While cardio is important to your fitness effort, you might be wasting time with cardio if you want to lose weight. Even worse, you might be sabotaging your efforts, too. Cardio is important for overall fitness, just as flexibility, strength and balance training is. It’s not meant as a cure all for every fitness goal, such as weight loss. You need cardio for endurance and a healthy heart, but strength-building workouts help prevent osteoporosis, while building muscles and flexibility training can prevent injury. Some people think that just running every day is enough. Not only is it not enough to get you fit, it can actually make losing weight harder.
Why isn’t cardio good for weight loss?
Sure cardio workouts burn tons of calories, but the problem comes from where it gets the calories to burn. It uses calories from both fat and lean muscle tissue. Think about the marathon runner. Their body is lean and not muscular at all. While the workout of a marathon runner will keep weight off, once they quit, it’s harder to maintain the low weight and not put on fat. That’s because the more muscle you have, the more calories you’ll burn and the higher your metabolism will be. Muscle tissue requires more calories for maintenance than fat tissue does.
Going bonkers with excess cardio workouts not only makes weight loss tougher, it’s boring.
Nothing will kill a workout program faster than boredom. If you love running, do it, but don’t forget to include other types of exercise for building strength and flexibility. However, if you hate it, there’s no reason to include running as part of your fitness program. There’s far more interesting ways to get fit, such as kettlebells, HIIT workouts, circuit training and exercise bands. You can get cardio training in a number of ways, it doesn’t have to be from a run or a walk.
Why not make your fitness and weight loss fun?
One thing we promise, besides great results, is that you’ll never be bored. Our boot camp atmosphere and constant change in the workout will keep you coming back for more. Working out in a group is not only cost effective, it’s also far more fun than working out on your own. You have the energy and momentum of the group and the comradery of others cheering you on to success.
- We use many exercises that are full body workouts and not only build strength, but also flexibility and endurance, plus burn huge amounts of calories. You’ll get more benefit from every minute you workout.
- Even walking can become a more effective workout by adjusting the pace of your walk. Walk at top intensity for a few minutes then at a slower recovery pace. It becomes a HIIT—High Intensity Interval Training—workout.
- Even though distance running is a good calorie burner, it puts a lot of stress on your body. If you do too much day-after-day, it can affect your immune system and leave you feeling dragged out. We create a program that’s perfect for your needs, boosting your energy without overdoing it.
- If weight loss is your goal, you need to include a healthy diet, besides working out. At 180 Fitness, we provide help in that area, too.