Cardio and High Intensity Intermittent Training (HIIT) training can not only help you lose weight, but are the only proven method to remove the most dangerous fat you carry on your body, known as ‘stubborn fat’. Buried deep within the abdominal cavity and between your internal organs, this visceral and liver fat can trigger heart attacks, cancer and other potentially fatal diseases.
“When it comes to increased health risks, where fat is deposited in the body is more important than how much fat you have,’ says exercise physiologist, Cris Slentz PhD, lead author of a study published in the ‘American Journal of Physiology’. Conventional aerobic cardio training is great at targeting this type of fat, where the shorter, hyper intense anaerobic HIIT training will raise what’s known as excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC) to help your body burn more fat as fuel for many hours after your workout.
Regardless, cardio has received a bad name from some, with claims that it “can’t increase muscle mass”, it “heightens stress hormones” or even “cannibalises your own flesh.” However the world’s leading sport performance scientists and trainers from every sporting discipline all elect cardio/HIIT training not just to increase fitness levels but also when their athletes needs to lose body fat.
A good point to mention here is that to a coach, weight loss should never be in the expense of losing muscle. When you burn your own flesh as fuel, you go into a catabolic state, which will lead to a spiritual paralysis. So this leads to the next point, the best coaches and athletes get results from cardio because they follow a proven structure. They have a plan. They train to win. Those who don’t, who just turn up to a cardio workout without any thought or randomly add ‘30 minutes steady state’ at the end of their weights session, are simply wasting their time.
Cardio training is not to blame for a surge in cortisol (stress hormone) or loss of muscle mass; any negative elements are indications that someone is going wrong and training inefficiently. Here’s an example and the biggest reason why cardio training has so unfairly received a bad name. In short, when you elect to perform cardio in a workout, more often than not the aim is to burn fat (fat oxidation) as opposed to increase oxygen consumption. Now, fat oxidation can only occur under certain conditions. The correct moderate training intensity must be employed so your body elects to burn predominantly fat as a fuel and does not switch over to carbs, ie turning the workout from aerobic to anaerobic. However, there is one other condition to consider. If insulin spikes (from intake of sugar/certain carbs) before or during the workout, your body will elect to burn the sugar/carbs that caused that spike first. It then becomes a physiological impossibility to oxidise fat as fuel.
What one sees and hears so often is “I needed energy so I drank a non-diet coke, or ate a Mars bar, or had pasta just before my cardio session.” This means fat oxidation becomes #Void! The workout may have been performed well, but no fat loss will occur. That person starts off with a 30 minute cardio session, feeling motivated by training hard, yet sees no results. So they eventually start to increase their training volume each week in the hope to turn the tide. Suddenly they are doing 60 or 90-minute sessions and placing too much trauma and stress upon their body… Everyone then wrongly waves the finger of blame at cardio!