Cardio

What is cardio?

Arnav Sarkar explains how cardio is beneficial for weight loss, "The simplest explanation of a cardio workout would be any workout/exercise that gets your heart rate up, and keeps it elevated for a significant amount of time." If you're a first timer with cardio, look to starting with 20-minutes-a-day cardio workouts, and increase the duration and intensity of exercise to improve your stamina and reach your weight loss targets.

Precautions for cardio workouts

Before you start huffing and puffing, did you know there are limits and precautions when you practice your cardio workouts? Arnav explains what you should keep in mind for cardio workouts, "Don't overdo it, especially the slow and long duration type. Good cardio training has a lot of benefits to offer, but overdoing it, which is very common, can soon lead to problems like aching knees, muscle loss, slower metabolism, etc. For most people, 10-20 minutes of intense cardio, and 25-45 minutes of low intensity cardio seems to work best without causing any overuse injuries."

High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)

HIIT sessions are only 20 minutes long if you minus the warming up and warming down session. For best results, you should go for HIIT training every second to third day. This is because whenever you do reps, you perform them with greater intensity. But don't fool yourself into trimming down in a day and performing this workout every day as this workout is known to burn energy from your muscle system which calls for at least a day's time to rest and recover.

Kettlebell

"The basic exercises that are done with a Kettlebell are whole body exercises," explains Arnav. "This means that they make your body work hard and burn a lot more calories than what the basic isolation exercises like crunches, curls, etc do. Also because these basic exercises burn a lot more calories with each rep, the workouts are rarely very long. For most, a basic 30-45 minute workout will be enough to get the job done."

Circuit training

Simply put, circuit training is a bunch of aerobic exercises mixed up with resistance training to deliver a high intensity workout. These exercises are performed one after the other - in a circuit - with minimal rest in-between. Circuit training involves both aerobic and anaerobic exercises but this method of training is so flexible, you can create your very own routine in a matter of minutes with a little bit of research and help from your friendly neighbourhood fitness blog or website like healthmeup.com

Plyometrics

Plyometric contractions—or the stretch shortening cycle, as it is often referred to—involves a process whereby the muscle undergoes a period of rapid lengthening movement, followed by a brief transition time where there is no change in muscle length, followed

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