Cardio exercises are the most crucial fat burning exercises if you want to rigorously blow fat off. These exercises boast of highest effectiveness levels when it comes to weight loss. Cardiovascular exercise is another term for aerobic exercise, and it comes in many forms. There are several outdoor and indoor exercises; some are simple, and some more intense.
In a nutshell, these are exercises that involve movement in the larger muscle groups in the body. The objective is to raise your heart rate to a specified level. Aside from strengthening the heart, lungs, and major muscles, cardio, as the exercises are nicknamed, also burns a lot of calories.
Your Guide to Cardio – The Best Fat Burner
- Cardio – How It Works
- Most Effective Cardio Workouts
- The Best Time for Cardio Workouts
1. Cardio – Why It Works
The fact that cardio helps the body burn calories is not enough reason for these workouts to be considered the best fat burning exercises. But there are many special benefits cardio can provide. For one thing, cardio is not only effective; it also almost instantly works. It can burn more calories in one workout session than several sessions of other workouts can.
On the average, cardio exercise can burn around 100 to 500 calories based on how intense the workouts are, how long each session takes, and the weight you started with. And if you raise your intensity level and do more cardio, you don’t have to cut back as much calories in your diet.
Best of all, cardio exercises are easily manageable and can be easily done on most days of the week. People also rarely get overworked or injured with cardio workouts.
2. Most Effective Cardio Workouts
For weight loss, the most effective fat burning exercises considered as cardio include biking and boxing. Biking, especially mountain biking, can help you burn up to 500 calories in just an hour. And if you’ve got nice scenery where you live, you’ll be looking forward to your biking sessions so the more likely your weight will come off permanently.
Stationary biking also works, but that could be boring. But if you don’t have much time to spare, buying an exercise bike you can use at home is convenient.
Boxing is also an incredible fat burner, and it’s also fun once you get the hang of it. Boxing can work up all the muscles in your body, especially the major muscles – the arms and the legs – and turn you into a fat burning machine.
Like boxing, swimming also exercises all the muscles in the body. This is also a fun sport you can really get hooked into. Continuous breast stroke laps for 30 minutes can burn 400 calories.
For women, the most recommended cardio workout is step aerobics, which focuses on the legs and hips. Thirty minutes of step aerobics can burn around 400 calories.
The simplest cardio workout is walking at a brisk pace. Walking for 30 minutes can help you burn 180 calories. And if you start sprinting or walking up inclines, that raises the amount of calories burned.
3. The Best Time for Cardio Workouts
So when should you schedule your cardio workouts to make them more effective? To maximize fat loss, do your fat burning exercises first thing in the morning on an empty stomach. This means you are burning excess fat stored in your body since there won’t be any carbohydrate to burn. If you do it later in the day, you will simply burn calories you accumulated throughout the day from your meals.
Also, your cardio workouts should also last for at least 30-45 minutes daily, five to six days of the week.
What’s Your Target Heart Rate?
For your body to start burning calories during your cardio fat burning exercises, you need to raise your heart rate to a specific level. The ideal target heart rate differs for each person and is calculated based on several factors.
You can also calculate on your own using a specific formula. The formula for men is (220 – age) x .5 = lower target zone and (lower target zone) x .85 = upper target zone. For women, the formula is (226 – age) x .5 = lower target zone and (lower target zone) x .85 = upper target zone.
But the best way to get your most accurate target heart rate to base your fat burning exercises on is to ask your doctor to calculate for you.