Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1010: The Best Cardio to Burn Fat

Episode Date: April 15, 2019

In this episode, Sal, Adam and Justin go into depth about cardio... the good, the bad and the ugly when it comes to burning fat. What kind of cardio works best? How much cardio is ideal? Is there ever a time you should avoid cardio? All of these questions are answered so that you can get the maximum efficiency and benefit from your workouts. What needs to happen for your body to be able to tap into its stored energy (aka body fat)? (6:37) The dangerous ‘rat race’ we get ourselves into in regards to calorie intake and excess cardio. (7:58) What determines if something is cardio or resistance training? (12:50) The benefits of cardiovascular activity. (14:25) The different types of cardio and the pros/cons of each: (20:10) HIIT (High-intensity interval training). (21:06) LIIS (Low-intensity steady-state cardio). (30:08) Not doing any cardio at all, yet doing proper resistance training. (44:08) The Mind Pump cardio prescription. (56:54) Related Links/Products Mentioned April Promotion: MAPS Split ½ off!! Code “SPLIT50” at checkout Evolution of Diet - The Hadza of Tanzania Mind Pump Ep 860: The Right Way to do HIIT How to Use the Talk Test to Monitor Exercise Intensity - Verywell Fit Mind Pump Free Resources

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND all the time. What is the best form of cardio to burn body fat? 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 what are the pros of high intensity interval training? What are the cons? What are 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 cardio burn body fat in 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 maps split our very advanced

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504, the discount. And if you want to check out our other maps programs, let's say you're not super advanced, or your goal is a little bit different, we got other maps programs at maps fitnessproducts.com. No, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I do, but what the hell is it? Do you remember that? Shaft? No. I don't remember that dude, that show where you're hitting. Contact on PBS. I don't remember that. Three to one contact on PBS I don't read three to one contact. Yeah, it was like to one contact It was like a science show for kids on PB you guys watch PBS when your kids just yeah, of course

You know you really just in his equally as nerdy I am I suppressed it though because I wanted friends because I wanted friends. Yeah. Yeah. He invited to Park and Sal just gave all the way up. He's just like, yeah. I'm just book thing. This is gonna take me somewhere someday.

I'm not even gonna debate that. And you were probably right. I'm not even gonna argue that. I literally had, I got more friends, you got more knowledge. My mom loves to tell a story where 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, I'd look at my mom and be like, tell him I'm not here. Yeah. She'd open the door. I'm learning. Yeah. She'd open the door a little bit. Invested in this. And she kind of put her head out and then you know, can Sal come out and play? Oh, I'm sorry, honey. He went with his father to something, something that she closed the door. And then you got firecrackers. And then she gave, whatever. She, she get mad at me like,

you making me lie all the time, but she did, because she knew, you know what I mean? That one day those skills are coming in. They have. They have a red door. Yeah, captain of the year, Almanac, this podcast would not survive

without all of your random dollars. This is bullshit. For sure. It's really not. Yeah, keeps us going. And Justin just remembers all of your random dollars. This is bullshit. For sure. That's what I mean. It keeps us going. And Justin just remembers all the commercials. Yeah. Yeah, which is not important at all.

But it also important to the podcast. But it helps here. And that's, I mean, it definitely pays off now. They used to have kids commercials used to be pretty damn awesome. Yeah, well, we were kids. They're not as good anymore. Well, they all had jingles and they had like memorable qualities to them where now like they don't put any effort

into it and like they used to, you know, like it was like, you just would get into it. And you think we lost that in advertising? That's different. I think it's different. Like how do kids, kids aren't, we were forced to watch commercials like you spoiled kids, even now. I had to watch options. I had to sit through a commercial and we were to watch commercials, like you spoiled kids, it even now. I had two options.

I had to sit through a commercial and were to watch my whole show. So if it was a 30 minute cartoon and it's four commercial breaks. It was like 20 minutes of cartoon. It's crazy. They had four commercial breaks in a 30 minute show you watch.

So you really got about 15 minutes of show. You're just getting into it and then boom, cut. Yup, yup. I remember 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 since, you know what I said?

