I just got back from an amazing weekend in Niagara Falls where I celebrated Vince Del Monte’s wedding. It was quite a party, and fitness experts John Romaniello and Joel Marion tried their best to prove that the best cardio for fat loss is dancing.

But I’m not convinced. More about cardio in a second…

First, I just want to mention in this Friday’s email, I’m going to give you the complete rundown on the wedding, including two HUGE life lessons I learned from the Del Monte family, but today I want to talk to you about the best cardio for fat loss.

Why?

Because last Friday night, before heading off to the wedding in
Niagara Falls, I spent 3 hours reviewing your answers to the latest
TT client survey, and boy did I learn a lot about what you need to
help you lose fat.

Surprisingly, MOTIVATION was the #1 request for help, and I’ve got some great articles and audio programs in the works that will help.

The second biggest request was for more nutrition, and I’m working on some free reports and articles that will help you eat right for fat loss.

Finally, the 3rd biggest request was for the best interval/cardio program for fat burning.

Fortunately, I can cover a LOT about this topic in just one article, plus I also have a free interval training report already done for you, so I’ve chosen to start by helping you solve the “best cardio” problem.

Now a lot of people make a big mistake with cardio, and funny enough, this conversation came up over and over again at the wedding on Saturday night.

And this “theme” really makes me roll my eyes and shake my head.

I can’t remember how many times I heard someone say, “Oh, I’m going to have to hit the gym extra hard on Monday to burn this off.”

I find it ridiculous…because first, it’s not healthy thinking, and second, it is not accurate thinking.

Seriously, let’s look at this for a second.

The wedding meal, beginning with the post-ceremony celebratory drink,
right through to the anti-pasta buffet, followed by the main dinner (I had eggplant parmigiana), and then dessert, PLUS the late night sweets spread (the Del Montes know how to host a party!) would EASILY result in over 2400 calories.

And how long would it take you to burn that many calories doing your
average cardio workout?

You’d need to do cardio for just a little less time than it would take you to run a marathon.

So 3 hours for the fittest TT readers, 4-5 hours for the average TT reader, and more than 6-8 hours for beginner TT readers.

Does that sound like a “regular cardio session” to you?

Heck no!

So FORGET the “I’m going to burn off this big meal with cardio” mentality.

It’s WRONG thinking.

Plus, as I’ve mentioned time and time again, research shows that regular cardio doesn’t really help with fat loss.

1) One study showed interval training was better than cardio at burning belly fat (and cut the workout time in half) – more about interval training research here:

=> http://www.TurbuenceTraining.com/intervalreport

2) A second study found that 300 hours of cardio per year helped men lose only 6 pounds (and women lost only 4 pounds). So that’s about 50 hours of cardio per pound of weight lost – at BEST!

(Obesity 15:1496-1512 (2007). Exercise Effect on Weight and Body Fat
in Men and Women. Anne McTiernan*, et al.)

3) A third study found SOME folks start eating MORE when they start a cardio program. These folks end up gaining weight on aerobics.

(Reference: International Journal of Obesity 32: 177-184, 2008).

So if long, slow, boring cardio doesn’t work, what’s left for to burn fat?

Well first, I will acknowledge that high-intensity cardio seems to work better. In one study, subjects who burned 400 calories doing high-intensity cardio ended up losing fat while subjects who did only low-intensity cardio did not lose ANY fat at all!

(Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2008 Oct 8. Effect of Exercise Training
Intensity on Abdominal Visceral Fat and Body Composition.)

But the best way, the fastest way, and the most enjoyable way to burn fat is with interval training.

If you haven’t read my interval training report on how to lose fat with this scientifically proven exercise secret, please go to this website and get your free report:

=> http://www.TurbuenceTraining.com/intervalreport

And soon I’ll be revealing over 31 different interval training methods for fat loss. And it won’t just be sprinting on a treadmill for 1 minute straight. Trust me, there are a lot of unique ways to burn fat with interval training.

In the meantime, FORGET about slow, boring cardio. It is a generally a big waste of time for fat loss. Sure, it’s good for running marathons, but not for busy people who only have 2-3 hours per week to burn fat.

More interval training secrets coming soon!

Stay strong,

Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
Author, Turbulence Training

PS – If you don’t have access to any equipment for intervals…

…you can get started burning fat faster than with traditional slow cardio by using my “Bodyweight Cardio 3″ circuits. You’ll discover muscles you didn’t even know you had with this program!

