While you need to keep a lid on your wild cravings and say no to those cheese fries and beer on the weekends to lose weight, just focusing on a healthy diet isn’t enough to burn that stubborn fat. If you wish to get rid of that extra belly fat, you need to do cardio as well. We know there are a lot of myths circulating on the web about cardio, but those are all false. If you give cardio a chance, you’ll know!
If you haven’t tried cardio up until now, getting on that treadmill for a solid workout will be daunting. Furthermore, you might not be aware of what the best cardio workouts for losing weight are. We are here to take your pain and stress away! In this post, we’ll discuss eight cardio workouts that will actually help you lose weight!
Cycling
Hop on to your bike and peddle your calories away. Cycling increases the heart’s health, strengthens muscles and burns calories. Outdoor cycling allows you to enjoy the fantastic environment and fills your body’s need for Vitamin D. However, if you aren’t comfortable with outdoor cycling or can’t afford a new bike, then consider indoor cycling.
Get to a gym, ride on a bike and start peddling as fast as you can. Put on your headphone and play Robert Tepper’s “No Easy Way Out” for some extra motivation. This will allow you to push yourself to your limits and get rid of that unappealing belly fat.
Running Up the Stairs
Stairs are a great workout tool. Running upstairs provides a good calorie burn. For instance, if you weigh 150-lb, you can burn about 1000 calories by running stairs for an hour. That’s huge! You can mix running upstairs with other exercises if you wish to burn more fat.
Jumping Rope
Training regimen of every boxer includes the jump rope. It is easy to do, cheap, increases foot coordination and burns a lot of calories. While some people are capable of jumping ropes for thirty minutes straight, it is best for you to do slow jumps and fast jumps in intervals so that you can continue without tiring out. If you can’t manage this, jump very fast for one minute only and then take a break for 20 seconds. This will allow you to continue the workout for longer.
Rowing
Most people in the gym ignore the rowing machine. This machine is something that everyone should be using for cardio. People mostly don’t use the rowing machine because they mistakenly assume that it is just for upper body workouts. Rowing works the whole body and the parts that it mostly impacts include the hamstrings, back, quads, glutes, shoulders, biceps and triceps. In addition to strength training, rowing also provides impressive cardio benefits. In a 30-minute rowing sessions, about 250 to 300 calories are burned.
HIIT
In the past few years, high intensity interval training or HIIT has become extremely popular among gym enthusiasts. There was a time when HIIT was only used for training elite athletes, but now these workouts have become mainstream and are found in almost all gyms and cardio workouts. There are many forms of HIIT, but the goal is the same: give it your all with the highest intensity for a few minutes, then rest for a brief interval and repeat the same. The periods of high intensity increase your body’s need for O2. The system of your body searches for the oxygen and in the process burns more calories.
You might be thinking, ‘what is the best way to do HIIT?’ Well, there is no one exercise that is best for HIIT. The form isn’t as important as the goal to perform the workout at a high intensity. In some programs, you’ll have to push yourself to your limits for 30-35 seconds, with only a rest of 20-25 seconds in between. If you do it right, you’ll feel the effects immediately and will need that recovery time to continue. The best thing about HIIT is that you can burn more calories in a less time. With a HIIT session of 20 minutes, you burn more calories than what you’ll torch in an hour long jog.
Swimming
Swimming provides a total body workout and is also extremely helpful in burning a great amount of calories. It is a low impact exercise and there is a little chance of injury. Use the common freestyle stroke in the beginning and once you get a hang of it, try a variety of strokes to place more emphasis on various muscle groups. Intensity will increase when you try different stokes and as a result you’ll be able to torch more calories.
Kettlebell
This cannonball-shaped weight is sure to give you a great calorie burn. With kettlebells, you can burn about 20 calories in just a minute. Strength training is combined with cardio in these exercises to give you a workout that is worth your time and effort. Kettlebell workouts simultaneously work your strength, flexibility, balance and cardio endurance.
Walking
We have saved the easiest for the last. Yes, this is the simplest cardio workout you can do to lose weight. However, walking too slow won’t do you any good. If you want to torch some calories, you’ll have to leave the turtle’s pace behind and start walking faster. Just walk at a moderately-fast or brisk pace and you’ll start seeing results.
Now that you know all these cardio works that work best for burning calories, are you willing to give them a try? Great! Start doing these cardio exercises and you’ll see the results soon!
