Learn how to do cardio correctly depending on your goals: burn fat or increase endurance like pro runners and sprinters. Increasingly, you can hear the opinion that cardio training with constant effectiveness not only will not help you lose weight, but can be harmful. Moreover, for several decades, all athletes used constant aerobic loads during drying. Let's figure out which cardio workouts are more effective - constant intensity or interval.
Differences between interval cardio and constant intensity
Intermittent cardio is becoming more and more popular for weight loss. Today, you can find a large number of recommendations about the need to choose exactly interval aerobic exercise, since cardio exercises with a constant intensity lead to a loss of muscle mass.
For almost four decades, all bodybuilders have used aerobic exercise with a constant intensity to eliminate excess fat mass, but for unknown reasons today this type of training has become harmful. Most likely, this fact is due to the lack of knowledge of most athletes about cardio exercises aimed at fighting fat. As a result, they slowly walk on treadmills, burning at best a hundred calories, and cannot understand why the fat is not going away.
Let's first define the definition of these types of training. Constant Intensity Cardio is any type of aerobic activity that maintains a certain intensity throughout the session. In turn, interval training is the use of cycles of work with high and low intensity of any kind of activity. What is commonly called interval cardio is a mixture of the first two types of exercise. This training method is more suitable for people who have never played sports before and cannot physically withstand even a couple of tens of minutes of aerobic exercise.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Constant Intensity Cardio
Advantages
This type of training allows you to burn the maximum number of calories, the number of which depends on the intensity chosen by the athlete. It is the best choice for beginners who can do these sessions frequently at any time. Your results will directly depend on the intensity, duration and frequency of training.
disadvantages
Indoor cardio is boring. Cycling or jogging in the fresh air is much more interesting, but there are a number of restrictions for their conduct, which we will not talk about now. Excessive enthusiasm for cardio loads can lead to loss of muscle mass, which is very worrying for representatives of strength sports.
In addition, frequent use of one type of training can cause injury. For example, a large number of cyclists have knee problems. Hobbyists can avoid this by simply alternating between activities. It is important to understand that if you have a low endurance score, then cardio training will be ineffective for losing weight. On average, in one hour of training, you will be able to burn from 300 to 600 calories, which, even in terms of a week's loss of energy, is not an outstanding result. If you use medium intensity and work for half an hour, then you shouldn't even talk about energy consumption, due to its scantiness.
Today you can hear statements that cardio loads do not bring results due to the body's adaptation to them. Sorry, but the body also adjusts to a certain weight with strength training. If you can progress with the barbell simply by increasing its weight, the same can be done with aerobic activity.
Take an elliptical trainer as an example. Let's say you train hard at level 6 for 50 minutes at a heart rate of 145 beats. After your body has adapted to the load, and your heart rate has dropped to 130 beats, all other things being equal, you can do one of two ways.
It is fashionable to move to the next level of difficulty, continuing to train for the same 50 minutes, or increase the time of the session, remaining at the sixth level.
Pros and cons of interval cardio training
Advantages
You need to spend less time burning more fat as a result. However, it should be remembered that during the training itself, the loss of energy does not seem to be large. After this type of training, the body needs a lot of oxygen, due to which energy consumption increases.
Interval cardio can train your muscles to use fat more efficiently for energy. We have already mentioned about saving time, which can be a very significant factor in modern life. Besides, interval training is not so boring compared to classical training.
disadvantages
For aspiring athletes, interval training may not be the best choice. However, for beginners, intensive strength training will also be difficult for a similar reason - their body is simply not ready for such loads.
Even for experienced athletes, it is not recommended to use interval cardio more than twice a week. To get the desired results from interval training, you need to be prepared for hard work and get used to the burning sensation in your leg muscles. If you are not going to work hard, then interval classes will be of no use to you.
At the same time, some athletes use this type of training on a daily basis. However, this is not a good idea. You should work until you feel exhausted and very tired, but not as often. Sometimes athletes even have nausea after interval training.
Learn more about interval cardio and classical cardio in this video:
www.youtube.com/embed/uizxuYWuMd4
