What Is The Best Form Of Cardio?

walking never hurts walking is the ultimate low low Bas cardio that you can always do other modalities can be cycled in and out just for variation just for fun you do some cycling part of the year you do some jogging another part of the year or a little bit cycling a little bit jogging a little bit more at one part of the year a little bit less at the other some swimming some sports with your friends that's all really really good stuff hey folks Dr Mike here for RP strength I have been a professor of

sport exercise science in nutrition and I'm currently a competitive body Builder and Brazilian JY Grappler and I have to talk to you about a very important point a really a pandemic that's been affecting the world and it's what cardio is best to do oh that intro sucked retake JK here we go what cardio is best to do taking a little bit of a principled approach so a little bit of a deeper dive so if you're not intelligent just turn turn the shit off right now but if you want of the Smart Ones keep tuning in

which cardio is best to do depends on a few things because when we say best we don't exactly qualify what we mean by that but in most cases in the world of Fitness cardio can be judged on one of three different factors so we're going to ask three different questions and get something like three different answers but after you see this video you're going to know a lot about which cardio modality to choose and which one to stay the hell away from depending on your goals so first question we can ask is what kind of

cardio burns the most calories per unit time or just total if you're trying to burn a crapload of calories to lose as much weight as possible for example in some short period of time this is a very important question number two what kind of cardio interferes with muscle growth the least because G wiiz if you're trying to stay jacked and lean trying to stay jacked and get leaner this is a very important question if you don't really care if you're jacked or not well no worries we'll get you lean with all kinds of cardio and

you don't have to answer this question and number three is what kind of cardio is the most sustainable at high volumes at high volumes because sometimes you got to do cardio a lot of it for a long time months and months and then you're going to want to know which kind of cardio doesn't break you into pieces so if you got to get in shape for something four weeks away sustainability is not a big deal if it's 16 weeks or 32 weeks away or lifetime of good physical activity it's it's a different question so what

kind of cardio burns the most absolute calories both per unit time and per let's say typical hour of cardio the keys here are to choose something that has the maximum intensity because intensity or how hard you work relative to how hard you're able to work in any given time is actually directly linearly correlated with how many calories you burn the faster you go the more distance you cover the more calories you burn so intensity is the key but maximum duration or ability to keep doing something for maximum duration is also the key so technically speaking

like doing a power clean is about as many calories you can burn per any second of time but you can't exactly do 177,000 power cleans in a row and burn 8,000 calories so what card of cardiio modalities give us that best combination of burn a crapload of calories per unit time and are at least sustainable enough to do for an hour here and there a few times a week here's the ranked list in order one at the very top is moderate intensity interval training this can be done in a variety of other contexts it can

be done jogging it can be done swimming it can be done cycling and a few other methods however you do it here's how it works let's just take jogging or even the elliptical Works you're on the elliptical and you're you're grinding out and let's say you're going whatever they have miles per hour even though you're not going anywhere three miles an hour you doing that you warm up like that once you feel pretty Snappy you take 30 seconds seconds to go 9 miles hour considerably faster after 30 seconds you cool it back to three you

watch your heart rate decline back to some value maybe around 120 130 beats per minute again and you do another climb back to nine for 30 seconds again and you repeat that over and over and over if you're jogging you jog at your normal pace for five minutes and every fifth minute you do one minute at like considerably faster like not a half Sprint but a much faster jog it's going to Tire you out so you're going to have to slow down to your rolling pace for another 4 minutes after that or 5 minutes and

you do another 1 minute how you alternate the difficult to easier intervals is entirely up to you you're going to discover that yourself there's tons of different ways to do it generally speaking if you're not in amazing shape yet you do a lot of lower intensity base work and you only go up for a little bit at a time every several minutes if you're in really amazing shape you go up every minute on the minute or something like that and then come back down only for 30 seconds and come back up and the average difficulty

is much higher but this kind of interval training Burns an ungodly amount of calories if you're not into the interval training you can just do conventional jogging cycling or swimming just swimming a crap load of laps cycling a fucking crazy amount of miles or jogging and also crazy amount of miles is going to burn a crap load of calories there's a reason endurance Runners are skinny minis it's because a lot of them eat as much as they can they still can't gain weight because they're fat burning machines there's only so many 800 calorie cycling workouts

you can do per week until your body's like bro the fuck and if you relatively normally getting lean is not a problem next on the cheered list because it's a little bit less sustainable and sometimes has some downtime for technique and kind of pausing and breaking are things like boxing kickboxing Brazilian Jutsu so on and so forth you can do these in context in a way that burns a crapload of calories but you're not going to get as much cyclic continuous activity out of them even if you're boxing super hard every few minutes you're going