Click here to try Bodyweight Cardio 3

I challenge you to try the 5-round fat loss program in Workout B and tell me that isn’t 10x’s better than slow cardio.

Hey y’all….if you’re just checking in after a brief break, then you’ve picked the perfect time to catch up!

Over the past week I’ve been sharing with you an interview I did with underground strength and fitness expert, Jason Ferruggia.  If you’ve never heard of Ferruggia, then I highly recommend getting to know him because the training he does with his clients is producing some incredible results – This guy knows his stuff.

And last day was no exception…

Training younger athletes is a very delicate process. You don’t want to push them too hard and risk injury, but you also want to get the most out of them.  So, how can you achieve maximum results with younger athletes?  Check out part 6 and find out.

On tap for today, Ferruggia reveals just how much cardio you should be doing to gain muscle and keep fat at bay.  But that’s not all, if you’re going to be doing cardio, then you want to make sure you’re doing the RIGHT type of cardio.  Get it wrong, and you’re wasting your time….

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Craig Ballantyne: Now, one question that I wanted to ask that you were talking about a bit before is you make the skinny guys sit out of the conditioning stuff. Guys are always asking how much cardio, how much conditioning should I do if I’m trying to gain muscle?

So, what are your general rules and how does that differ from young guys to older guys, to guys who want to get really jacked and guys who just want to gain a little bit of muscle?

Jason Ferruggia: It’s funny, because now in the internet, YouTube, train like an athlete kind of phase everybody asks me all the time about what kind of conditioning they should do. We never heard of the word conditioning when I was coming up. Looking at bodybuilders in the 80’s there was lifting and there was cardio and no one did conditioning and maybe we’d do cardio.

To gain size and strength you really shouldn’t do any at the beginning if you’re SKINNY, it doesn’t matter what age you are. If you have a fast metabolism, the genetics to keep you lean, and your goal is to gain 30 pounds, you probably shouldn’t do any for at least 12 weeks if that’s your main goal.

If you want to do some, do what [Inaudible] Yates did and get up in the morning and go for a walk. I like to the two opposite ends of the spectrum, the two extremes, either HIGH intensity or really LOW intensity. I think the middle ground stuff is what causes cortisol release, which eats up muscle.

Basically, like I said, I would either have guys just follow Yates’ guidelines and walk OR I would do sprints OR some kind of high intensity method like that.

The in between stuff is NO GOOD.

Someone like me, 25 years old, I do not stay ripped by any means, I do NEED conditioning or I will get fat. So, I would train three days a week and then I would recommend two high intensity sessions. Personally, I prefer sprints above all else, so hill sprints.

The flat ground sprints are the riskiest, because you’re at risk of a hamstring pull, sometimes you’ll even pull a quad if your running form is horrible. Hill sprints really minimize the RISK, because of the angle of your body, so I recommend hill sprints twice a week. If you don’t have a hill near you sprint with a sled or sprint with a prowler.

The jump rope is great, it worked for every boxer in history, it will work for you.

Those are really the two basics.

Then I know people like to get into more of the fun stuff, which we do at the gym too, so if you have access to strong man kind of stuff, medleys like that are great where you take kettlebells and go into the battling ropes from a kettle ball swing, to a battling rope, to a body weight drill, to a sledge hammer swing.

That kind of stuff is great. If you’re going to do that you’ve got to be careful that it doesn’t interfere with your strength training, so that kind of workout might have to replace one of your strength training days. You can do two strength training days, one kind of crazy conditioning, kind of a strength based conditioning day.

For everyone else, like I said, it’s either LOW intensity or HIGH intensity. That middle ground stuff where you just get on the bike and ride pretty hard for 30 or 40 minutes, that kind of stuff I hate. That definitely causes MUSCLE LOSS and cortisol increase.

It’s either interval training or some kind of high intensity stuff or the real low intensity.

If you do the real LOW intensity you’ve got to do it obviously for a LONG TIME, six days a week for 30 to 45 minutes. But, those two won’t cause muscle loss where the other middle range stuff will.

Craig Ballantyne: Very interesting. Excellent stuff.

Now that you have the cardio element figured out, let’s talk exercises, specifically, which are the best for each  body part.  Let’s head to part 8 of the interview and find out.

