Health Fitness

A cardio routine is a great part of an exercise program but sometimes people can take this too far. The thinking process seems to make sense: if I do more cardio I will burn more calories and lose more weight. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work out this way. When you perform long duration cardio, a few things happen in your body. First, prolonged aerobic exercise increases cortisol response in your body. Cortisol is a hormone that is released when stress is placed on the body. High levels of cortisol in the body create a catabolic environment. This means that the body will break down muscle proteins for fuel. Not only will cardio increase cortisol, but it will decrease testosterone which will promote muscle growth. When this situation occurs, you will lose more and more muscle mass and not necessarily burn significant amounts of fat calories. In order to limit this effect in the body, stick to cardio workouts that last around 30 minutes and focus more on increasing the intensity.

In the previous mistake we learned that too much cardio is a bad thing for weight loss because it can deteriorate the muscle. The only thing that will promote healthy muscle growth is resistance training. Yet many will skip their strength workouts because they are afraid of bulking up and looking like a body builder. Most body builders shown on TV and in ads use drugs to help them get that big. It is extremely hard to build that much muscle with just a weight training routine. I could write a book on the benefits of resistance training, but I don’t want to take too much of your time. Some key points, however, are it will build muscle mass which increases your metabolism, it will promote higher bone mass density, and it will create a higher post-exercise oxygen consumption than cardio alone. This last point might sound technical but it is so important for weight loss. In a tough workout you will burn a couple hundred calories. After the workout your body has to get to work repairing the damages you made during the exercise and restore everything back to how it was before you worked out. This can take hours or even days to get back to normal. Until it does, you will burn more calories than you would if you had not worked out. If you are serious about losing weight, you will not be very successful without a strength routine.

It can be hard to design a routine to follow but if you stick to some basic guidelines you will be fine.

• Perform 2-3 workouts per week

• Perform exercises that involve multi-joint movements

• Perform 3 sets of 8-12 reps to help build muscle mass

• Perform at least one exercise for each major muscle group or movement pattern (push, pull, squat, bend, lunge, and rotate)