Whoa, yeah. You know, that used to be a big thing. Okay, kids, you know, don't put your hand on the stove. Yeah. You're such a good. Noted. Thanks. Thanks, Nate.

Thanks, Nate guys. Yeah. Yeah. I know noted thanks Nick eyes Thank God snake eyes you know He educated those kids the GI Joe slogan Be all you can't be no knowing is half the battle now you know and no It's half the battle actually.'s not. I knew a lot. Still did. Yeah. Secretly that was all propaganda for you to get you into the army and stuff like that, right?

All the, oh yeah, they snuck that in. Yeah. Except the military is nothing like GI Joe. Not at all. Like every time a plane gets shot, people don't just jump out and survive. Yeah. They're real people.

They're not just like, you know, these like half like snake people. Did you remember, remember realizing that as a kid as a kid where 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 gonna fight again. Like why? Kill them once. Oh, cartoon over. You win. Yeah. Anyway. So we've been getting tons of requests. And 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've 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 a 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, 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 happened in order for your body to want to tap into its stored energy, also known as body fat.

Yes. So your body stores body fat as a way of storing energy in case 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 your burning or stated differently. You have to burn more calories than you're taking in. You have to have that energy imbalance.

So to put it more plainly, if you were burning 3,000 calories a day, which includes the 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 2,000 calories, anything less than the amount that you're burning means that your body has to make up the difference. The way it does so, or the way that you're trying to get it to do so, is by tapping into its stored energy, which is body fat. If that doesn't happen, if you don't burn more calories than you take in or if you don't take in less calories than you burn,

you will not burn body fat. And how you work out and what you eat doesn't make a difference. And it's 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 and it's ever-changing on a very pretty regular basis. So you may be somebody who had a metabolism, let's just say, for arguments say that burns 2,500 calories a day. So every day say that burns 2,500 calories a day. So every day your body burns 2,500. So to your point, Sal, if you consume more than 2,500 calories, your body's gonna put body fat on.

If you eat less, then 2,500 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. 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 2,500 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 in, and then what ends up happening is what used to be your 2,500 calorie maintenance now becomes 2,300 calorie maintenance now becomes 2300 calorie maintenance. So you then have to either one restrict even more calories or two 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 and you're trying to shave this down and also add more activity to that. That can be a 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 to prevent that from happening? And why does that happen in the first place? Like, why do my bodies start burning less calories in the first place if I'm doing the 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, not only does it, first off the 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 cardio vascular activity requires little strength and it requires stamina and endurance. And so what it's asking your body to do

is you 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 can pair muscle down and maintain this cardiovascular activity and slow it some 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 when they do too much cardio. Talk about the example with the Hodza tribe and what they found in terms of like, you'd think that this group of people who have to still hunt and gather food, 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 found the opposite.

Yeah, they found that their bodies adapted because it 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 could get into with cardio actually. Well, explain why this was evolutionary advantageous for us. Right, right, right.

Because this goes all the way back to evolution why this happens. Because somebody's probably going like, that's crazy, 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 starvation. For most 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 calorie. It was my twinkie. Yeah. And or they fight back, right? You couldn't just walk up to food and eat it. It would either fight back or it'd run. So it required a lot of energy to get it. It required a lot of strategy. It was very dangerous. And so for most of you, human history calories

were just hard to come by. And in order to get the calories, you need to expand a lot of energy. And so the body became very, very good at becoming efficient. Now, what you want to do is you want your metabolism to speed up and in order to speed it up one of the best ways you can do that is building muscle.

Which is why we talk about resistance training all the time. Now, we're not gonna talk about resistance training in this episode, but that's definitely an important part of your routine because that'll help prevent the slowdown. 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, 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 example. We have a cardio threshold and it's a point and everybody's is uniquely different, but it's a place where your heart now gets

elevated to a certain point and you switch over systems. Now, your body is going and that's going to be everyone's going to range anywhere from, you know, some people as low as probably 130 to as high as maybe 170 is where your heart is beating, but because we're constantly because it's constantly beating anywhere between 50 to 100 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.

