If your health is important to you, you better start exercising today.
Cardio is the best form of exercise for your heart.
Who wouldn't want to keep their heart healthy, feel better, look better, and have an overall better life?
It's “normal” for you to want to be healthy, look good, and feel good.
Today — you need to start your complete weightlifting program consisting of weight lifting, cardio, stretching, and diet.
You'll find everything you need to know right here on Weight Lifting Complete. Keep reading…
Cardiovascular exercise is an important aspect of any weight lifting program. Everyone should do cardiovascular exercise no matter what their goals may be. Exercising your heart is something that should take priority in your life.
I don't know if you realize this, but your heart is a very important part of your life. Don't take your heart for granted. Keep it healthy and you will be a happy person for a long time.
Besides keeping your heart healthy, cardiovascular exercise plays an important role in building muscle and losing fat. I like to perform different types of exercise and different activities to counter the dullness.
Many people despise cardio activities because many of these activities are rather boring. I like to mix it up a little every once in a while and try something different. I'm also going to tell you how to make it a little more fun by taking your mind off of the exercise.
Cardiovascular Exercise Basics
You're going to need to know how to measure your heart rate as a check to make sure you're not performing the activity too hard or too easy.
Measuring heart rate is pretty simple. You more than likely already know how to measure your heart rate.
It can be tedious, though to measure your heart rate during your cardio workout. There are devices for measuring your heart rate that make it easier for you.
These heart rate devices continue measuring while you do your exercise so you don't have to stop and take a measurement.
Your heart rate will be important for determining whether you are doing low intensity, medium intensity, or high intensity. The 3 types types of cardiovascular exercise are discussed below…
Low Intensity Cardio
Low intensity cardio will be used mostly during the times when you are in a calorie deficit. So, when you are trying to lose fat or weight you can do as much low intensity cardio as you want as it's easy on your body.
Low intensity cardio will consist of activities that will not raise your heart rate too high.
It will take a longer amount of time to burn as much fat as other forms of cardio, though. Low intensity cardio is a good choice for beginners until they improve their cardiovascular system.
Medium Intensity Cardio
Medium intensity is the best type of cardio for burning fat.
You should be sweating pretty hard during medium intensity cardio but it should be at a rate you can handle for around 30 minutes or so. Remember, this is steady state cardio so you should be able to maintain your pace for a good amount of time.
Within the WLC System, we explain how to find your exact heart rate zones for burning body fat quickly.
High Intensity Cardio
High intensity cardio will be used mostly during the times when you are in a calorie surplus.
If you are in muscle building mode or weight gain mode, I want you to at least throw in a few high intensity sessions. High intensity cardio will take about half the time to complete.
So, you can be finished much quicker with high intensity cardio but it can add more fatigue and stress to your body. When you eating more food overall, the stress is at lower levels.
When eating less, the stress will be higher from these high intensity sessions.
Cardiovascular Exercise Strategy
Everyone should be doing cardio while using the WLC System. No matter if you're trying to gain weight, build muscle, lose fat, or lose weight you need to exercise your heart and cardiovascular system.
Weight lifting is good exercise, but cardio is good exercise for your heart. Weightlifting does not work the cardiovascular system like aerobics.
There are so many benefits from doing aerobic exercise that you'd be crazy not to include it in your WLC System plan.
You not only get increased fat loss, but you get increased recovery from your weight lifting workouts along with all the extra health benefits. Cardio can even help increase your appetite and get that metabolism revved up.
You should do a different amount of cardio and different types should be done while using the WLC System for the two different goals.
What are the two different goals you can choose from while executing the WLC System?
1. Building Muscle
Focus is on muscle building while minimizing fat gain. We do not want to gain much fat while on the muscle building WLC Program. We may even lose some fat along the way!
2. Losing Fat
Focus is on losing fat while maintaining as much muscle as possible.
We do not want to lose much muscle while maximizing the amount of fat we can lose. We may even build some muscle using the WLC System.
Did you develop your goals in the Weight Lifting Schedule section of the website?
You need to know what your goal on WLC is going to be in order to know which cardiovascular exercise plan to use. Your goal will either be muscle building or fat loss. Go to the appropriate program below that fits your goal.
Continuing on…
Now that you know your goal and the difference in Low Intensity and High Intensity Cardio, we need to know how to utilize them for the WLC System.
Cardio For Muscle Building With The WLC Program
Why would you do cardio when trying to build muscle on the WLC program? When would you do the cardio? Would you do low intensity or high intensity? I'll give you the answer to all of these and more.
Quick answer is do medium intensity cardio with a few high intensity sessions every now and then.
Cardio will be kept to a minimum.
