If your fitness goal is fat loss, how much cardio you need to do on a daily or weekly basis is a major point of contention …
Some would tell you very little – two to three sessions per week of high intensity – style sessions being adequate – and that diet is the biggest factor in fat loss.
Others would say that doing cardio on a near daily basis is necessary to see best results.
At the end of the day, almost everyone can agree that cardio is a necessary evil in the fat loss battle. And another fact that piles of research points to is that high intensity/interval cardio is the way to go for fat loss and dramatic body composition change.
You can certainly perform intervals using just one cardio modality – hill running or sprints being a great example. However, you can also mix body weight movements like push-ups and lunges into an interval cardio workout for increased variety (just to change things up), adaptability (doing a workout at home, in a hotel room, etc.) and increased intensity (making your cardio sessions more difficult).
Check out this video for a high intensity body weight cardio workout (I’ve also included a written recap below):
Video Recap
Start with a 5 min. low-intensity warm up
Then, perform the following sequence two to three times without rest:
- 1 min high intensity cardio (sprint, bike, jog in place, etc.)
- 15 push ups
- 1 min high intensity cardio
- 25 body weight squats
- 1 min high intensity cardio
- 15 bicycle crunches
- 1 min high intensity cardio
- 20 mountain climbers
- 1 min high intensity cardio
- 12 lunges each leg
- 1 min high intensity cardio
- :30 plank hold
If your current cardio routine is getting stale, try this high intensity body weight cardio workout to mix things up. Keep training hard –
Forest Vance, MS, CPT, RKC II
PS – This workout is a lot like those we do at our Sacramento, CA fitness boot camps … if you have a friend or family member who’s interested in our program, forward over this article and have ’em contact us for a free Test-A-Trainer session today!