to have to take a minute of rest and then go back and that minute of rest usually doesn't mean like you're still burning a ton of calories you're resting resting to get the most out of boxing if you get tired enough boxing you're doing Jiu-Jitsu your Technique degrades so much you're just rolling around pointlessly or throwing your hands pointlessly in the air or just vomiting up blood so these ranked a little bit lower because it's not the most Dependable way to do this but it is a great way to do this if you want and

lastly is high-intensity interval training that's when you alternate a jog with a Sprint or an incline walk with a Sprint because it has a lot of Sprints in there it burns a ton of calories but also makes it a little bit less sustainable high intensity interval training is something you could do for like 20 minutes 30 minutes it's unlikely you'll be able to do it for an hour so an hour just steady state pretty fast jogging it's probably going to burn considerably more calories than high-intensity interval training done for like 20 or 30 minutes per

unit time high intensity interval training is kind of undefeated but you just can't do it for that long because you'll exhaust the shit out of yourself or get hurt a few days later so if you want to burn the most absolute calories nothing beats monitor intensity intervals or just continuous activity like jogging cycling swimming Etc next question what if we want a cardiio modality interferes the least with muscle growth while still providing us with uh some some good cardio burn there are two keys here minimum intensity sprinting is the fuck out of the equation the

easier you work the less chance of muscle loss there is that comes from direct catabolism muscle breakdown increases with intensity but it also is an accumulated fatigue thing you accumulate enough fatigue in the muscle you depleted of it glycogen stores through going really hard you're going to have a bad time in the gym if you fatigue the nervous system that controls those muscles you're going to have a bad time in the gym if you beat up your joints from high-intensity activity you're going to have a bad time in the gym so minimum uh intensity is

low intensity is a very very good here that's what you're looking for the other thing you're looking for is as high as possible of workload distribution which means you don't want one muscle doing all the work in cycling the quads and the glutes do the vast majority of to pushing and like that's just two muscles if you're walking it's quads it's glutes it's calves and its hamstrings so a better distribution if you're doing the elliptical it's really kind of your whole fucking body and because if you're burning a certain number of calories with just one

muscle that muscle's working hard as fuck and then it's getting fatigue and it's getting interference with its growth Pathways but if you're burning the same total amount of calories but each muscle is just pitching in a little bit most of the muscle fibers aren't even active during that time it's the slower twitch fib which don't grow much anyway they get active their glycogen depletes they accumulate fatigue but also they don't accumulate a lot of fatigue they're insanely resistant to damage and they heal Ultra fast it's the perfect scenario so that's why the rank list looks

like this the elliptical it's something like 110 to 130 beats per minute heart rate is undefeated for my vote for the best cardio modality that interferes with muscle gain the least because it's not just all your legs it's legs plus upper body total workload distribution and at 110 to 130 Beats per minute the intensity is just not that high very difficult to lose a lot of muscle on elliptical but the calories do add up nothing crazy like if you go for a really intense jog but at 110 130 beats per minute you're going to be

doing some pretty good calorie damage next incline or even regular walking incline walking is insanely easy and distributes the workload through your entire lower body which is pretty damn good not elliptical good but pretty goddamn good regular walking is even lower intensity so you have to do more of it but it does does not risk muscle very highly my Preferred Choice of cardio currently for that reason is I just have a step tracker and I just walk and my total steps for the day have to add up to a certain amount on a fat loss

phase for me that's around 12,000 steps as long as I get that all the cardi getting done in the background I control my diet and I get into shape it's fucking awesome lastly you can use moderately paced swimming total body distribution most Strokes in swimming use more or less the whole body zero impact which is sweet the water's really kind to joints it's cool also to kind of unload the rest of your body unload the spine that's dope it happens in your sleep as well but if it happened a couple times during the day that's

also really cool and if it's a moderate Pace the intensity is not that high especially if you're Adept at swimming swimming does have something called the cold water effect when you're immersed in water and you come out a lot of times you're hungrier than you ought to be because your body's like fuck fuck fuck I need some goddamn food to heat my ass back up so in some cases some context that could not be ideal but on the other hand if you work really really hard in the water and work up a sweat which you

actually definitely sweat in the water it just well here's the gross part it just seeps right into the water everyone's swimming in your sweat so as you work super hard in the water your own the water regulates your body heat for you really well and then you never get the cold water effect so you can do this but it's got to be a pretty decent pace my recommendation is if you're already good at swimming and you're competent unless you want to learn a new life skill that's frustrating and takes a few months to really master

