate on where that heart rate is there's going to be a major individual variants the way I used to coach it to clients is simply the talk test octus. Yep, you're doing list cardio is if you're on a bike you're on a treadmill and you can actually have a conversation with me next to you. So if you can talk to me while you're pedaling or while you're walking up an incline on a treadmill or walking slowly on steps or whatever it is that whatever form but you can still hold a conversation that typically is a good place to measure. Okay. I'm in list cardio and if I get to the point where I'm kept trying to gasp for air and I'm having a hard time talking to you that I'm probably elevated above
that little
Too intense right now. Some of the pros of lists. It's suitable for almost anybody. So it's a very easy form of cardio for most people I can take almost anybody and have them do some form of steady state cardio, whether it's just walking, you know, if I got I used to train people in advanced age who obviously we're deconditioned and older, you know, their cardio consisted of walking at you know, a speed of 2.5 with a you know, the ramp up at maybe one or two, you know for 20-30 minutes. That was their cardio. Yeah, I can start anybody unless you can get an elliptical go slow. Just kind of get your heart rate up a little bit. It's that's one of the best things about it. Is it suitable for most people it's a very easy way to build that stamina endurance and that kind of health and somebody
I love doing that and I loved like focusing a little bit more on if I needed a little more intensity and I was maybe felt like it was a little bit like I wasn't out of breath at all or like I was really easy to talk. I would elevate it.
So I bring the elevation up versus adding more speed just because then you know, you're getting that same effect. The heart is working harder, but now like mechanically I'm not like compromising anything that may be something in the chain that we need to fix. Now. One of the great Pros about list cardio is to me with all the clients that I've trained. It seems to be the most sustainable. Yeah. It seems to be the one like getting a client to go for a nice hike outside of like a moderate Hill. They have the claim that's not really Intense or to get on the treadmill and go for a nice power walk or get on the elliptical and kind of cruise where they could literally multitask that could be doing other things why they're doing it because it's not that intense seems to be a more realistic thing for them to incorporate into their lifestyle long term versus having to get up for hit. I mean getting out you to get in there and get after hit where you're pushing your car was very intense very intense. And even though it's a shorter amount of time and you're like, well, I need to do it for 15 to 20 minutes. It shouldn't be that hard. It's an intense
15 to
Ben-Hur dedicated to that hit ya know 15 minutes of
cardio and you brought up the point earlier about competing that when I competed I did a lot of lists cardio. This was me because I would get up an extra hour earlier than I would normally would I was half asleep. I throw my hoodie on and I go for a walk on the treadmill for an hour. So I'm not having to push the body really hard. All I'm trying to do is to kick my kilocalories up a little bit. So when we're at rest and again, I'm going to use hypothetical numbers just so people get an understanding of what it looks like on a mathematical point is your body when it's at rest is burning about to kilocalories per minute when you're just when we're sleeping. So we're burning calories, even when we're sleeping and then when you decide to get up and start going for a nice little power walk that 2 goes to 4 and then when you get on there and you want to pick up the intensity goes to like a six and then we're talking about high intensity. We're going like 8 to 10. So that's the difference. It's by you pushing and ramping up you're burning more calories per minute because you're pushing really hard but then the sustainability of that is a lot less so you could argue like, okay what's easier for me to do?
Get on a treadmill walk for an hour while I read or do something else because it's really easy for me to do and I could do it for an entire hour or push as hard as I can for 20 minutes. When you look at them head-to-head, it's not as big of a difference as you would think it
would know and it lists is great for longevity. It's got recuperative regenerative properties now can you over do it? Yes, you can overdo it to the point where it stops becoming recuperative. But if I have a client who's stressed or tired or let's say I had a hard workout. Let's say yesterday. I worked out super-hard my body's sore and I need to do something recuperative. I need to facilitate recovery a nice steady state low intensity cardio session is great for that hit is not hit is too much, you know steady-state perfect for that. So if I have a client who's tired or not feeling good or stressed out, you know, we're going to do a little bit of light cardio along with some other Mobility stuff. And this is going to help your body, you know regenerate it's a relaxing form of cardio. It's got lots of longevity like a
Said the person who does list cardio all the time and does it right is probably have more longevity the person that does lots of hit cardio all the time again, that's not to say they don't both, you know have their pros and cons. But in this context of needing to relax needing to recuperate regenerate my body's already on the edge, maybe you're a competitor and you're pushing your body already to the Limit. That would be the form of cardio that would recommend
again, I'm going to that was one of the things this is anecdotal. Of course when I was competing. One of my favorite things was to get on the treadmill, especially after a hard week of training because what happens when you talk about facilitating recovery, what what what helps recover a muscle is more oxygen more blood flow more nutrients because nutrients gets carried into that, right? So if you're going to get your muscles to recover faster, right we go in we work out really hard. That's where we do the damage. That's where we break down the recovery process right when we when we start to rest, but doesn't mean resting me.