Right. I'm really training the heart inates and then it switches over into the cardiovascular system. Right. Really training the heart in this process more than anything. You are, and what you're doing is you're using aerobic energy, which means with oxygen to produce the type of energy that you need. Resisting training is anaerobic, where you're burning energy that does not require oxygen. So it's two different types of energy systems, and you cross over into them with different workouts. And what determines whether or not you're doing cardio

largely is the type of activity and your current fitness level. So to use Adam's example of walking, somebody who's really deconditioned, walking could definitely become cardio of astral activity for that person. For most of us, it isn't. So that's kind of the breakdown of what cardio 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. It's very good for the lungs. It increases lung capacity, your ability to 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 a little more energized. You got the stamina to really do something that's labor intensive for a longer duration. What 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 is 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 do 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? No, a lot of animals see a lot better, better sense of smell, hearing. What do humans do really well? There's two What do humans do really well? There's two 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 where 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, I'm not telling you now to go just run every single day

because the odds are you don't run very well and it'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, and sometimes I think our podcasts, people get the misconception that we're anti-cardio. I think cardiovascular activity has a place and everybody's routine for health.

Well, I think the intent of using cardio specifically just to lose fat. That's the problem. And we're just trying to highlight and paint that picture a more effective way to do that. But again, cardio has its place. It's definitely gonna build up your place. It's definitely going to build up your stamina. It's 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, lifting weights in an hour that you will do cardio. And for those of you who are like, nah, it's not true, I do these crazy circuits with weights, okay, you're doing cardio with weights. I mean, 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 right, absolutely. If I want to create a deficit and I want to work on it and I want to do it manually, 60, and 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

and all I'm going to do is cardio. Yeah, you know, type of 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, 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 and running for 60 minutes, you'll see within a week or two,

your body will make incredible improvements. Now, that feels good and rewarding for the person who's getting on the treadmill on the first day. They were like, oh my God, this is killing me. And then by day seven of doing it, they're like, okay, find in 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 sole 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 to hold a healthy amount of body fat to try to, you know, hold a healthy amount of body fat

Better it 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 detriment's how people miss missusum Yeah, what do you guys think? When I think 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 one 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? And so less low-intensity interval training. Or steady state. Low-intensity state, either way you wanna say it. Yeah, and so then, or not, in which you brought the example of need or something. So there's ways to get activity, but it's not necessarily cardio.

Right. So what's the best option? So hit being the high intensity in voltage. That's characterized by short bursts of high intensity activity followed by slightly longer amounts of slow or low act type at 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 intervals that we're talking about with high intensity. And all what you're really doing, because there's probably people listening that would argue the protocol that you're throwing out there, intensity. And all what you're really doing, because there's probably people listening that would argue the protocol that you're throwing out there, because you're just using that as a sample.

What it really is is you spike your heart rate really high, like close to your max heart. Yeah, you are trying to get, it's close to your max heart rate in a short amount of time. What if 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 spike up and that's what interval training is so there's a lot of

Debate under the time on which that looks like and none of that really matters what really matters is because there's gonna be such an 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 peak, it's coming back down and slow, 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 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 gonna be as damaging to my joints I'm gonna prefer to do something like that for a hit style workout. Yeah, so let's 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 was like, oh crap, hit cardio.

Probably about 10 to 12 years ago. It's something like that, right? It definitely shook everybody up. It'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.

Yeah, because up until this point, when I first started professionally in fitness, the only way people did cardio, most people was the steady state form where that's their 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 studies showed that the hit cardio burned more body fat and built muscle. And built some muscle or preserved more muscle than the steady state. And you get in less time. In less time.

So they compared like 15 minutes a hit to like 30 minutes of lists. Now tell me how that's not appealing to like almost everybody. Absolutely. And it's true. It's 100% true. Like time for time,

hit cardio is gonna preserve muscle more than lists because it's high intensity. So it's actually more like resistance training than the other forms of cardio. In fact, if you get really, really good cardio, the sprints themselves can become like muscle building. Like I know sprinters, you have just tremendous. It's like more fast twitch action.

Totally. 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 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 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 damages or results. Right. And 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 disasters. 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. I mean, hit was something I 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

in a fitness if you're just getting started into hit cardio, what do you not do and what do you lean more towards? Good question. Yeah, I like, I kind of like briefly touched on it, but it's the assault bike. So it has two handles and 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 the machines. So that way it's just a safety thing. And then also you can ramp up based off of your ability versus, you know, just not really being sure where your level is.

