Cardio is not something many people like to do. There is belief that too much cardio can break down muscle or stunt muscle growth. High intensity training or High intensity interval training are very different and yield very different results from the slow paced cardio exercises such as walking, cycling slowly, etc.

Something that I’ve seen other people in the Gym trying to get lean and even my own wife at home trying to drop some pounds is the intensity being used for cardio. Putting the differences between high intensity cardio and low intensity cardio aside, what is the main objective to accomplish in each workout to achieve fat loss? Calories burned. The problem with many people doing low intensity cardio is that they get bored too easily and give up after only 50 or so calories are burned.

Keeping it intense not only stimulates fat burning at a whole new level, but also aids in the recovery of muscle, contrary to popular beliefe. HIIT stimulates growth hormone production which is essential to not only preserve your off season gains, but to possibly provide more. Also many people jump to the conclusion that because high intensity interval training burns more carbs than fat that we should stick to low intensity cardio.

Look at it this way: what happens after you’ve burned all of the carbs and are depleted of glycogen? This means for the rest of our day our body’s will just be using the fat stores as reserves. This method is similar to having a low carbohydrate diet, so why deplete yourself of the energy that you need for your workout, and furthermore, why waste your time cycling on the bike at 50RPM when you probably have better things to do?

To add to me siding with fast paced, or high intensity interval training in particular, is metabolic acidosis. This means that during a sprint or other HIIT exercise you are depleting your two primary energy systems: ATP and Glycolytic and burning right through the fat during the rest breaks.

Now we need to take into consideration what we mean exactly by fast, or intense cardio. This is referring to anywhere from the 65%-100% of maximum target heart rate prediction for any given age. High intensity interval training can be anywhere from 70%-80%  and above of maximum target heart rate and this is great for people that are physically able to perform this type of exercise. If it is not evident already, you can say there are many many reasons to chose intense cardio if you have the physical ability.

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