Laying in bed is when you lay in bed your heart rates completely flat you're not it's not elevated at all. It's not promoting a bunch of blood flow and oxygen not as much as walking on a treadmill. So you getting on a treadmill and walking at a very nice Pace. What ends up happening is you promote more blood flow more oxygen which promotes more nutrients to get that muscle which means faster recovery and for a guy more effective right at a guy like me who was competitively bodybuilding and trying to add as much muscle and recover as fast as I can and get back and add more muscle. I wanted that it was important to me that I recovered as fast I can't so it would I would use it a lot for those reasons. It wasn't even because I was trying to burn body
fat. That's exactly why I would use cardio and I noticed my health got better and I just felt bad and I recover better and by the way, it's very rare that you need to not move in order to recover faster if that's if you really really overdid it, but for most of you listening when you train really really hard one of the best ways to get your body recover better is to do very light movement the following day.
Enlist cardio is fantastic for that right as far as the cons are concerned. Well, I guess it's it takes more time, right? That's what that's got to be. The number one con. You know it to do the same fat burning effects that hit would give me in 15 minutes. I have to do 30 or 35 minutes of list cardoso just overall. It just takes more time. It's not as effective on a per time basis in terms of fat loss the other con with lists and this is a big one now and this is why we always talk about don't just do cardio as the primary way that you're going to burn body fat is the adaptation that comes from doing lots and lots of steady state cardio is to slow down. Your metabolism is to get your body to lose muscle and that's that study that we talked about earlier. The one that blew everybody away was they found that when people lost 10 pounds primarily doing list cardio with a reduction in calories that they would lose something like six pounds of fat or five pounds of
And five pounds of muscle with hit it was something like 9 pounds of fat and one pound of muscle or no muscle was lost. And so that's B and again that happens because list cardio is act as when you're doing it. You're asking your body to become efficient efficient with calorie burn but also you don't need a lot of strength. You don't need a lot. And so your body the way you
the way your weight is a detriment at that point is what you're telling your body because I'm going to just keep doing this continuous movement and to get more effective at this continuous movement. I need to shut down some weight and then that's not really deciphering whether or not you know, it's fat tissue or muscle
tissue that well Matt muscle burns calories. Yeah, you need it. You need
explicit A. We're at a point in this conversation that I think it's a very important to make very clear because there's a there's a myth that has permeated the fitness space for a very long time which is, you know, all I don't want to do too much cardio that I want to burn muscle. Our body doesn't want to burn muscle. It's a very expensive tissue. Very last option doesn't metabolize very
It would much rather have either sugar calories, right or it would rather have body fat. The last resource would be muscle and that's very tough to actually do that. But that doesn't mean that your body doesn't pair down muscle right or get rid of it because it's not advantageous to have it right. If you are sending a signal to the body that you're going to do cardio every single day and you're not doing very much weight training in comparison to how much cardio you're doing. You're telling the body. Hey, we need to be able to travel over long distances like Sal was saying before it. I don't need to have all this big bulky muscle get rid of it so we can become more efficient and what I'm doing
think of it this way imagine if we lived in like a post-apocalyptic, you know world and gas was super super rare and expensive like what's that was a Mad Max where they're fighting over the Absalom. So imagine that right Wars. So this just gas is super expensive source of energy. We need it. Are you going to are you going to build cars that are very efficient or are you going to build cars with lots of horsepower and power like a drag-racing that the only time you would
Ever use your drag racing car is if you absolutely needed. Otherwise, you'd be in these one cylinder engine cars that conserved energy your body has muscle or builds muscle if it thinks it needs that muscle that's what weights do when you lift weights. You you cause a stress on the body the body thinks we need this muscle. It's a priority building when you're doing lots and lots or primarily only doing list cardio. Your body doesn't need lots of muscle, but it's still expending a lot of energy. So it says we're expending a lot of energy don't need a lot of muscle. Okay. I know how we can fix this problem. Let's get rid of a lot of this muscle now, we're burning less calories doing the same amount of activity and now we're artwork spending less less less energy. And this is what ends up happening. When all you do is steady state cardio and you don't do any proper resistance training and you just rely on this list your body starts to adapt in that direction. That's a big con and this explains why
if you're somebody who's listening you've ever had this before where you're busting your ass towards a goal.
