so whats everyone think the best kind of cardio is to drop some body fat? low intensity but for a longer duration or high intensity for shorter duration? or if some people can give me a few pointers of what to use like tred, bike, elyptical.
Jglo as a Former fat boy, depends on how short or long a time you have.
current state of cardio conditioning now? if none, you are in luck because over time it will take more and more as your body adapts to get the same effect of fat loss. so with LSD over 60min is overkill.
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I have used long slow distance to go from 265 to 189, about an hour a day on incline treadmill 3.5mph level 9-12 incline. starting out at 30min at level 6 3.0mph. problems I encountered with that method was overtraining. I got too drained from doing it in conjunction with weight training, so went to 3x week weights maintenance routine instead of 4-5day split training. I also got shin splints from doing so much work on the incline at too high a speed. too much too fast.
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when on ships in early 1990s all they had was a lifestep machine and a lifecycle so I generally did the cycle with the hill program, which I now know was interval training. Cosgrove advocates interval training for fat loss, and now I have to concur after reading his books and the research. I prefer the bike for this because of no impact, but have used sprints and treadmill intervals as well with success for short term. side effect of sprinting on treadmill was also shin splints from too much too fast. gradually ease into it to prevent it. You can look at the BUDS warning order and it has a back off week in there to prevent shin splints as well.
Bottom line, both will work if used in conjunction with diet, but I would say intervals because it is shorter, can be used on weight days if necessary, less impact to recovery and nervous system IMO. You could also go for the long slow distance route and throw intervals in there as well. walk for 1-2min at a higher incline or faster speed, then return to the lower rate several times to bump post exercise oxygen consumption and met. boost.
good luck
As long as you do it consistently. I believe Berardi had a study done with members of his site where there was no difference between steady state and intervals in terms of fat loss, except that the folks doing steady state had a higher drop out rate.
Cressey recommends a great circuit training idea as a way to get some energy expenditure, technique work and to hit small muscle groups/activation exercises. I feel like it is an excellent form of cardiovascular exercise. Doing some steady state cardio immediately afterward seems to be very effective as well.
Do both high intensity and low intensity in my opinion…although if your diet is not in order you’ll be wasting your time with respect to leaning out.
One more thing…if I have the balls and some time, nothing in my opinion beats doing some sprints until you can’t walk or breath anymore.