Every day I get the pleasure of chatting with people who have many different goals and things they are looking to accomplish with their fitness.
Today when I was talking to a client I got asked, what is the best form of cardio?
The first thing that I always think about whenever anyone asks me a fitness or health question is...
What is the goal you are looking to achieve? When that is figured out we can reverse engineer what the best form of cardio is for you.
The way I see it is that there really is no better form of cardio. The best cardio is the one that will get you to your goals.
Outside of what your goal is, do we have any underlying issues or injuries that we need to think about?
Walking vs running for instance, you will burn the same amount of calories over the same distance. However, you will burn the calories in less time if you are running. Also, running can have a lot of impact on your joints.
Let’s take biking vs running for instance. We will burn the same amount of calories in the same amount of time. You will get a great health benefit from both. The impact of the bike on your joints is pretty much zero.
Last, let's throw a curve ball into the mix, HIIT. HIIT is High Intensity Interval Training.
HIIT is a great cardio workout using strength training to get a cardio workout. Depending on the chosen exercises it can be very low impact. You very much can get the calorie burn you are looking for in a short amount of time. However with the hard nature of a HIIT workout. It is recommended that you keep your HIIT workouts to a total of 45-60 minutes of work per week. That is less than half of your recommended 150 minutes per week of physical activity.
Let’s get back to the question.
What is the best form of cardio?
The one that will get you to your goal and will help you stay injury free.