First off let me just say that any and every form of cardiovascular exercise will burn calories. But wouldn't it be great to learn there is something you can do to keep burning as many calories as possible even after your workout is over?

Go faster to burn more calories. That's it right there. That's the secret. Going faster for intermittent bouts during your cardio work is called interval training.

So many of you have been told that there is a "fat-burning" zone and in order to lose weight you need to train in that zone.

Nonsense!

Part of that is true; there is such a thing as a "fat-burning" zone.

Do you have to train in that zone to lose weight? NO.

Is it the best way to lose weight? NO again.

Let's go over that right now.

When you exercise at a low intensity, somewhere around 60-70% of your maximum heart rate, most of the calories you burn off will come from fat.

That's why on some cardio machines you see at the gym, most notably the TM, they have pre-set programs and one is almost always a "fat-burning" program.

This is the program that has you go at a slow speed for a long time.

Like I said, that part is true.

By going at a slower speed, most of the calories you burn will come from fat.

But what they don't tell you is that this is not the best way to burn the MOST calories.

So get the whole "fat-burning" thing out of your head now.

Let's focus now on how you can burn the most calories from your cardio exercise.

It's just the opposite of the long, slow "fat-burning" zone.

In order to burn the most calories you should increase the intensity.

In everyday terminology this means GO FASTER!

Let's look at how this works.

When you exercise at a higher intensity, or a faster speed than you are accustomed to, your heart rate is higher and in turn you burn more calories (especially after your workout is over).

Even though more calories from fat will be burned at a longer, slower pace, you will burn more calories TOTAL from a faster pace.

Let's say you go out for a somewhat easy run for 45 min. In that run you keep your heart rate at 70% of your maximum heart rate.

You think to yourself, "Great, I've just burned a lot of calories and they mostly came from fat since I was in the fat burning zone."

Now let's say on another day you went for a run but decided to cut it a little shorter, let's say 40 min., and did some interval training and got your heart rate up much higher than 70%.

Training this way, you will burn more calories total then you did at the slower pace.

And like I've said, losing weight is merely a matter of burning more calories than you take in.

Don't be concerned with where those calories are coming from.

What you do want to make sure of is that you are not burning lean muscle.

That's one reason that strength-training is so important. It prevents you from losing lean muscle.

A combination of a strength training program and cardio will ensure that your weight loss is fat weight and not lean muscle.

I went a little off topic there with the weight lifting; I just want to make sure you are aware of how important it is to do both the weights and the cardio.

Let's get back to cardio and how to go about pumping up the intensity.

A lot of you might be thinking 2 things right about now;

• I can barely go much faster than a walking pace right now, how can you expect me to go any faster? • I don't know anything about heart rate and percentages of maximum hear rate, so how fast will I know how to go?.

Let me also say that what we're talking about applies to all forms of cardio, whether it's walking, biking, running, swimming, etc.

I'm going to use walking/running as my example here.

Let's address that first concern right now.

This one is easy.

Remember the old saying that you have to crawl before you can walk?

We'll start out with a person who can only walk at this point and we'll work our way up from there.

What we're going to talk about now is interval training in action.

If you go for a 30 min. walk at a nice leisurely pace, what you can do is increase your speed slightly every 5th minute.

It will be easier if we use the treadmill for this example.

Let's say you walk on the treadmill for 30 min at a speed of 3.5.

Using the interval training method, you would increase your speed to 4.0 at the 5th minute mark and keep it there until you reach the 6th minute mark. Once you hit the 6th minute you bring the speed back down to 3.5.

The pattern would be as follows:

Start to 5th minute = 3.5
5th minute to 6th minute = 4.0
6th minute to 10th minute = 3.5
10th minute to 11th minute = 4.0
11th minute to 15th minute = 3.5
15th minute to 16th minute = 4.0
16th minute to 20th minute = 3.5
20th minute to 21st minute = 4.0
21st minute to 25th minute = 3.5
25th minute to 26th minute = 4.0
26th minute to 30th minute = 3.5

Let's look at a couple of reasons why this is beneficial.

First off as you can see, it's not physically over demanding.

Out of the 30 minutes, only 5 minutes are spent at the higher speed.

And for that reason also, it is not too tough to handle mentally.

The mental part, or what I like to call "mental intimidation", is what often prevents a lot of people from "kicking it into high gear".

By training this way, you know that even though you are at the high speed for 1 minute it is still only 1 minute and you will be able to recover at the slower speed very soon.

As I said this can be applied to any form of cardio exercise, even popular equipment found at fitness centers such as elliptical machines, steppers, rowers, etc.

You can also put this to work outdoors, whether it's walking, running, biking or even swimming.

If you are going outdoors it is helpful to use a watch. This way you know when you need to increase the speed.

With today's high-tech watches you can even set it to go off every 5th minute so you don't have to constantly look down to check it.

Of course, by training outdoors like this, it's up to you to bump up the pace. There are no buttons to push like there are on fitness center machines that will force you to go faster.

In keeping with this type of training, let's say you enjoy bike riding. All you would do here is pedal faster every 5th minute.

Let me also say that the goal here with this type of training is not to go all out, 100% for that 5th minute, but just increase your speed slightly.

You want to increase your effort enough that you feel like you are pushing yourself, but not too much that you can't sustain it for the full minute, or whatever duration you choose.

A lot of people make that mistake.

Every 5th minute they think they should go all out, full speed. You won't last through the workout this way and probably end up discouraged.

Don't let that happen.

Push yourself, but don't overdo it!

As good as the "5th minute" increase of speed is, it's not the only way to do interval training.

The options are endless, especially if you are outdoors, just be as creative as you like.

You might decide to walk a little faster every time you come to a telephone pole.

Or if you are walking at a pretty good pace to begin with, maybe you can break out into a little jog or run every time you come to a street light.

The nice thing about this is that it's almost like playing little games with yourself and it takes your mind off of the actual intense part of the walk, run, bike, etc.

And it doesn't necessarily have to be every 5th minute, not does it have to last for 1 minute.

If you're just starting out you can simply do every 10th minute for 10 seconds.

What is so great about this is it's very easy to make progress.

Using the above as an example, you might one day feel that you can go for 20 seconds instead of just 10.

And as time goes on, you might decide that you can increase the pace every 7th or 8th minute instead of every 10th minute.

Before you know it the time you spent at your "fast pace" will become faster and longer and the time spent at your "normal" or "slower" pace will become shorter.

I would not recommend that you do this every single time you do your cardio.

Doing it too often can become somewhat physically challenging, especially as you get into it a little more.

The main point that you should take with you after reading this article is to pump up the intensity during your cardiovascular workouts.

It's a great way to make your cardio sessions more intense, more enjoyable, and your progress will come easier and faster.

All this adds up to a fun, enjoyable, effective cardio session.

So don't be afraid to push the envelope a little the next time you set out on your daily walk or run.

You'll be surprised at what you can actually do.

The sky's the limit - Push Yourself!