Cardio Workout That Doesn’t Suck!

Getting strong is great, but let’s face it, being strong and fat just sucks! That is unless you are a powerlifter, but I don’t think that is many of us, I know that isn’t me! Trying to walk around wearing a shirt that says I can lift x number of pounds doesn’t really make people feel like they are fit.

After all, it is pretty well engrained into our culture that being “in shape” is more than the ability to just lift a lot of weight. So, that means we have to perform the dreaded “cardio”. Now for years, cardio has just sucked! I can remember even being back in college being on that dreaded treadmill for hours so I could make sure I got in my cardio. After all, isn’t that the way you get lean?

Cardio in a lot of ways reminds me of traveling on airplanes. I mean, how did we EVER travel on planes without ipods, ipads, and all our great computer gadgets to keep us entertained? Trying to think back, that MUST be why trips felt three times as long as they really were:) It makes me laugh now to think of cardio at the gym the same way. Hit any commercial gym and you see people texting, staring at their iPads, cruising to their playlists, and doing anything to entertain themselves as they let the misery go by.

Does “cardio” training have to be or SHOULD be mindless training? Jethro Bartelings shows an Ultimate Sandbag complex that is the perfect answer to more purposeful cardio training.

Well, it is just one of those things right? I mean, cardio is one of those necessary evils if we want to get lean or drop some of those dreaded pounds. Yes and no. Cardio for many years was a slang way of talking about aerobic exercise. This is exercise that usually is performed at a relatively low intensity but for a long duration. Without getting too sciency, basically exercise that was done for at least two minutes straight tends to be more based in our aerobic systems.

The other energy systems that our body possesses will get burned out by the two minutes. So, is that important? Is there “fat burning zones” to worry more about than these other energy systems? I hear you, for many years that is what I did, I followed the mystical fat burning zones. The idea of a fat burning zone is actually this. If I burn 300 calories in a workout, and 70% is fat calories, then in theory, I burned 210 calories of fat. That would again, in theory, be far better than burning 300 calories in a higher intensity workout that only has 50% of the calories come from fat. That means we only burned 150 calories of fat.

So, aerobic exercise really wins, right? Well, not quite. While most focus on actually what happens only DURING the workout, what happens afterwards might be more important. Usually during more aerobic based exercises, mostly of what you burn from the workout comes from the time you actually trained. In higher intensity workouts, your body continues to burn calories possibly up to 22 more hours! That big jump in metabolism can burn far more calories in the end and actually may burn more fat overall!

Brian Bott shows another great DVRT complex that allows us to build strength and conditioning at the same time. Effective solutions to especially time strapped workouts! 

In a study by Tremblay, et al (CLICK HERE TO READ), they found “these results reinforce the notion that for a given level of energy expenditure, vigorous exercise favors negative energy and lipid balance to a greater extent than exercise of low to moderate intensity. Moreover, the metabolic adaptations taking place in the skeletal muscle in response to the HIIT program appear to favor the process of lipid oxidation.” In other words, higher intensity exercise burns more fat than aerobic exercise even in the numbers in the actual workout look significantly different!

You can see the cardio impact of these DVRT workouts like Brian demonstrated! 

Maybe you already knew this! Maybe you already are performing high intensity workouts, so what does this have to do with DVRT Ultimate Sandbag workout programs? One of the ways we can actually measure intensity is through heart rate. We have found almost NOTHING compares to some of the heart rates we see when people perform DVRT Ultimate Sandbag workout programs.

Just this past week, DVRT Master Instructor, Jordan McConaha, wrote about her work during our DVRT Ultimate Sandbag workout Clean and Press test, “ I’m happy to report my heart rate peaked at the DVRT Clean and Press test at (189bpm), and Bear Hug Squats at (179bpm)!” That is around 97% maximal heart rate! That is just crazy!

Here is the best part, because some could say, maybe I get the same out of things like 100% efforts sprints. Here are some other benefits that you can get from these type of DVRT Ultimate Sandbag workout high intensity programs….

-More flexibility

-More lean muscle

-More muscle balance

-Greater movement skills to help prevent injury

-More variety

-Core strength

-Can be done anywhere

-Requires very little space

Best of all, ANY of these DVRT Ultimate Sandbag workout programs can easily be adjusted to any fitness level. Check out this more advanced level of DVRT complexes by powerlifter Shauna Sevon. See even the strongest of people believe in well rounded fitness!

Don’t miss saving 25% on DVRT programs like our DVRT Metabolic Resistance Training program HERE with coupon code “spring2018” and revolutionize your fitness!