How Often Can You Do Cardio?

When I say "cardio workout" you probably have an image of someone running on a treadmill, or some

other piece of gym equipment like an elliptical machine, stair climber, rowing machine and the like.

Each of these types of workouts will produce a cardiovascular benefit. But most people are doing

these workouts because they think it will help them burn calories and lose weight. The cardiovascular

benefit just happens to be a nice bonus on the side. Lets face it you wouldn't workout if it actually

made you look worse!

So most people are doing "cardio" workout to lose weight; but this is not the best strategy. Any

workout that gets your heart rate up and keeps it up will provide a cardiovascular benefit and burn

calories. But for most people the goal is burning as many calories as possible. This is where

traditional cardio workouts fail, and higher intensity whole body workouts are proving to be better in 2

important ways.

1. Intense whole body circuit training will build and tone all the muscles of your body better than any

traditional cardio workout can. Keeping your muscle mass up will ensure your metabolism stays at its

peak.

2. High intensity circuits will burn more overall calories at each workout than a slow traditional cardio

workout. This is of great benefit to people who are pressed for time and want to burn the maximum

amount of calories in the limited time they have at the gym.

These whole body circuit workouts are based around doing exercises that work lots of muscle groups

all at once like:

Squat and Press

Push ups

Jump Squats

Mountain Climbers

Lunge Walking

Quick Splits

Now that we see there are different and better ways to do 'cardio' training, how often can we do a

high intensity circuit workout for 'cardio'?

The simple answer is - as often as you like! Assuming that you probably have other things that take

up time during the day like work, school, family, friends, and hobbies, I would guess you will probably

be limited to one workout per day. So by all means if you can get a workout in every day there is no

reason not to.

The higher intensity whole body circuit workouts might take a few weeks to get used to if you've never

done them before.

For most people I'd say 4-5 times per week is great. But that doesn't mean you have to stop there.

Work your way up to a level that fits with your fitness goals and into your lifestyle. How Can You Jump Higher