Another "Say No To Cardio" Blog Post...part 2

In my previous post on saying no to cardio...I spoke about my own personal experience with cardio and the move from regular slow boring cardio to high intensity interval training.

To summarise....for a long time I was a fan of long cardio sessions. I would do 3-4 sessions per week, usually 6-8km at a steady pace. For a long period I just kept doing this, but the thing was I never saw much in the way of results. After some time I decided to take the advice of my trainer and that was to attempt HIIT. I immediately saw results, my fitness was increasing and I was also burning more fat than I ever did with slow cardio.

In this post I wouldnt to talk more about the science behind the two forms of cardio and the benefits of each.

Were we built for long sessions of cardio?
A lot of people these days are discussing how we should be living lifestyles that are more in line with our caveman ancestors. This relates to both our diets and our training. In relation to cardio, their lifestyles were more in line with HIIT. Short bursts of intense exertion mixed between slower walking speeds.

But long cardio sessions must have some benefits?
Any form of cardio is bound to have some benefits. Large amounts of cardio will improve cardiac muscle strength. Also a study i read stated that 300 hours of cardio per year helped men lose 6 pounds. Its better than nothing right! But what about all the negative effects that come with those long boring sessions of cardio. It raises cortisol levels, increases oxidative damage, systemic inflammation, depresses the immune system and decreases fat metabolism. Yes you read that right...decreases fat metabolism.

Another thing that I commonly hear and read is that people dont lose any weight when they do high amounts of cardio and some even put on weight. The fact is that longer sessions of cardio lead to greater appetites and this inevitably leads to overeating once you get out of the gym

Whats so good about HIIT then?
HIIT is an extremely effcient method of speeding up your metabolism and dropping body fat quickly. But it also has been proven to reduce your appetite. Studies show that HIIT increases hormones called catecholamines. These hormones actually reduce your appetite. So after your painful HIIT session, you wont have to then fight your stomach to stop you overeating and undoing all your hard work.


During a HIIT session, you will get your heart rate going much harder than you would ever would in a regular cardio session. You will also be performing at a much higher rate than you would in a regular cardio session...but this is the exact reason why people struggle to start doing HIIT sessions. Most people would much rather run at 10-12km/hour for 30 minutes than doing 8 one minute hill sprints at 18km/hour.

But the two forms of training can work together. One effective method is to perform a HIIT session, then once you have completed that, do some brief steady state cardio. This will help maximise the fat burning after the HIIT session, which would already have you in the most efficient fat burning region.

So hopefully this gives you some ideas why you should start doing HIIT sessions opposed to slow steady state cardio. But one last note...no form of training will work most effectively unless it is tied to a well structured diet!