On Saturday morning I was walking home from the gym when I passed by a young women – about 28 years old – who was talking on her Iphone.

And I heard her say, “I’m going for a walk now to get some exercise because I’m going out for a bad dinner tonight.”

And I just wanted to yell, “No – no – no – no – no! That doesn’t work. It never has, it never will.”

You can’t out-cardio a bad diet.

Every woman I’ve ever met has made this mistake and had that “cardio confessional mindset” at one time or another – and it goes for most of the guys I know, too.

Unfortunately, at best, this poor girl will probably burn an extra 300-500 calories during her walk – if it’s a really, really long walk. But at dinner, she’s likely to eat 400-700 calories during the appetizer or consume that in liquid calories alone!

(NOTE: By “bad dinner”, I’m guessing she meant a high-calorie meal, and not a pity date with a deadbeat ex-boyfriend.)

The bottom line is that a single cardio session will not beat a bad diet.

Now you might be thinking, “At least it’s better than nothing.”

But is it?

Remember, as I’ve mentioned in the past, one British study found that some people OVEREAT in response to cardio exercise.

So when dinner comes around, this poor girl might think, “Oh, I did that long walk today, so I can treat myself to a bigger dinner or dessert.”

The only thing that comes close to beating a bad diet is interval training and resistance training.

Back in 2007, an Australian research study on interval training was getting a LOT of press for the surprising results. In the study, women who did interval training were able to lose belly fat without changing their diet.

In fact, one subject, named Louise, said this:

“My diet was pretty bad back then, with lots of sweets, lots of junk food…doughnuts and sugar — it was awful.”

And yet by the end of this study, interval training helped Louise burn 8kg of fat in just 15 weeks – WITHOUT changing her diet.

Perhaps it IS POSSIBLE for you to out-train a bad diet – but only if you use interval training.

And that’s just another reason Turbulence Training is based on this specific type of fat burning exercise.

So here’s what you need to do:

1) Give up the “Cardio Confessional Mentality” and understand that you can’t “out-cardio a bad diet”.

2) Stick to your simple Turbulence Training lifestyle nutrition plan 90% of the time and then enjoy your 10% reward meals GUILT-FREE.

3) Use interval training to burn the fat and resistance training to sculpt your body.

It’s that simple – a 3-step system for fat loss success that is guaranteed to work every time.

Enjoy guilt-free eating and fat loss with this mindset.

Your friend,

Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
Author, Turbulence Training

T’is the season for folks to be hitting the cardio confessionals with the mistaken belief that 30 minutes on the elliptical machine will somehow
magically erase 40 days of being on the See-Food diet…

Today while I did my Turbulence Training style workout, I watched all those poor folks on the cardio machines (you know, the ones with the long, sad faces
hating what they are doing) and felt kinda sorry for them.

Not many – if any – of them looked like they wanted to be doing cardio.

I also thought about how disgusting cardio machines are…

Back in University, I once helped the maintenance guy clean the cardio equipment. And I’d compare that experience to walking through a slaughterhouse – pretty darn gross.

The stuff I saw on those machines…from thousands of gym members doing
thousands of hours of cardio…sweating out their DNA into every crack and
crevice of that equipment…the sweat mixed with hair mixed with all other
sorts of stuff led to the grossest “gunk” I’d ever seen compiled anywhere
outside of a sewer.

I pretty much swore off of ever touching a cardio machine that day.

But it always makes me laugh when I see someone give a ceremonial squirt and wipedown of a cardio machine, as if that’s going to do anything…

I also watched all those folks on the cardio machines and I noticed they go through some interesting rituals during their workouts.

This got me thinking, and I came up with “The 7 Signs You Are Doing Too Much Cardio”.

So you are doing too much cardio if…

#1 – You have to spend 5 minutes before your workout flipping through all
the magazines in the gym to find one you haven’t read before.

#2 – You know the other cardio addicts on the machines beside you (that you talk to everyday) better than you know your own friends.

#3 – You know exactly how many calories you burn per minute on every machine in the gym (and you use that information to justify every calorie you eat.)

#4 – You hate doing it and dread your workouts more than a trip to the dentist.

#5 – The only thing you are losing is precious time – and not belly fat.

#6 – You go to the gym to watch your favorite television shows while doing
cardio.

