In order to lose body fat effectively, you have to do cardio and there is no way around it. Many fitness enthusiasts have over looked the benefits cardio workout. The main reason here is because doing cardio exercise is very boring for some people and also, it is very difficult for unfit people to start a cardio workout program because they feel discourage when the cannot complete a run while others can.
Therefore, the best cardio workout for a particular person must be carefully design to meet his or her needs so that they can stick to the cardio workout program and burn fat. There are many strategies of doing cardio like interval training, high intensity interval training, fartlek training and conventional style method.
Here, we are just going to discuss how to design yourself, the best cardio workout for yourself. In the nutshell, the best cardio workout for a person is when the heart rate is elevated for at least thirty to forty five minutes at an intensity of seventy percent to eighty five percent of their maximum heart rate. This heart rate range is called the targeted heart rate.
At this heart rate, the body burns the optimum amount of fat in the body. This means that, if your do your cardio at this heart rate, the percentage of the total calories burned is the highest compared to other heart rates.
To calculate the targeted heart rate for your best cardio workout, follow this formula.
Take two hundred and twenty, minus your age, and then minus your resting heart rate. Then with the figure, multiply it with seventy five percent and eighty five percent. Add your resting heart rate into the two values and that is your targeted heart rate range.
For optimum fat loss, do your cardio workout four to five times a week and each session should last for no lesser than thirty minutes and no more than one hour. Make sure when your doing your cardio, you are in your target heart rate, use a heart rate monitor to monitor your heart rate!
There is much discussion going on which cardio machine is the best. Well, theoretically, if you are in your fat burning zone, any machines will work the same. But there are a few cardio machines that burn calories faster. The excellent calorie burners are the treadmill and the stair master. These cardio machines work the glutes muscle carder than any other machines. Because the glutes is the largest muscle in the body, it will burn a whole lot of calories!
There is another cardio machine that is making a big hit right now. It is called the Wave by Technogym. This particular machine simulates ice-skating and it really can burn calories as fast as the stair master and it works the inner and outer thighs!
You should not be out of breath during the cardio session. You need oxygen to burn of fat. Combine the your cardio workout with weight training and you definitely can see the fat melt off!