How to do Cardio

Let’s flip the script. Like I stated in my last blog post, cardio and HIIT have their place and their own benefits, right? Right. SO, how do we actually go about doing cardio?? Do we just get on the treadmill and stay there for an hour doing the same shit? Or, do we do this crazy circuit until we can’t breathe and take minimal rest? Absolutely not. How do you even know what you’re burning in that hour on the treadmill? I mean, your burning calories so that has to be good, right? Not necessarily. You need to make friends with your heart rate zones.

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Heart rate zones are KEY to controlling what you burn during cardio. I see this way too often… ol Sally comes into the gym and just kills herself on the treadmill doing all kinds of weird unnecessary shit to just rack up calories on her FitBit. What she doesn’t know is she’s WASTING HER TIME. What if Sally is in Zone 4 or 5 and not letting her body rest properly in between bouts? Well, Sally is burning strictly carbs. Not even touching the fat she’s working her ass off to burn. What if she’s just Sunday strolling on the treadmill and coasting in the bottom of zone 1? I mean, she’s getting activity and steps in but if she came to the gym to effectively BURN FAT, she’s wasting her time.

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We all have 5 heart rate zones. Each zone is dedicated to achieving something different. You can determine your heart rate zones by using the textbook formula for heart rate max and go off of percentages OR you can get your heart rate zones actually tested at a local facility that offers active metabolic assessments. Zones 1 and 2 are where you’re actually going to burn the most amount of fat (the top of zone 1 and bottom of zone 2 specifically), BUT less calories compared to the other zones. You’re not even working that hard in these zones! Zone 3, you’re working on cardio endurance. So, training for a race? Zone 3 with proper rest and intervals is GREAT to help increase your endurance. Zones 4 and 5? Now, these are the zones that everyone sees the media portray. The breath-taking hard as hell zones to do cardio in. They burn the most calories out of the 5 zones; however, once you’re in Zone 4, you’ve completely swapped to burning carbs. In the moment, if your goal is to burn fat, you’re obviously straying from that. HOWEVER, if you can take adequate rests, let you heart rate drop back down to zone 1, and then begin your next bout in zones 4 and 5, you’ll be increasing your VO2 max, which correlates directly to how well your body burns fat. So, to spell it out, in the moment, you’re burning carbs, but when you look at the bigger picture, that rest back down to zone 1 and repeating that is what’s going to make your body more efficient at burning fat in the long run. Make sense? Now, going back to Sally. She racked up SO MANY calories, but if she was in zone 4 and 5 most of the time, that girl just wasted her time burning soooo many carbs for no reason. Yikes. More calories burned doesn’t always mean more fat burned.

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Programming not only goes for strength training. Cardio and HIIT need to be programmed for the client as well. It needs to be built off of heart rate zones, and it needs to be integrated with strength training for maximum fat burning. If you’re just going to the gym and hopping on a piece of equipment just to rack up calories, you’re completely wasting your time. Become more efficient when it comes to your cardio, and hell, you could probably accomplish way more in less time if you actually followed a heart rate zone-based cardio workout.