8 Week Cardio Interval Training Blast! Get Increased Fat Loss AND Take Your Cardio Fitness To A Whole New Level
Interval training is one of THE most effective ways to burn fat while preserving muscle. When using cardio training for fat loss, I recommend it almost exclusively in my programs! This nice thing is, interval training is also one of THE most effective ways to improve your overall cardiovascular capacity as well.
There is a LOT of good information available on what intervals are and how to perform them. But what often seems to be missing is a detailed plan that helps you progress from Point A (just starting out with interval training) to Point B (performing the more challenging interval training techniques).
The trick is knowing where to start and how to progress from there. You can't just jump in and start sprinting up hills without knowing what you're doing and building yourself up to it. That's a good way to not only hurt yourself but exhaust yourself as well!
So in response to this, I've designed an interval training progression plan that gets you started with the more introductory-level types of interval training then gradually moves you into the more intense and challenging interval training techniques.
I'll lay out how many intervals to do, which style of interval training to do and how long to do it for. This progression plan will also give you good variety in your cardio training, which I'm sure you know can get VERY dull if you keep doing it the same way over and over.
You see, just like with weight training, you need to constantly challenge and even shock your body in order to continue making progress. Otherwise, your body simply has no reason to adapt and get better. This plan will do it for you!
The overall goals with this cardio program are fat loss and improving cardiovascular capacity. This type of training is NOT a plan I would recommend if you're trying to build muscle. When training to build muscle, you want to keep cardio training down to a lower maintenance level (once or twice a week at most) and this is not a program that does that.
The program is based on doing cardio training 3 times per week and can be applied to basically any method or apparatus of cardio training, be it running, cycling, elliptical machine, stair machine, etc. Any cardio based sports activity will work as well (e.g. swimming, rollerblading).
Choose whatever cardio activity works best for you, that you enjoy the most or that you'd most like to improve your performance in, e.g. if you're a runner, using running as the activity for your interval training.
You can certainly utilize different cardio activities as you go through the program, e.g. use treadmill running one day then the elliptical machine the next. The real key lies in the intensity with which you do the activities!
Before you start in on the program, I would encourage you to read through the following two articles. They'll help you understand what interval training is all about and introduce you to the different types of interval training.
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