Effective exercise

vim_n_vigor

I have been seeing a lot about cardio makes you fat, cardio is inefficient, blah blah. I have been working through NROLW and the recommendation for people who enjoy cardio is to do interval training first, stop for 5 minutes, and then do steady pace aerobic activity after. The reason being that our (female) bodies will flood the blood stream with triglycerides and thereby making the aerobic activity more efficient at burning fat. Comments? Do you believe this to be true? Is this the more efficient way to train?

vim_n_vigor

bump

dr3wman

First of all, cardio doesnt make you fat. The only thing doing high intensity exercise before steady pace will do is raise your heart rate initially so it will gradually drop into the "fat burning" zone over time. Theres no need to overcomplicate things, high intensity will burn more calories in the same time period and steady pace (65% of HRM) has been shown to target fat specifically. If you are just looking to drop weight as fast as possible, the more high intensity the better. If you are looking to gradually burn fat, normal steady-pace cardio sessions will be fine

scottb81

I'm not sure about the triglycerides but it is generally a bad idea to do intervals without doing a steady state warmup first (about a mile at an easy pace). Hard intervals are stressful enough without the added stress of pulling a hamstring or achilles tendon.

vim_n_vigor

I want to lose weight, of course, but I want to maintain as much muscle as possible.