Cardio Exercise Good Better Best

Everyone has wondered at some point in time which cardio exercise is better. To put it in simple terms, both low and high intensity exercises will help you to burn off body fat. The question here is which is the most effective to burn off more body fat.

Your body burns glycogen, which is a form of stored carbohydrates that are stored in your liver and muscles for energy when doing physical activity. Excess carbs are stored in fat.

During low intensity exercises, your body will burn a lot of fat but not many calories. During high intensity exercises you burn more calories and some fat.

The effects of low intensity exercise last for the duration of the exercising. The effects of high intensity exercise last for hours. That is why you so often hear the advice to do both or interval training. Some people call it the caveman exercise. You spend most of your time doing the walking (gathering, moving from camp to camp) with brief intense cardio exercise (running from the tiger).

Doing more than brief intense exercise is counterproductive. The caveman could only run from the tiger for so long before he either got eaten or got away. Long distance runners have dropped in their tracks from heart attack. The way to build a healthy heart while dropping the excess pounds is interval training.

When your store of glycogen gets low, the carbohydrates from your food you eat will be converted into glycogen to fill up the store and won't be converted to body fat when they are left unused for energy.

Reducing your bad fat intake will cause the stored fat to be called into play for the production of glycogen.

High intensity cardio exercise will rev up your metabolism even after you have completed your workout. What this means, is that your body will continue to burn body fat hours after you have left the gym. This effect is nearly non existent in low intensity.

Accumulatively, your body will burn up more and more calories during and after you have finished a high intensity cardio exercise than it will with low intensity.

You can inject high intensity exercises into your cardio workout by introducing some interval training. You can walk for 5 minutes or so, then break into some jogging for another 5 minutes or so. Then, walk briskly again until you have caught your breath and then sprint for a minute before you walk again. From this point, simply alternate your running and walking for the next 15 minutes until you are finished.

One of the best things about cardio is the more you do it, the more energy you'll have. Cardio will help you to burn calories, although its more useful for keeping your energy levels high.

If you've never tried cardio before, you should give it a shot. If you like to exercise, you'll find cardio the best way to boost your energy and keep in top shape.

If you are just starting out, you'll want to go slow and keep your high intensity cardio exercise limited to 1 or 2 minute bursts. Before putting that strain on your heart you need to see your physician.

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