#7 – You’re getting overuse injuries from repetitive motion because you keep doing the same activity over and over again everyday.

Seven darn good reasons why cardio is lame.

Listen, cardio is not the be all and end all of exercise for fat loss. In fact, as I’ve written in previous fat burning cardio articles, slow cardio is highly over-rated for fat loss.

Most of your results are going to come from your nutrition. So focus on whole, natural foods, and avoid foods that come from a bag or a box. If it’s been modified in any way, you don’t need it.

Once you’ve taken care of your nutrition, look for workouts that you enjoy that allow you to build strength, mobility, and fitness.

And no matter what you choose to do, don’t just do the same thing over and over again everyday.

Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
Author, Just Say NO to Cardio

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By the way, here are some bonus reasons from my readers about why they think cardio is lame.

If you have other thoughts, please post them in the comments below. Thanks!

#8 – If you are using cardio as a form of self-punishment (like after a night of
eating at a friends wedding)…you do too much cardio.

#9 – If you go to the gym to do cardio even though you have more important and time sensitive things to get done..you are a cardio junkie.

Yesterday I was interviewed by Men’s Health magazine, and they were looking for workouts that could replace cardio. In my opinion, doing bodyweight or kettlebell circuits is a much better replacement for cardio.

I think bodyweight circuits or kettlebell-bodyweight circuits are the best replacement for cardio.

Now of course you’re not going to run a sub 3-hour marathon just by doing these circuits, but I guarantee you’ll sculpt a better body and burn fat with circuit training than you ever will by just doing cardio. Plus, these circuits, even if done up to 5 times, will still be a shorter workout than doing an hour of cardio.

Take it easy the first time through each circuit and use that as a warmup, and then go through another 2-4 times for your workout.

Here are some sample circuit training workouts:

Crazy-8 Bodyweight Circuit
1) 60 Jumping Jacks: Done as fast as possible, but make sure you do full jumping jacks.
2) 20 Spiderman Pushups or regular pushups:
3) Walking Lunges: 30 steps total
4) Spiderman Climb: 10 per side
5) Bodyweight Squat – 20 reps
6) Mountain Climbers – 20 reps
7) Burpees – 5 reps
8]  High Knees: Done as fast as possible. Do 50 total.

With that program,  you can literally do that circuit anytime, anywhere, without having to rely on a single piece of equipment. After all, that’s the biggest concern of most people these days…they need to workout in a hotel room, or at home, or in a park where they don’t have kettlebells, or dumbbells, etc. So that’s the workout you can use.

Next up is a circuit that you can do in a tiny amount of space in your home. And frankly, you can do it anywhere that you have access to a kettlebell and stability ball, so YES, you can do this one in a park, too.

Kettlebell and Bodyweight Exercise Circuit
1) KB Swing – 20 reps (1-0-1)
2) Pushup – 20 reps (2-0-1)
3) Stability Ball Back Extension – 10 reps (2-0-1)
4) Stability Ball Pike – 8 reps (2-0-1)
5) KB 1-Arm Swing – 10 reps per side (1-0-1)
6) Pushup – 20 reps (2-0-1)
7) Stability Ball Leg Curl – 20 reps (1-0-1)
8] Ab Wheel or Stability Ball Rollout – 8 reps (2-0-1)
9) Sprint or Burpee – 20 seconds or 8 reps

If that’s not hard enough for you, you can add more kettlebell swings or snatches. And if its too hard for you, then you can do this circuit instead (make sure to move through it as fast as possible)…

Beginner Bodyweight Exercise and Kettlebell Circuit Workout
1) KB Squats or 2-Arm Swings – 10 reps
2) Beginner Pushups – 10 reps
3) Stability Ball Leg Curls – 10 reps
4) KB Squats or 2-Arm Swing – 10 reps
5) KB Rows – 10 reps per side
6) Bodyweight Split Squats – 10 reps per side
7) Beginner Close-Grip Pushups – 10 reps
8] 20-second run

Those are bodyweight exercise and kettlebell circuit workouts that you can do with little equipment, and you should be able to do them at home. The equipment might cost you 50 bucks (or more if you need a heavy kettlebell).

Helping you burn fat without cardio,

Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
Author, Turbulence Training

PS – Check out all of the Turbulence Training Circuit Programs here.