Best Cardio for a Weight Loss PLATEAU (Proven) – Cardio Workout for Fat Loss to lose belly fat
Why do people start off losing pound after pound and burning a whole bunch of fat but then it’s like your body adapts and all that fat loss slows down. Not only does it slow down but for many people it comes to a complete halt this is known as a plateau and in today’s video I want to talk about the best cardio for a weight loss plateau.
First I want to make it clear that cardio isn’t always the solution to break through a plateau. However, if you’ve been weight training correctly and following a proper diet plan then this post is going to help you drastically if you find yourself stuck. Okay lets dive in starting first with the purpose. What’s the purpose of cardio as it relates to Fat Loss?
Sure it helps your entire cardiovascular and respiratory system which is great for your health but as it relates to Fat Loss, cardio is primarily used to create a bigger caloric deficit. I think we can all agree that if we can burn twice the amount of calories from one cardio workout as opposed to another than the one that burns more calories in the same amount of time and possibly even continues burning calories after we’re done that would be the best cardio for a weight loss plateau.
So now the question becomes what factors affect the amount of calories you burn out of your cardio workout. I’m gonna list these to you and they’re not in any order. The first one is how many joints you have involved in the movement Now this isn’t based on my opinion, study shows that multi joint training will burn more calories than let’s say focusing on just one joint.
To know what is best cardio for a weight loss plateau the second factor is are you sitting or are you standing? Now I’m not saying that cycling can’t be an effective form of cardio but again, this is a fact, you will automatically be burning less calories when sitting rather than standing.
Of course this is without intensity factored in which is the third and the most important factor. Intensity so how intense are you’re cardio workouts? You’ve probably heard of HIIT training. It stands for high intensity interval training and is known to be able to burn far more calories in a shorter amount of time. I want you guys to understand how and why this happens. It comes down to one main difference between HIIT and steady state cardio training and that’s intensity.
By working harder for even a shorter period of time you’re going to wind up burning more calories than a lot of the people not working quite as hard for a longer duration. Also typically the recovery process will require a lot more energy from a higher intensity workout than from a lower-intensity longer duration workout. And again energy is calories this is what’s often referred to as the after burn effect. So these are the three factors we want to strive for to have.
We want a high intensity multi-joint cardiovascular workout that can be performed on our feet for maximum calories burned ultimately leading to maximal Fat Loss. Now with these principles in mind we want to figure out what is the best cardio for a weight loss plateau.
Let’s start with the most common type of cardio… jogging. Based on our principles jogging is really only focusing on your hip joint and your knee joint so I wouldn’t call it multi joint training exactly. Of course this is totally different than sprinting, in a sprint your whole body is involved in the movement but just for this example let’s talk about that steady state jogging that I see people doing at the park and in the gym all the time
It’s performed on our feet so that’s a step in the right direction however, the intensity that’s required for jogging is pretty low so you’re going to have to commit quite a lot of time.
When we compare jogging to an activity like swimming or hitting a boxing bag which not only is a multi-joint workout but also incorporates both aerobic and anaerobic systems, and boxing is also typically performed at a high intensity by doing rounds or intervals where you throw in some breaks. This is one of the best cardio for a weight loss plateau.
When you compare that to jogging, the interval type boxing workout is going to burn a lot more calories. Now when we compare the boxing to running which is a more intense form of jogging or especially sprinting, with sprinting you can destroy the amount of calories that you would burn hitting a heavy bag. In fact to come close to the amount of calories burnt by sprinting you would have to do some intense sparring.
Once again though with boxing if you’re standing there playing patty cakes on the bag then you would have probably been better off going for a jog. Same thing with swimming if you’re just floating around in the pool you’re wasting your time and this goes for everything including things that you would assume to be really exhausting like wrestling, play hockey football or basketball.
If you’re just messing around you would have been better off jogging. This points to the fact that the true biggest factor out of the three is intensity. The best way to set up your cardio workouts for maximum intensity is by setting up an interval. Intervals can range from 15 seconds all the way to five minutes on and the rest interval will typically range between 30 seconds to 90 seconds off.
So a very simple example would be to sprint for 60 seconds and then rest for 60 seconds. Repeat that 10 times and as long as you put in your maximum effort for each one of those sprints I promise you you’re not going to find any other best cardio for a weight loss plateau.
Now this doesn’t exclusively apply to running. If you want to do the stair stepper I think that’s a great idea, it’s a great cardio machine and I also think that you can get a far better work out on the stair stepper by setting up intervals. Maybe a minute of a more aggressive pace and then 30 seconds of a slower pace. This is also one of the best cardio for a weight loss plateau. And again guys these intervals are not set in stone so if you have to take a longer break interval then you can totally do that just keep in mind that the point is progression and even though we’re not lifting weights with cardio our form of progression would be to increase work intervals and decrease rest intervals while still maintaining a high intensity.
Again this same type of training can be applied to swimming wrestling boxing cycling rowing. The awesome thing is that intensity and the amount of joints that you work will go hand-in-hand so just by upping the intensity on the rowing machine you’re going to start to incorporate a lot more of your trunk and spinal muscles and your entire court is going to get involved in the movement. Whereas if you’re just sitting there messing around your intensity is at a low level and on top of that you’re probably just working your upper back and your arms.
Again to recap intensity is king and there are a couple ways you can increase it. You could increase speed decrease stability add environmental factors like hills which you can actually also add on to a treadmill in the form of an incline. Also you want to strive for multi-joint training because those workouts will typically automatically increase intensity and unless you plan to do a seated activity at a very high intensity you’re most likely going to be better off sticking to the intense cardio workouts that can be done on your feet. That’s it guys I really hope this post has helped you find out more information on how you can change your diet and program your weight training and cardio workouts.