Yeah, I would agree. I didn't, I rarely would do the treadmill just because people terrible at running. It's just a high risk activity for most people. A bike or a liptical, I like the elliptical too, 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 roer, because a roer, like the air, yeah, like the air dyno, whatever, the harder you pull, the more the resistance is there. Those are great, although those are a little bit more mechanically challenging, so I tend to not lean towards a roer, because rowing isn't as easy as it is.

It's more advanced technical. Definitely a little bit more technical. I like the bike. I like the lipped cool. And I like ropes. Roops. This is where ropes, I think are kind of cool. Oh, sure. And I think there's your upper body with your arms, uh, whipping the rope around less risk in comparison to like, I definitely think jumping and running. No. So the ones that I would avoid are jump boxes, which you see are common.

That should not be cardio. Right. That's plio. Right. So I'm not a fan of any sort of jumping exercises for it, and I'm not a fan of running for the same reason that you guys are. You just most people, we're 90% of the population

has lower cross syndrome or some in balances 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 and knee pain ankle pain, hip pain, low back pain. Now I do like circuit training too in terms of like styles of hit but it has to be The main thing is to be able to regain composure, so 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 what that looks like. So it's a little more technical and challenging as somebody that's not working with a trainer to do by themselves. Agreed. If you do proper hit with weights, good form, good technique, you don't go to failure, you don't have a form breakdown type of deal, but you are training at high intensity. One of my favorite forms of doing hit. But so one of the cons we said was with the pros obviously burns more body fat, builds muscle or preserves muscle. 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 who has lots of stress and needs more recuperative type training, bad idea. 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 their weight training, you're gonna 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 a 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 bodybuilders. Bodybuilders are always just balancing on the edge of overtraining. They're pushing their body so hard with weights, their diet is like, they're eating less calories

in their burning because they're trying to get cut. I'm not gonna throw them at high intensity cardio. It'll take away from everything else. The bodybuilder, I tend to put them on the steady state type stuff, it's more recuperative, more relaxing, and it doesn't stress the body too much. So next we have LIS. So LIS 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 rate. So you're not pushing away. In fact, again, this is another one of those things where people can debate on where that heart rate is. There's gonna be a major individual variance. The way I used to coach it to clients is simply the talk test.

Talk test, 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 trying to gasp for air and I'm having a hard time talking to you, then I'm probably elevated above that. A little bit 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.

If I got, I used to train people in advanced age who obviously were deconditioned and older. Their cardio consisted of walking at a speed of 2.5 with a ramp up, maybe one to two for 20, 30 minutes. That was their cardio. I can start anybody on list. You can get an elliptical, go slow, just kind of get your heart rate up a little bit. That's one of the best things about it.

It's suitable for most people. It's a very easy way to build that stamina and endurance and that kind of health in somebody. Yeah, I love doing that. And I loved like focusing a little bit more on it. 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 would bring that elevation up versus adding more speed just because then, you're getting that same effect, the heart is working harder, but now 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 a moderate hill that they have the client 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, they could be doing any other things while 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, to get in there and get after hit where you're pushing your heart. It's intense. Very intense, very intense. And even though it's a shorter amount of time, and you're like, well, I only need to do it

for 15 to 20 minutes, it shouldn't be that hard. It's an intense 15 to 20 minutes. You are dedicated to that hit. Yeah. 15 minutes of cardio. And you brought up the point earlier about competing. That when I competed, I did a lot of list cardio. This was me, because I would get up an extra hour early

than I would normally would. I was half asleep. I would throw my hoodie on and then I'd 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 kilocalves 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 two killi cows per minute when you're just when you were 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 two goes to four. And then when you get on there and you want to pick up the intensity, it goes to like a a six and then we're talking about high intensity. We're going like eight to ten So that's the difference that'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?

Why read or do something else because it's really easy for me to do? Get on a treadmill, walk for an hour, why 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 be. No, and this is great for longevity.