You're restricting calories like crazy. You're dialed in on your food. You're doing Lots you doing cardio every single day. You did a body fat test when you started you go for weeks like this just being super consistent you check your body fat percentage you're excited because the scale one downscale went down 10 12 pounds. You're pumped you think you're doing it, but you take your body fat percentage and the body fat percentage stay the same or when I went up and that just doesn't frustrate. It's like people go what the fuck why this doesn't make sense to me. Well, yeah, it makes a lot of sense. You've didn't feed the body very much nutrients. You did lots of cardio. So you sent the signal that muscle is not advantageous. Even if you were still doing some weight training in there. If you are doing a lot more cardio in a lot more calorie restricting you send the signal to the body that it needs to be efficient and therefore repairs down the muscle now. Can you lose fat without doing cardio is the
question you definitely can and before we get to that people might be wondering how the hell can you lose weight and go up and body fat percentage real easy.
Okay, if you're if you're if you weigh a hundred pounds and you have 10 pounds of body fat on your body, that's 10% body fat. Okay, if you lose 10 pounds of muscle, but your body fat didn't go down. Now, your body fat percentage is higher because your total body weight is lower and your body fat makes up a larger percentage of your total weight. And so this is why we see this with clients where and I've seen this many times. They won't they won't do what I tell them or whatever. They'll come in. I lost 15 pounds tester body fat your body fat. Stay the same. How is that possible? Well, you lost muscle you lost fat but you also lost muscle. So you're just a smaller version of the same thing that you were before or sometimes a fatter smaller version of what you were before. So that's definitely one of the cons of list. But like I said, there's the pros aspect of so it's why it's important understand why there's a good and bad with both hit and less cardio. So, you know how to use them. And what is appropriate programming associate. That's right.
And that example that we just gave for list is a Cod that's actually a con for hit too.
It's just less likely
that yeah, you can overdo. Hey you talked about
the study Sal that you know, some of the studies that made hit so popular was it's less likely to happen with hit but it still happens a lot. She would lots and lots of hills if you train hit a lot and you're not training a lot of traditional strength training with sets and rest periods and you're not feeding you might find in like a class setting like an orange theory or is one of these types of class exactly. This is actually very common when you see these types of classes that sure they incorporate weights and so the consumer who's taking these classes. Oh, they think oh I'm getting traditional weight training, right because I'm lifting weights. But if you're doing it in this circuit type of style all the time and your heart rates tells stays elevated. It's like what Sal said, you're basically just doing cardio with weights. And if you're not giving the body adequate nutrients, you're basically sending the signal that again it needs to get good at cardio and it may actually pair down muscle and you won't build even if you lost ten pounds on the scale. There is a
Very high possibility that you could have lost five pounds of fat and also five pounds a month, right?
So now let's talk about the the pros and cons of not doing any cardio doll. So I'll start with the pros. Now. This is this is considering you are lifting weights and you're doing it, right? Okay, so this isn't like the pros of doing nothing because there are none. Yeah. Yeah, let's get that out of the way. So this means you're still lifting weights your training in the gym, you're doing weights properly, but you're not doing any
Coral this is this is going to get into why if you're somebody who listens to mind pump why we are we sound like we're anti cardio people which were not but this what this part which I'm excited that we waited till the end of this conversation to get into because I'm going to start it with this is where most people I believe should be when I look at the general population of people that I have helped when they come and they sit down in front of me and we assess their diet and their nutrition how they're what they're consuming and what they're doing exercise wise very few people. Do I start?
Doing cardio, even if their goal. They come to me say Adam. I need to lose 30 pounds 50 pounds a hundred pounds and they come to me and they sit down at my desk and we look at their their diet. We look at their movement. It's very very rare that I ever say. Let's do lists or hit
because it's not just about
getting there. It's about you know, how you feel like, is that
what it what is it going to be like
when you get there and how are you going to go forward from there that goal that you've and it's also about what we circling back to the beginning of this conversation the free-flowing metabolism that I talked about very few people come to me and hire me because they're in a very good place metabolically. Most people come hire me because they are in a place that's not rationed. Yeah, they've already yo-yo dieted. They've lost and gained weight enough times that they haven't been successful that now they're finally saying, okay, they're double dip it in their pockets. It's time for me to invest in this they hire the trainer I sit down and I assessor thing I go sir your 200-something.
