Cardio Training: What Are Your Goals?

Are you interested in learning more about cardio training? Then you came to the right place. Developing an effective cardio routine can build lean muscle, decrease unwanted fat, and promote a healthy lifestyle.

In order to develop a proper cardiovascular training regime, one must answer some important questions.

What Are Your Cardio Training Goals?

By answering these questions, you will be able to determine which cardio techniques are the most specific to your needs and goals.

“I want to decrease fat, and build lean muscle.”

This is the goal of most people who exercise on a daily basis.

Unless you’re training to be Mr. Olympia, then you’re probably just looking to obtain a physique that gives you confidence about yourself, increases your overall health, and allows for a long and prosperous life.

Now, reaching these goals isn’t always an easy path.

It takes hard work, dedication, and consistency to see your desired physical results. And with this initial understanding, you can begin your cardiovascular training journey.

In order to decrease fat levels, and replace it with lean muscle, you must understand basic cardio fundamentals.

There are two types of energy systems used during any cardio training activity: aerobic and anaerobic.

The simplest and most popular form of cardio is aerobic. This isn’t because aerobic training is the most effective, but simply because it’s easy to implement, and it’s a comfortable option for most people.

Some popular aerobic exercises include long distance running, elliptical training, cycling, and swimming.

What most people don’t understand, is aerobic exercises are not the best way to lose fat and build muscle. Before I explain why, first let’s look at the benefits of aerobic training.

Benefits of Aerobic Cardio

Disadvantages

As you can see, there are some obvious disadvantages of using aerobic cardio techniques for losing weight and building muscle. Fortunately, there is a far more effective cardio training method, and that is anaerobic cardio.

For a cardio exercise to be considered anaerobic, it will typically last for less than two minutes. Most of these exercises are high-intensity, and very challenging.

When it comes to reducing unwanted fat, and building lean muscle, anaerobic training is the absolute best option. Anaerobic cardio exercises have an obvious advantage over aerobic methods because:

A. Anaerobic exercises build muscle, and aerobic methods do not.
B. You will burn more calories in a shorter amount of time.
C. Most importantly, you will achieve long lasting results.

If you need more evidence of anaerobic training being a more effective fat burner and muscle builder, all you need to do is examine the physiques of a cross-country runner and sprinter. There is simply no debate.

Most Effective Anaerobic Cardio Exercises

Each of these methods will be discussed in far greater detail in the future, but it will give you an idea of what exercises you need to use to achieve your goals.

Sprints

Sprints are the most popular anaerobic training method there is. This is because sprints are an incredible fat burning, and muscle building exercise.

Hill Sprints

A more advanced version and evil brother of the traditional sprint. Hills sprints will take your fat burning progress to a whole new level.

Intervals

Interval training has become one of the most effective and popular forms of incinerating fat. Not only is it an effective strategy, but it will also bring life to your boring or repetitive routine.

Agility’s

People typically view agility’s as only a method used by athletes. This is far from the truth! Using agility’s for cardiovascular training is one of the most underutilized techniques. Everyone can benefits from agility’s because of the high-intensity level necessary to complete the exercises.

Popular exercises include agility ladder drills, dot drills, and cone drills.

Plyometrics

Like agility’s, plyometrics are highly unused as a cardio technique, and this is very unfortunate! If I were to rank each anaerobic exercise, I would place plyometrics near the very top.

These exercises are high-intensity, will destroy fat, and are an excellent lean muscle builder.

If you’re goal is to burn unwanted fat, and build lean muscle, then you need to start incorporating these anaerobic techniques into your cardio training regime.

“What type of cardio should be used for sports?”

Developing a cardio routine for sports isn’t much different than the previous techniques. Sports like cross-country, swimming, cylcing, or triathlon-like events require purely aerobic training methods to compete at a high level.

On the contrary, the majority of sports including baseball, softball, football, basketball, soccer, and volleyball all require anaerobic cardio training. Reason being, these sports are explosive by nature and therefore should be trained that way.

A baseball player for example, will see no benefits from using aerobic cardio techniques because there is no aerobic component involved within the sport.

The opposite would be a cross-country runner who would see little benefits from anaerobic exercises, because there really is no explosive movements necessary.

Developing a cardio training routine for sports in simple. If your sport is purely explosiveness or requires sudden change of direction or speed, then you should use anaerobic exercise.

If your sport is performed at a singular pace and does not require explosiveness movement, then you should focus on aerobic exercises.

People tend to complicate this topic, but it’s really simple. Train for the movements in your specific sport, it’s that simple.

“I just want to be in better shape.”

Getting into “better shape” is completely dependent on your goals! If getting into better shape is simply giving you ability to walk up and down a set of stairs without gasping for air, then you won’t need to develop a comprehensive cardiovascular routine.

However, if getting into shape means transforming your body, then you need to focus on techniques above.

This is simply an introductary post to cardio training, and the more complex methods will be released soon!

If you’re looking for a complete guide to cardio training, I highly recommend you check out Visual Impact Cardio.

This program focuses on high-intensity cardio training that will rapidly decrease unwanted fat, and increase mean muscle. And to be honest, there really is no other cardio program like it.

CLICK HERE to learn more about Visual Impact Cardio.