So, what type of cardio should you do? Short answer, what I recommend my clients to do is mix of LISS (low intensity steady state) cardio and HIIT (high intensity interval training). Cardio for most people is mainly for fat loss but most of us have abused it with regards. Let’s get to the basics guys, what is cardio? Cardiovascular activity can be defined as any physical activity which raises the heart for an extended period of time. We'll stick with this definition for our purposes for today. Cardio can be done in various forms from machines (treadmill, bike, row machine, step mill, etc.), to actual movement that requires you to work against gravity such as circuit training, plyo, dance classes…etc to even weight training if your heart rate is elevated enough and then sustained. Now under the umbrella of types of cardio activity, you have various modes that can take place and that is all dependent upon the intensity and set up of the workout. For the context of our episode today, let's zone in on the three possible modes from the chosen types above: endurance, interval training, and HIIT. I recommend all of my clients to do some sort of cardio in all program because it is good for your heart, your health, just general well-being. Walking is considering a type of cardio so if a coach to tell you to take all cardio out, please RUN! Run as fast as you can! Cardio is part of life how are you going to take it out? So, what I would like to do is I first set up a base for my clients, starting with my clients at 5 days a week, just walking 30m is a good start. So, Walking is LISS, low intensity steady state. You don’t need to power walk, it’s a leisure walk in the park, you can still carry on a conversation type of walk. Remember guys, minimum effort for maximum results. If you start off super high intensity, an hour a day, 7 days a week, where are you going to end up at the end of your prep or your weight loss journey? Are you going to do 2 hours a day? 3? 4? I know some of my friends that are currently prepping are doing 4 hours a day, 2 in the morning 2 in the evening, I am like common now… If you need to do that much of cardio to get in shape I really think you have to step back and just lose the weight slowly, reassess your time line here, the shows are always going to be there, there are tons of shows every year, don’t worry they are not going anywhere! Step back re-assess and do it the right way. If you are a beginner definitely don’t need to be doing HIIT, first you need to learn proper form even with running, if you haven’t been active, so ease into it so your body can adjust. I usually put my clients on the 5 day LISS schedule for 4 weeks, let the body adjust and then I would throw in a couple of HIIT interval once a week for another 2 weeks to see how their body adjust. Most clients would lose weight just doing LISS so don’t need to kill yourself over cardio. I really mainly want my clients to focus on putting most of energy and effort in their weight training session. So, this bring me to the next point. I also get this question a lot, should I do cardio before or after my weight training? I usually tell them to get warm up LISS such as a walk on the treadmill for 5-10min then do the weight training then finish it with rest of your walk/LISS so 25 to 30min after.