This guy you're a you know, 30 something year old male 200-something pounds and you only eat two thousand calories and you're coming to me and you want to lose body fat. No way. Am I putting this person on cardio? I need to build their metabolism up before I even consider doing hit
Orleans. Now, there's three things we need to consider here with why you would do no cardio one is time if the average person wanting to work out can dedicate and this is someone who's just starting off like Adam saying most of these people realistically okay on average just my experience can dedicate between two to three hours a week total. Okay, realistically to the gym. Obviously they could do more if they really wanted to but we're talking about people who just are starting to get into fitness. So I'm looking at you and I'm saying okay, you only have two or three hours a week to dedicate to working out realistically. I'm going to dedicate all of that time to the most important form of exercise at this point in your training career, which is resistance training why it'll speed up your metabolism of most and those cardiovascular stamina.
It's that we talked about with cardio. You're so deconditioned. You're going to get you're going to get that with weights. Anyway, so I'm going to get all the health benefits. Anyways with resistance training. I'm going to speed up your metabolism. And since we have limited time, let's focus on the most important thing which is
resistant strain. Well, let's talk about why and how this is. How does weight training speed up? This person's metabolism. How does this guy who came to me who has only eating 2,000 calories if he eats 2300 calories, he puts body fat on why why would him lifting weights and not doing doing cardio speed up his metabolize. Well, when you're lifting weights the
signals different so that the signal that you're sending to your body when you're lifting weights is I need more strength. I need to get stronger. It's not saying I need to become more efficient with calories and I don't need much muscle. So your body starts to prioritize strength over efficiency. It starts to prioritize muscles. So you start to build muscle that process of prioritizing muscle and the process of building.
Also in the process of having more muscle equates to a faster metabolism, which is why a muscular and lean 200 pound male will burn more calories at rest than a squishy not muscular 200 pound male same body weight one guy's got more muscle to a person has less muscle. The person with more muscle is just going to burn more calories at rest. Now. Is that a good thing? It is in Modern Life. It doesn't it doesn't make you healthier by the way to have a fast metabolism to set necessarily you could have two very healthy people one with a slow metabolism with the faster one. But today it's beneficial because food is plentiful. It's all over the place and life is sedentary. And so I know if I can get somebody to speed up their metabolism to the point where they're telling me my gosh. I can't keep up with all this food. They're not gonna have an issue with having to restrict your calories all the time versus the person were they're coming to me. I'm like man, I'm starving all the time because if I eat anything over 15 or calories again, wait, that's a
Position to be in Forever very very difficult position to be in forever. So those are some of the pros you have
Li got also going to talk about some of the pros of what happens when we strength train for the next 24 hours versus what happens after cardio for the next 24 hours you get that afterburner when you get when you get on a piece of cardio equipment and you get after it for whatever said time and you get whatever benefit so if I push on there my body's burning more calories per minute, like I talked about the moment you get off of that and that heart rate comes back down to its normal place. The benefits are done. The main benefits have already happened from that when we weight train not only do you get some benefits of the burning more calories because you're actually having to move heart rates elevated and you are going to burn actually calories while we live you get those benefits, but then you continue to get benefits because the point that Sal made you've now send a signal the body that it needs to build strength your body's going. Oh shit. He might do this to me tomorrow. I better add some muscle and be ready for it. So what does that mean? That means later on when I go eat more food that
Almost guaranteeing that some of those calories are going to get partitioned over into building muscle instead of being stored as fat. That's a huge
Pro. Right right this the metabolism boosting effects of resistance training if done properly happened pretty quickly. They really really do with cardio the efficiency boosting effects the slowing down on metabolism that also can start to happen right away. So it's real important that you understand that so, you know what the right combination combination is now. Ideally you'd want to do kind of you want to have all of it you want to do some cardio with resistance training that some of the cons of not doing cardio. Well, if you get stuck and only ever doing weights, you're probably not going to reach your Optimal Health and I've been here many many many times myself. I love the lifting weights. I hate doing cardio. I always go back to doing some cardio because I start to notice some detrimental effects to both my stamina and my mouth for sure. Yes, that's one of the biggest things that I'll
notice right away if cardio just hasn't made its way back in my
Programming just even lifting
weights at a certain point. I mean you
tend to like break down have
fatigue kind of sets in at a certain point where if I have that and I know that's like a part of my programming like I'm gonna have more stamina to get through these in during workouts.