It's got recuperative, regenerative properties. Now, can you overdo 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 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, 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 gonna do a little bit of light cardio along with some other mobility stuff. And this is gonna help your body regenerate. It's a relaxing form of cardio. It's got lots of longevity like Adam said,

the person who does list cardio all the time and does it right is probably going to have more longevity. The person that does lots of hit cardio all the time. Again, that's not to say they don't both have the 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, 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 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 start to rest, but doesn't mean resting means laying in bed, because when you lay in bed, your heart rate's completely, you're not, it's not elevated at all. It's not promoting a bunch of blood flow in oxygen, not as much as walking on a treadmill. So you're 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 to that muscle, which means faster recovery. And for a guy, you'll feel more effectively. Right, and a guy like me who was competitively bodybuilding and trying to add as much muscle and recover as fast I can and get back and add more muscle, I wanted that. It was important to me that I recovered as fast I can. So 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 better, and I recovered better. And by the way, it's very rare that you need to not move an oratory cover faster. That's if you really, really overdid it. But for most 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. In this cardio, it's fantastic for that. As far as the cons are concerned, well I guess it takes more time, right? That's got to be the number one con. You know, to do the same fat burning effects that hit would give me in 15 minutes, I'd have to do 30 or 35 minutes of LIS Cardio. So 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 LIS, 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 gonna 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 6 pounds of fat or 5 pounds of fat and 5 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, and again, that happens because Lisk cardio is act, is, 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're, the way you're, the way you're, the weight is a detriment at that point is what you're telling your body, the way your body 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 shed down some weight. And then it's not really deciphering whether or not, you know, it's fat tissue or muscle tissue.

Well, muscle burns calories, right? Yeah, you need it. You need to, it's a, we're at a point in this conversation that I think it's very important to, you need to, this is a, we're at a point in this conversation that I think it's very important to make very clear because there's a myth that has permeated the fitness space for a very long time, which is, you know, oh, I don't wanna do too much cardio, I don't wanna burn muscle. Our body doesn't wanna burn muscle.

It's a very expensive tissue. It's a very last option. It doesn't metabolize very well. 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 or get rid of it because it's not advantageous to have it. If you are sending a signal to the body that you're gonna 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, I don't need to have all this big bulk you must also get rid of it so we can become more efficient at what I'm doing.

Think of it this way, imagine if we lived in like a post-apocalyptic world and gas was super, super rare and expensive, like what what's that, was it Mad Max, whether you're fighting over the gas level? So imagine that, right? So there's just gas as super, but it's a source of energy we need it. 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 car. The only time you would ever use your drag racing car is if you absolutely needed it. 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 cause a stress on the body.

The body thinks we need this muscle. It's a priority build. When you're doing lots and lots or primarily only doing LIS cardio, your body doesn't need lots of muscle, but it's still expanding a lot of energy. So it says we're expanding 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 we're expanding less less less energy. And this is what ends up happening when What 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 busing your ass towards a goal, you're restricting calories like crazy,

you're dialed in on your food, you're doing lots, you're doing cardio every single day, you did a body fat test when you started, you go four weeks like this, just being super consistent, you check your body fat percentage, you're excited because the scale went down, scale 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 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 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 were doing a lot more cardio and a lot more calorie restricting, you send the signal to the body that it needs to be efficient and therefore it pairs 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 weigh 100 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 if you're total weight. And so this is why we see this with clients where, and I've seen this many times, they won't do it, I tell them or whatever, they'll come in. I lost 15 pounds, that's your body fat. Your body fat stayed 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 lists, but like I said, there's the pros aspect of it. So that's why it's important to understand why there's some good and bad with both hit and list cardio,

so you know how to use them and what is appropriate for the programming of social. And that example that we just gave for lists is a con. That's actually a con for hit too. It's just less likely with it. Yeah, you can overdo it. You talked about the study, Sal, that some of the studies that made hit so popular

was it's less likely to happen with hit, but it still happens a lot. There's still lots and lots of hit all the time. 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. Which you might find in like a class setting,

like in Orange Theory, or one of these types of classes. 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 rate 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 pare down muscle and you won't build. Even if you lost 10 pounds on the scale,

