Intervals vs. Steady State Cardio Part I

I've gone over why lifting weights is an important part of a fat loss program, as well as why keeping your eating line is also essential.


But now I'm going to go into over the next few days why intervals are much more effective to fat loss than steady state, low intensity cardio.

First I'm going to go over what intervals actually are and how to do them.

An interval session normally starts with a warm up at a moderate pace. Intervals can be done on any exercise equipment such as the treadmill, stationary bike, elliptical, etc. Note though, you're going to get the most bang for your buck running, second choice would be the stationary bike. The elliptical, well, it'll work but, in my opinion, just avoid it.

After the warm up, you then go at 90% of your max pace for a short period of time. Might be 20 seconds, might be 30 seconds, or 45 or maybe a full minute. If you're on the bike, it's more important to increase the resistance first, then be concerned about the cadence. You want to keep the resistance and speed at a pace where you could really only pedal between 80-90 RPMs. If you're spinning really fast at a cadence of over 100 RPMs, then you need to increase the resistance you're using.

After the high resistance/high speed pace, you then reduce the resistance and the speed for a period of time down to the rate you were going at during the warm up. This really depends on the amount of experience with intervals. If a beginner, take about 60-90 seconds at the lower rate. If more experienced, you could use twice the amount of time for the rest as you did for the high intensity part (example, if you were going 30 seconds hard, take 60 seconds at the lower pace).

Once time is up on your active rest period, increase the resistance and speed again and go at it for the recommended amount of time. Keep doing this until you've done 6-12 of the high intensity intervals (again, based on your experience with intervals).

After you've completed the number you're going to do, slow down and do a cool down for 3-5 minutes at a nice easy pace. In the end, you're interval workout is probably going to be 20-30 minutes.

Important point to remember though. When I say 90% of your max pace, I mean based on your subjective max pace. If you're in good shape, been working out for a number of years, a max pace for you might be a full blown sprint. For someone just starting out, it might just me a faster pace walk and as you get more experienced with it, progressively increase your pace a little faster.

Next up, what this all means and why intervals are better for fat loss than low intensity steady state cardio.

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