I remember a long time ago and for most of my life, I've been trying to build muscle as a skinny kid, right? So always trying to build muscle and I remember one time one of my trainers convinced me that doing some cardio not a lot but some would improve my health and improve my ability to work out in the gym. I'd be able to do more squats without gassing out be able to do more rows and subsequently would build more muscle. He convinced me and I did I went and I did 30 minutes of cardio three days a week on elliptical normal, you know, low-intensity steady state and sure as hell I noticed that my stamina got better and my health improved and I actually built muscle better because my health improved so cardio can definitely benefit the speeding up.
Metabolism as well when done properly and the con of never doing cardio is you miss out on the potential health benefits of that cardio. In fact, I would say if I were to break down a routine for the average person who doesn't have a specific athletic goal because I think if you have a specific athletic goal cardio can be a big part of
your life. Yeah, you have to consider it that
but yeah, like if you're a runner should you do a lot of running of absolutely but if you're the average person you want to be fit and healthy lean you want to have some good tone or muscle your routine should probably be I don't know 70 80 percent resistance training 15% of cardio and in the 5% of stretching or mobility, and of course depending on the individual those numbers can can can move around quite a bit but it should include all those mixes. I don't think most I think most people benefit from having mostly resistance training and some cardio and then some kind of a Mobility flexibility.
Well, I want to I want to go back to this hypothetical example.
I used with the guy who's 200 pounds and only eating 2,000 calories and where and how what I decide to incorporate cardio. Now, I made the statement that I wouldn't put this person on cardio at all at first and what I would do is this is before I introduce cardio to somebody's routine. I want them to be eating a sufficient amount of calories. Well, what is a sufficient amount of calories that could be either a huge variance depending on the person? I'm going to make that based off. I'm going to ask them. I'm going to ask him. Like are you in a place right now that you feel like you're eating plenty of food, you don't ever feel like you have to restrict like and a guy who I know is 200 pounds. It's up. That's a big that's a bigger guy and 2000 calories. That's not a lot of calories. I mean you make one one food Choice that's out of the like out of the ideal food choice or menu. Say a Five Guys number one. Oh, yeah, you know to feel the impact of well. Yeah. That's a that's a that's a 1,500 calorie meal. That's 80% of your entire intake.
Once anyone which means you basically can't have much more the whole rest of there any flexibility. So there's not a lot of flexibility and room there. So I want to make sure that my client is in a place where they are eating a sufficient amount of calories that allows them some flexibility in the diet and it doesn't make it does it make them feel like they're constantly having to restrict so personally I tell them when we start I start this guy obviously. Okay. My goal is I want to slowly increase your calories while we are strength training and not doing cardio until I get your calories to a point where you look back at me and you go Adam. I don't want to eat any more food. This is getting ridiculous. You started me off. We only had two thousand calories you now got me up over 3500 calories and it takes work to hit that calorie intake and the way I get him from 2000 up to a number like 3,500 is through strength training and just continuing soon that soon. We need more muscle. We need more muscle at a little bit more calories. We need more muscle. We need more a little more calories and that
Time some people that's going to take week. Some people's going to take months. Some people may even take years depending on how broken the metabolism is. Once I get him up to that place or her where they feel like they are eating more food than they have ever had and their body is not putting on body fat now. We're at a great place to start introducing cardio into their routine because then I know when they start to introduce that cardio and they create that deficit their body is going to drop and it's going to their body fat is going to rapidly drop and they're in a place where they're actually eating a good amount of calories enough to sustain all the muscle that they've just built to build the metabolism up and they're in a happy place that allows them
flexibility right now and a lot of people ask, you know, this this question like which piece of cardio is the best. Should I do the elliptical should I do the treadmill what's funny to is that these cardio please ask that looked just like that? Yeah. A lot of these cardio machine manufacturers actually Lie by the way on and tell you how many calories
That you're burning. So if you get on is that people come up to me like I like the elliptical because I burn more calories on that a bit. How do you know? Well, it tells me the machine don't believe that those machines lie and they boost the numbers to get people to use those. Yeah, they want to sell them. Yeah don't believe them modality with cardio really is not that important. I mean the important part is can you do the modality? Well without hurting herself if that's the case really doesn't matter what you pick it's different than weights with weights modalities everything the exercises you do in the form. You do matters a lot with cardio if you're walking on a treadmill going on elliptical doing a row or a bike long as your form is good. They're all fine. Pick the one you like the most this is one where I always tell people I don't care which one you do do the one you like. I don't care. If one Burns 15 percent more calories do the one you enjoy going to be on there for 30 minutes doesn't make that big of a difference
right? So going back to this person because I want to give people that are listening like an idea for themselves where they should start to introduce and do this.