there is a very high possibility that you could have lost five pounds of fat and also five pounds of muscle. So now let's talk about the pros and cons of not doing any cardio at all. 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 not. Yeah. Yeah. Let's let's get that out of the way. So this means you're still lifting weights, you're training in the gym, you're doing weights properly, but you're not doing any cardio. Well, this is gonna get into why,

if you're somebody who listens to Mind Pump, why we are, we sound like we're anti-cardiop people, which we're not, but this part, which I'm excited that we waited till the end of this conversation to get into because I'm gonna 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, what they're consuming and what they're doing exercise-wise, very few people do I start doing cardio. Even if they're goal, they come to me, say, Adam, I need to lose 30 pounds, 50 pounds, 100 pounds,, they come to me say, Adam, I need to lose 30 pounds, 50 pounds, 100 pounds. And they come to me and they sit down on my desk and we look at their diet, we look at their movement. It's very, very rare that I ever say, let's do lists or hits. Right. Because it's not just about getting there. It's about, you know, how you feel. And like,

is that what is it going to be like when you get there and how are you going to go forward from there that goal? 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, right? Most people come hire me because they are in a place that's not. Yeah, they've already yo-yo diadid. They've lost and gained weight enough times that they haven't been successful, that now they're finally saying, okay, they're dipping in their pockets.

It's time for me to invest in this. They hire the trainer. I sit down and I assess everything. I go, sir, you're 200 and something pounds. You're 30 something, you're old male, 200 and something pounds, okay? You're a, you know, 30 something, you're old male, 200 and something pounds, and you only eat 2,000 calories, and you're coming to me and you wanna 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 or less. Now, 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's saying, most of these people realistically, on average, just my experience, can dedicate between two to three hours a week total, 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 gonna 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 the most and those cardiovascular stamina benefits that we talked about with cardio, you're so deconditioned, you're gonna get that with weights anyway. So I'm gonna get all the health benefits any ways with resistance training. I'm gonna speed up your metabolism

and since we have limited time, let's focus on the most important thing which is resistance training. 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 2000 calories? If he eats 2300 calories, he puts body fat on.

Why would him lifting weights and not doing cardio speed up his metabolism? Well, when you're lifting weights, the signal's different. So 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 muscle. So you start to build muscle. That process of prioritizing muscle and the process of building muscle and the process of having more muscle equates to a faster metabolism, which is why a muscular and lean 200lb male will burn more calories at rest than

a squishy, not muscular 200lb male. Same body weight, one guy's got more muscle, the other person has less muscle. The person with more muscle is just going to burn more calories at rest. Now, The person with more muscle is just gonna burn more calories at rest. Now, is that a good thing? It is in modern life. It doesn't make you healthier, by the way, to have a faster metabolism, necessarily, you can have two very healthy people, one with a slow metabolism, one with a 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 their calories all the time. Versus the person where they're coming to me and like, man, I'm starving all the time because if I eat anything over 15 or calories,

they can't wait. That's a hard position to be in forever, very, very difficult position to be in forever. So those are some of the pros of... Well, you've got also got to tell us one 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.

Oh, you get that afterburner? When you get on a piece of cardio equipment and you get after it for whatever said time and you get whatever benefits. 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 wait train, not only do you get some benefits of the burning more calories because you're actually having to move heart rates elevating and you are gonna burn actually calories while we live, You get those benefits, but then you continue to get benefits

because the point that's sour made, you've now sent a signal to 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 I'm almost guaranteeing that some of those calories

are gonna get partitioned over into building muscle eat more food that I'm 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. The metabolism boosting effects of resistance training, if done properly, happen pretty quickly. They really, really do. With cardio, the efficiency boosting effects, the slowing down on the metabolism, that also

can start to happen right away. So it's real important that you understand that's you know what the right combination is. Now ideally, you'd want to do kind of, you'd want to have all of it. You want to do some cardio with resistance training. 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 loved 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 health for sure. Yeah, 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 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 to where if I have that, and I know that's like a part of my programming. I'm gonna have more stamina to get through these enduring workouts. I remember a long time ago, and for most of my life, I've been trying to build muscle,

I was a skinny kid, right? So, I was always trying to build muscle. And I remember one time, one of my life I've been trying to build muscle. I was a skinny kid, right? So I was 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 a elliptical, normal, low intensity study 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 the 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 routine. Oh yeah, you have to consider it that way.