master become competent with don't get into swimming but if you are already a decent swimmer it's a great way to burn calories you do you know laps for 35 minutes or whatever or 40 minutes uh Scott do people listen to music when they swim do that thing underwater headphones or some shit like that I don't know a single person who you is how to swim yeah we live in the northeastern part of the United States so swimming is akin to diving into a lake and breaking your head open on the ice I know someone from

the northeastern us is going to be like I'm in a swimming club Great Scott and I don't have any friends we've never been invited to Swim Club lastly what is the most sustainable at high volumes you want to do plenty of cardio you want to burn lots of fat but it's something that you're going to have to be able to do and it doesn't screw you up and it doesn't say hey look you're doing too many intervals your knees are jell now you got to back off the shit my ranked list is elliptical first again

interesting because there's no impact the elliptical is completely sick look and your joints never feel a fucking thing that's Peak sustainable it also distributes a ton of effort through your body low impact here is key which is why walking and swimming are in second and third respectively swimming doesn't beat walking for sustainability because you got to go somewhere to do the swimming now me personally I have five private pools mostly the Butlers use them but every now and again I'll put on a 1920s full body swimsuit and and and and cap for my hair and

go for a swim but you got to go out of your way to swim a lot of times not often but a lot of times so if you happen to live on a lake you live in Florida and you can swim at 24/7 365 and beat off Gators beat off Gators do they have external genitalia you beat them off through the ca anyway I digress swimming if you have access to it is amazing for sustainable cardio but walking I mean fuck you get walking everywhere you go to the mall with your friends you get walking

you go to the mall by yourself you get walking you pace around in your living room wishing good friends to go to the mall with there you go you're still walking so elliptical walking swimming really really close here it just context dependent notice eliptical walking and swimming made the last two lists they are both interfering with muscle growth the least and the most sustainable there's going to be a lot of jelling there a lot of this is pretty much the correct answer in most cases however they don't make the top tier list for really burning

off a ton of calories now you can still use the elliptical but then it's interval training and then you're going to be doing some fucking work so it's not exactly Leisure lastly making the decision for you just kind of a list of examples of how to think through this logic do you need to burn lots of fat but don't care much about muscle especially muscle in your legs higher fit intervals jogging or Triathlon inspired training amazing any other modality works really well if it gets your heart rate up for as long as possible every workout

if you can maintain 150 beats per minute for 45 minutes four times a week holy fucking shit you're burning a lot of calories so there's a really good start and muscle loss you don't give a shit need to prep for a bodybuilding show or get your lenus physique but you really really do care about being jacked or just doing a fat loss phase and you really really care about not losing any muscle elliptical and or incline walking is often going to be your best bet any other modality is totally fine if it's easy on your

joints distributes the work over many muscles instead of one or two and keeps your heart rate under 130 beats per minute at the top end and most cases you get a little bit more intense than that you're going to start to accumulate a lot of fatigue and risk muscle loss more than you should be lastly if you need cardio that's built into sustainable life walking never hurts walking is the ultimate low low based cardio that you can always do all modalities can be cycled in and out just for variation just for fun you do some

cycling part of the year you do some jogging another part of the year or a little bit of cycling a little bit jogging a little bit more at one part of the year a little bit less at the other some swimming some sports with your your friends that's all really really good stuff if something starts bothering your joints or makes you tired then going back to Incline walking regular walking or the elliptical or maybe swimming is a really really good idea so don't beat the shit out of your joints and be like I can't do

cardio anymore if you joints are getting fucked up a little bit back up and do the very low impact stuff and lastly before I get to the main points for beginners intermediates and advanced of all the cardio modalities that fit this schema pick the ones that you most like to do and are the most fun and don't be afraid to be uh throwing some variation in there you could do sometimes elliptical sometimes walking the world is your oyster and by oyster I mean misery filled pot of cardio it hurts and it sucks Lastly lastly for

real this time main point here for beginners to take away from this video do cardio that's fun and sustainable because it's for the long haul that you do cardio for intermediates do cardio that's fun and meets your goals well you already have sustainability checked off the Box if you're an intermediate you made it this far you know how to keep your shit together but now you got goals that are for real for real beginners meet their goals really easy they have non-exotic goals and the sustainability will get them there anyway now as an intermediate you

got to science the shit up a little bit more and say yeah maybe even though I like this cardio it doesn't meet my goals so let me pick a cardio I like that does meet my goals for the advanced do cardio that meets your goals well and when you're not chasing proximate goals that gets on a fat loss phase have a sustainable cardio approach in the background always mailing around giving you a little a little bit more fat burning potential a lot more Health potential and a better quality of life anyway it would be really

ironic if you listen to this chat while doing cardio and if you're doing cardio you're the fucking shit keep on stepping and if you're not doing cardio go to the gym and do cardio goddamn it what the hell is wrong with you I'll see you guys next time [Music]