Once I introduced that cardio, the first form for me is again the list because it's more sustainable, right we talked about that and I normally prescribed somewhere between 30 minutes to an hour. And again what's realistic to their schedule. So if I'm strength training ideally on lifting weights about three times a week, that's a very realistic time. I think for most people they can commit to at least two or three times a week of weight training and then two times or three times a week on the days typically that are off from weight training. I'm encouraging some sort of list cardio 30 minutes to an hour and that can be hiked. It can be a power walk on the treadmill can be the elliptical it can be the bike. It could be the ropes. It could be a lot of different things and like Sal said that's her swimming. Like I'm doing a rowing right now. It can be all these things and have fun with it. Enjoy that process. It shouldn't be hard. You're really doing it more just to keep the body moving and you're doing it for the over Health overall health benefits more so than you're doing it to do cardio. In fact, this is where I think mine pump gets the the bad rap.
Of over anti cardio. We just think that cardio is a terrible way to burn body fat. And I know the title of this is what cardio you know, what cardio is best for burning fat. The answer is I think that most cardio is not best for burning fat. I think weight training is best for burning fat and then you use cardio as ultimately for overall health benefits hundred percent and then if you have something where a two weeks, I've got you know, I'm heading out to you know, Vegas or something and I because I don't do cardio all the time and I decide to hey these next two weeks. I'm going to introduce a bunch of cardio. You'll see great change in your body because your body is not adapted and used to that. That's how I love to introduce cardio for. My clients is when we have as little time frame where we want to see some major change then I introduced it because we've been doing great right training. We've worked on building their metabolism and how the body responds.
Well, I love cardio for its health benefits and don't love it so much for its long-term fat-burning benefits. Now as far as hit cardio's concern,
That would be something that I would introduce later on. Once your Fitness is already high. You've got good mechanics good technique, you're not pushing your body to the Limit with your training and your stress life. Everything feels good. That's when you can throw in the hit but even then I don't recommend for most people doing hit more than once or twice a week. If you're going to do hit. I know when that study came out I had I would have clients like I do hit training every single day. But why do I feel terrible right? It's little too intense to do all the time for most people. So hit it. Let's say you do cardio three days a week and you're pretty fit and healthy to of those lists one one of those be hit. I don't know. How do you guys feel about that ratio?
Yeah. I know that sounds reasonable. I love that. I think though ultimately the goal is to get to a place where you are able to move up or down your weight. Okay without utilizing it and then you introduce it into there. So, you know when I was competing and when I was coaching competitors, we never messed with cardio at first.
It was all about figuring out your nutrients where you needed to be your calorie Maintenance building the metabolism up and then also teaching you how to restrict calories a certain way and train you and train your program change your program up. So you would see the reduction of body fat still with no cardio so that when we decided to introduce cardio, maybe those final two weeks or three weeks before you hit the stage. I knew that the body would respond dramatically because it hadn't been adapted to doing that. So I know the first couple weeks when you first introduce cardio, you see great results and that's what people see and why it's so challenging as a trainer to convince people that cardio is not a great place to go burn fat because what happens is someone doesn't listen to me they still go do it and yeah, you're right in the first two weeks. If you go run every single day for the first two weeks you absolutely are going to burn a bunch of calories and you're going to reduce reduce some fat, but the problem is your body gets adapt to that really quick. And then where do you go from there? I want to have that in my back pocket as as your last.
Trick up your sleeve, right? It's a great thing to be able to utilize when you have figured out all the other pieces first.
Let your metabolism do the calorie burning for you use cardio for health and boost your metabolism with resistance training think that's a good place to end there. Look go to mind pump free.com. You can download our guides the free the cost nothing at all. You can also find us all on Instagram. Justin is at my palm Justin. My page is my pump Sal and Adam is my pump
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