How Much Cardio Do You Really Need To Lose Body Fat?

Cardio is the most important form of exercise that one needs to perform within the regular exercising routine. It can be considered to be a part of the warming up exercises that are necessary to be performed before any other regular workouts that you may be performing. Cardio helps increase the rate of heart beats and also improves the blood flow to the muscles. 


This helps in heating up the muscles which are then made ready to perform any intense exercises. Cardio is therefore considered to be an important part of the daily workout routine that we usually perform. It helps in preparing the muscles and also acts as an awesome fat burner.

Like every other workout pattern, the cardio exercise plan also varies according to the composition of the individual body and its capacity. You need to make sure of your goals and know the appropriate steps you will need to take to achieve it. It is important to know the right amount of cardio that your body needs.

It is usually said that the right amount of cardio that one would need to perform is about 20 minutes per day for 3 days in a week. This is the normal required amount of cardio needed when an individual is interested in simply maintaining his fitness. Apart from maintaining fitness, the Cardio exercises are also very helpful in burning calories. It now depends on how many calories you consume in a day and how many you will need to burn that you can decide the amount of cardio that you have to perform.

Basic Working of Cardio Exercises:

Basic Cardio exercises are said to burn calories that are proportional to the intensity of the cardio exercises. The more intense you perform the cardio, the more calories you will burn. If you are simply performing cardio for about 20 minutes per day and thrice a week, it is enough to perform cardio exercises that will help you burn at least 400 calories in a day’s workout. If you manage to perform the above mentioned amount of cardio with the specified intensity, you will be able to lose about 1200 calories within just three days of workout.

Cardio for Weight Loss:

Since we have already seen that the cardio exercises are very useful when we think about burning those extra calories, this plays an important role in the weight loss regime that one may follow. If you are determined to lose enough amounts of weight, the cardio exercises will help you reach your goals sooner than any other form of exercise.

It is already seen that intense cardio exercises when performed for 20 minutes per day, thrice a week will help in remaining fit and maintaining the amount of calories consumed and burnt. If the duration of exercises is doubled so that one burn about 600 calories in a day and it is perform for 6 days a week, it will be an effective weight loss plan that one can follow. You can simply burn about 3600 calories per week with cardio alone. If you succeed in doing this along with the other workouts that may burn a few more calories, you will surely find the expected results soon.

Cardio according to your Workout plan:

Since Cardio is mainly performed in order to prepare themuscles and the bones to face the further forms of exercises, it needs to be performed according to the workouts that you will be performing. If you are used to perform high intensity workouts, it is necessary that you perform high intensity cardio as well. The intensities of your workouts should match that of the cardio performed before it. The cardio helps you to prepare the muscles to bear workouts of the intensity that you prepare them for. You cannot simply perform a cardio that is low intensity and then begin with the vigorous workout movements that you usually do. This will increase the risk of injury of muscles.

Thus, we now know that cardio is surely an important part of the workout routine. But, we also know that it will be more effective and helpful only when it will be performed using the right techniques in adequate amounts. Being an important part of the workouts, cardio has to be given more attention since it is a part that may give great results when performed well or also can cause severe injuries when it is not done appropriately.

Author Bio:

This Blog Post is written by James Hundson, a fitness expert who has been studying the secrets of fitness for years. He specializes in almost all the fields related to fitness. He loves researching about new fitness trends which he mentions in most of his blog posts. His writing has inspired many to take up various fitness challenges that have helped them to lead a healthy life.