Cardio workouts are important for your hearts health and also, a must do if you’re trying to lose weight. Even if you are not trying to lose weight, you have to do cardio now and then, because it is important for your heart, and it speeds up your metabolism too. Whether you’re running, fast walking, jumping on a rope, or hopping on a bike, you have to know some important tips, that will maximize your results, and will improve your cardio workout.
Do It In The Morning
Start doing cardio in the morning, on an empty stomach. Actually, it is not ok to do strength training in the morning, but cardio is the perfect choice. It forces your body to use the fat reserves to make energy, rather than the immediate food you consume. That way, when you exercise without eating prior to the exercise, your body burns more fat. So wake up and go for a run, or go to the gym for a 30 minutes morning cardio.
Track Your Pace
Use a smart phone app, there are tones of them, heart rate monitor or GPS to record distance, pace and calories burned. Tracking all of these variables helps to keep the pace on a level that is fat burning. You don’t want to have a steady pace the whole workout, so this helps you track and manage your pace.
Use Your Hands
When using a piece of cardio equipment don’t hold onto the handrail. Just let go and pump the arms forward and back, not across the body. You have to include your arms in order to make full body cardio workout. Many forms of cardio are all about the legs, so when possible, maximize your cardio time by focusing on working your arms as well.
Do Different Types Of Cardio
As every other workout, you have to change the cardio too, in order to get more results. The success is in the changes. Make sure you change your cardio workouts now and then, for example, if your cardio workout is running on the treadmill, cycle or do a fast walking the next day.
Do Cardio Right After Strength Training
It is a mistake to do cardio before the weight lifting training. You shouldn’t waste your energy on cardio, so it should come right after the weights lifting training. That way, you burn more calories. Don’t even wait, just when you finish in the weights room, hit the cardio right away.
These tips contradict each other. We are supposed to do cardio right away in the morning and not strength training, but also to do cardio immediately after strength training? The two don’t work together, so I assume you have to choose one over the other?
Cardio and strength training do work together.
The thong is, we don’t want to do strength training first thing in the morning, because we need bigger amount of energy for weight lifting (that we’ll get from the breakfast and lunch).
Cardio requires a smaller amount of energy, so it’s healthy to do it even on a empty stomach.
Now, when we decide to do a full body strength training and cardio training, we should always do weight lifting first, so that we avoid wasting our energy on cardio first.
So the choice is yours, do it in the morning or in right after strength training, eater way you’re doing the right thing :)