Somewhere along the line, someone said that in order to burn the most fat you needed to do steady-state aerobic exercise in your “target heart rate zone”… somewhere between 60% – 70% of your maximum.
Ever since then, people have be diligently cranking out their 20-30 minutes of steady-state aerobic exercise thinking the fat would melt off like an ice cube in the summer sun.
What happened?
Wide spread disappointment… the “target heart rate zone” failed to significantly help people reach their fat loss goals.
As it turns out, higher intensity exercise burns more calories and more fat.
One way to increase the intensity is to use calisthenics intervals to break up boring cardio.
Calisthenics Intervals…
Improve Cardiorespiratory & Burn More Fat
Old habits die hard… so I won’t even tell you to completely replace your aerobic exercise with shorter duration, higher intensity intervals.
I give away a copy of Better Than Traditional “Cardio” with every copy of Workout Without Weights from Bar Brothers workout to show how to use Aerobic, Fartlek and Interval training depending on the stress level of your other physical training… always emphasizing higher intensity over lower intensity exercise.
Determining the intensity of your cardio training according to the intensity of the regular bodyweight calisthenics workout is a great way to skyrocket workout effectiveness… without drastically increasing workout time!
Aerobic training has its place in a well-rounded fitness training program… just not as emphasized as most programs use it.
If you’re in the steady-state aerobic habit… just add some calisthenics intervals to your aerobic training.
Let’s say you are doing 20 minutes of the stationary bike… jump off every so often and do some calisthenics intervals.
For example, you could do calisthenics exercises like jumping jacks, mountain climbers or steam engines.
You could even do bodyweight exercises like push ups, air squats or crunches if you keep the intensity high… or even burpees if you are brave!
Keep the calisthenics intervals short, 10-20 seconds, then go back to the steady-state aerobic exercise.
The calisthenics intervals will accomplish a few things…
They will break your rhythm and breathing patterns improving cardiorespiratory endurance…
They will force you to recover during the steady-state activity improving your recovery capabilities…
They will raise the intensity of the activity, burning more calories and more fat…
… and they may just be the added push you need to reach your fitness, health and physique goals.
Try it and see the difference calisthenics intervals can make!
Bodyweight Exercise + Calisthenics Intervals
Could Replace Steady-State Cardio
What do you do if you are short on time, or away from the gym, and you want to get in an effective full body strength, cardiorespiratory endurance and fat burning workout?
Combine bodyweight exercise with calisthenics intervals!
Bodyweight exercise is a great way to get a full body workout in little time and without equipment… and combined with calisthenics intervals the workout can improve heart and lung power and burn fat too!
This type of workout will do more to improve your body both in physical ability and appearance than steady-state aerobic training ever could.