You can find more information on the exact protocols within the WLC System.
Cardio for Fat Loss on the WLC Program
Everyone now knows to increase fat loss on any program that you should be doing cardio. What type of cardio will keep your muscle loss to a minimum? The answer is within the WLC System.
We'll teach exactly how much cardio you need to be doing, the best activities for burning fat, how to find your fat burning zones, and much more.
You need the WLC System if you want to lose body fat quickly and permanently.
Making Cardio Workouts Fun
Let's face the facts here. Cardio can be very boring at times, but you have to remember its importance. It is one of the most important things you can do for your health.
If you want to be healthy and live longer, you've got to be doing your cardio. Don't come up with excuses not to do your exercise. Start doing your cardiovascular exercise today and watch your body transform.
Why do boring cardiovascular exercise? Because it keeps us healthy and living longer for our friends and family. We have an obligation to them to take care of ourselves. They need us and we need them.
We can make cardio workouts more exciting by doing a few simple things. How in the world could we make this boring exercise more exciting?
Methods of Doing Cardiovascular Exercise
You need to change your cardio around from time to time and try something different.
Cardio can be fun when you change it around and try new methods.
For example, go bike riding outside when the weather is nice instead of riding inside on a stationary bike. Go jogging or walking with your dog at the park on a nice day. Do your exercise in different locations.
Simply changing the cardio equipment you have can make cardiovascular exercise much more fun.
Buy some new equipment for home, or try something new at your gym. Changing the style of cardio you perform will also keep your fat loss at a maximum. Having fun will keep you going too.
Music
Listening to your favorite music can help while doing cardio. Get you a portable mp3 player if you're going to be on the move.
Music can really pump you up and push you to do even better.
Audio Books
You might as well get a good story in while doing your cardio. You can get instructional audio books and learn something while doing your cardio. Listening to audio books are one of my favorite things to do while doing cardio. Download something you've always wanted to learn about.
Audio books are really the best for cardio. Learning and exercising just can't be beat. If you get an audio book you're really interested in, the time goes by very fast.
Television
Watch you some TV if you're going to be stationary. Put on Sportscenter if you're a big sports fan. Watch your favorite TV show. Catch up on the news.
If there's a favorite show of yours that comes on at a certain time and day, schedule a cardio session for that time.
When you're really interested in something else, your mind forgets about doing the exercise.
Movies
Watch a favorite movie of yours. Rent you a new movie that you've been wanting to see and split it up over a few days and only watch while you do your cardio.
You'll even look forward to your next cardio session so you can watch your movie.
Personally, I love movies… especially inspirational ones that really make you want to change your life. Some of them are great and can even inspire you to change your life.
Video Games
If you're doing your cardio on a stationary bike or another piece of equipment that use of your arms is not required, a good video game will keep you're mind off the cardio.
If you're like me, I still like to play a good game of Madden Football.
Of course, that was before I had 2 kids. It's a little hard to focus on a video game with 2 little girls running around.
Summary of Aerobic Exercise
You've got to make your cardio fun or you'll get tired of doing it because it's so monotonous. Understanding the importance of cardio will also help you stay consistent.
I've always had trouble staying consistent with cardiovascular exercise, so I had to find ways to make it fun.
If you've got any more ideas for making your weight lifting and cardio fun, please let me know.
Weight lifting requires more concentration than cardio so I like to keep distractions to a minimum when lifting weights. Cardio can use some distractions, though. Time will pass much faster.
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Taylor says
atHow much cardio do you suggest for burning maximum amounts of body fat? What do you usually recommend for muscle building? You didn’t list exact amounts above and was wondering.
Joshua says
atHey Taylor! Great to see you here.
Within the WLC System manual, I teach you how to adjust the amount of cardio based on your results.
For both fat burning and muscle building, I always recommend that you start out with 2 to 3 cardio sessions per week. You simply measure your results each week and increase cardio as needed.
There’s no need to add more and more cardio when you’re already getting maximum results. Remember that more is not always better. If you continue adding cardio workouts and do too much, you will overtrain and all your results will STOP.
As long as you are getting good results, you continue doing the same thing.
I teach you how to do all of this within the WLC System Manual.
As an example, one person may need 8 cardio sessions per week towards the end of a fat burning program while another person may only need 4 to get equal results. Each and every person is totally different and that’s why the WLC System is so powerful.
For muscle building cycles, we always keep the number of cardio sessions to the minimum of 2 to 3 sessions per week.
The WLC System adapts to you and your body — there isn’t a preset amount of cardio that works for everyone. The WLC System teaches you how to learn your body and get the fastest possible results with your body.
If you have any more questions, please let me know.