Yeah, like if you're a runner, should you do a lot of running of absolutely. But if you're the average person, you wanna be consider it that way. Yeah, like if you're a runner, should you do a lot of running of absolutely. But if you're the average person, you wanna be fit and healthy, lean, you wanna have some good tone or muscle, your routine should probably be, I don't know, 70, 80% resistance training, 15% cardio and then the 5% of stretching or mobility.

And of course, depending on the individual, those numbers can move around quite a bit. But it should include all those mixes. 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 go back to this hypothetical example that I used with the guy who's 200 pounds and only eating 2000,000 calories and where and how would 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. Well, what is a sufficient amount of calories? That could be 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 them, 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. 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 didn't feel the impact of that. Well, yeah, that's a, that's a 1500 calorie meal. That's 80% of your entire intake in one sitting in one, which means you basically can't have much more the whole rest of the day. Yeah, any flexibility. So there's not a lot of flexibility in 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, doesn't make them feel like they're constantly having to restrict. So personally, I tell them when we start, I start this guy off and say, 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 anymore food. This is getting ridiculous. You started me off. We were only at 2,000 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 3500 is through strength training and just continuing sitting. That's it. We need more muscle. We need more muscle. Add a little bit more calories. We need more muscle. We need more add a little more calories. And that takes time. Some people that's going

to take weeks. Some people is going to take months. Some people that's gonna take weeks, some people that's gonna take months, some people that 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 gonna drop. And then their body fat is gonna 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

flex to build it. Right, now, and a lot of people ask, you know, this question like, which piece of cardio is the best? Should I do the elliptical? is a mop and they're in a happy place that allows them flex to build it. Right, now, and a lot of people ask, this question, which piece of cardio is the best? Should I do the elliptical? Should I do the treadmill? What's funny too is that these cardio machines are always asking that.

Elliptical. Just like that. 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, I just have people come up to me like, I like the elliptical because I burn more calories on that. And I'm like, 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 yourself?

If that's the case, really it doesn't matter what you pick. It's different than weights. With weights, modality is everything. The exercises you do and the form you do matters a lot. With cardio, if you're walking on a treadmill, going on a 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% more calories, do 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% more calories, do the one you enjoy, you're gonna be on there for 30 minutes, doesn't make that big of a difference. Right, so going back to this person, because I wanna give people that are listening like an idea for themselves, where they should start to introduce and do this. So once I introduce that cardio,

the first form for me is again, the list because it's more sustainable, right? We talked about that. And I normally prescribe somewhere between 30 minutes to an hour. And again, what's real listening to their schedule? So if I'm strength training, ideally, I'm lifting weights about three times a week.

That's a very realistic time, I think, for most people that 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,

hike, it can be a power walk on the treadmill, it can be the elliptical, it can be the bike, it can be the ropes, it can be a lot of different things. And like Sal said, that's, or swimming, like I'm doing or rowing right now, it can be all these things. And have fun with it, enjoy that'm doing or 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 overall health benefits. More so than you're doing it to do cardio. In fact, this is where I think mind pump gets 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 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 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.

100%. And then if you have something where, hey, 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's not adapted and used to that. That's how I love to introduce cardio for my clients is when we have this little time

frame where we want to see some major change, then I introduce it because we've been doing great rate training, we've worked on building the metabolism, now the body responds well. I love cardio for its health benefits. I don't love it so much for its long term fat burning benefits. Now as far as hit cardio is concerned, 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 gonna do hit. I know when that study came out, I know I would have clients, but I do hit training every single day, but why do I feel terrible?

It's a little too intense to do all the time for most people. So hit, let's say you do cardio three days a week and you're pretty fit and healthy. Two of those lists, 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're introducing 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 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 that was 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 of 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 some fat. But the problem is your body gets adapted that really quick and then where do you go from there?

I want to have that in my back pocket 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. I think that's a good place to end there. Look, go to mindpumpfree.com.

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