
when you're using cardio specifically for fat loss there's different rules that you need to follow cardio is great for overall health benefits cardio is great when it comes down to longevity but when you're looking at Fat Loss specifically there's a few things you need to pay attention to so what I have are nine of the most critical cardio fat loss mistakes that people make so let's just go ahead and Jump Right In after today's video I put a link down below for the dog food that I feed my dogs yes I'm advertising dog food on YouTube I've hit rock bottom no in all seriousness this is human grade dog food we have four dogs if you know me you know we have four dogs so I've got an 18-year-old a 15-year-old a 13-year-old and then a puppy and Sundays is human grade dog food which means a dog food that humans could actually eat as well so I always felt bad giving my dogs kibble while I'm eating good quality food like before I had kids the dogs were our kids right they still are our kids bottom line is I really recommend you try it out if you're worried about your own health and you're concerned to your own health maybe you should think about what you're feeding your dogs too so it's human grade and it was formulated by a veterinarian that was tired of the same kind of thing I was tired of so anyway that link down below saves you 15% off Sunday's dog foods so that link is in the top line of the description underneath this video and again when you support our sponsors you allow us to keep doing what we are doing which is creating amazing content for you the first one is what I call the Zone creep now the Zone creep is when you start doing cardio but you start enjoying cardio so much that you slowly start increasing your intensity now if you were training for performance this would make sense you want to improve your performance and you want to be pushing it harder but the Zone creep is where you start creeping into zone four sometimes even zone five and what does that mean when you're doing cardio for fat loss you typically want to stay in that zone two cardio range which means that you can carry a conversation on with somebody while you're doing your cardio now that's great for just sustainability with your card CIO but it also allows you to utilize fats as the fuel source during your cardio better when you creep into Zone 3 you're utilizing carbohydrates and fat so you're okay in that zone but what happens with me is I get into running and then I start wanting to push my times I start wanting to get faster and I start wanting to do this and it becomes a problem next thing I know I'm looking at my aura and my whoop results and I'm in zone four the whole time this is great for performance but is not nearly as good for using fat as a percentage of your fuel so try to keep your intensity down to a rating of perceived exertion of maybe six on a scale of 1 to 10 that way you could carry on a conversation or do the sing test if you're running you could literally sing to yourself without getting out of breath that's a good indicator the second one is not increasing your protein more when you add cardio in so let's say for example you eat 200 grams of protein per day when you're resistance training but then you add an hour of cardio in you should be adding more protein in and people don't don't typically factor that in they think resistance training is all that triggers a demand for protein but when you do cardio you absolutely trigger a demand for protein and arguably it becomes even more important because with resistance training you're trying to add muscle typically or you're trying to get stronger with cardio you need to be adding that protein in to prevent the muscle from being wasted so when you add cardio in add more protein now this is going to be a little bit random but a general rule of thumb that I tell people to follow is for every 30 minutes of cardio add another 30 gam of protein now obviously if you weigh 100 lb that's going to be a lot of protein but I weigh about 180 and that's the rule that I follow so if I ran for 60 minutes today I'm going to try to add 60 more grams of protein on top of what my normal Baseline is the next one is not cross trining and I've talked about this in other videos before but this is so important especially for fat loss and that's just the rule of efficiency if I go out and I go for a run and I run for the next three weeks I'm going to get really good at running and what's going to happen is I'm going to develop efficiency that's the entire idea of training but we're not just trying to train we're trying to trigger adaptation so what I always try to do is make sure that my cardio seems adequately difficult if running becomes easy then I switch to the bike if the bike becomes easy then I switch to the rower if the rower becomes easy then I switch to the skier I'm always kind of rotating ating it up and it's a really important thing to remember now another piece that isn't quite so much a mistake but it's more so something I wanted to mention before I get into the next ones if you're training outside one of the fastest ways that you're going to slow down your performance is becoming dehydrated so whether that means you're hydrating before your workouts or hydrating after I always recommend increasing your sodium levels this is a really important thing just so that you're kind of having more intracellular water so you have more onboard water for your activity one of the reasons people get so sore is because they end up quite dehydrated and they don't even realize it so dehydration plays a critical role in delay onet muscle soreness and our overall recovery this next one is really wild and people don't really consider it too much and that's avoiding upper body cardio upper body cardio is one of the most powerful ways to get your heart rate up especially if you're doing interval training so if you're doing steady state cardio doing arm type work might be a little bit different but if you're trying to opt for hit to get it done faster doing upper body movements is a huge huge cheat code reason is is because you have more what is called peripheral resistance that means when the heart is pumping blood into the upper body there is less overall ability to receive that blood as there is compared to the legs you have big arteries in the legs so when your heart's pumping it can drain blood into the legs really fast with the upper body it has to fight resistance from the periphery what that means is less activity gets your heart rate up more so if you're trying to do interval training doing something like the rower where you use a lot of arms or doing battle ropes where you use a lot of arm movement is a tremendous way to get the heart rate up super fast in 20 30 seconds and then recover it's totally missing out by not doing it we always think of cardio as using our legs jumping running biking whatever use the arms this next one is one that people really mess up on a lot and that is doing so much cardio that they start taking away from their resistance training and this is arbitrary right it can vary from person to person but it happens to me and it's happened to me even recently so I love doing CrossFit style workouts that's just kind of fun for me not Everyone likes CrossFit and I don't officially do CrossFit but that means I'm squatting a lot I'm deadlifting a lot but also when I start training for running I run so much that my legs get kind of beat up and the next day I end up getting hurt or can't lift as much with my leg movements so as a result my legs shrink and as a result that slows down metabolism because a lot of our mass is in our legs right our legs carry the biggest amount of muscle in our body our glutes especially so if we run or we bike so much to the point that we're sore it's counterproductive because then we cannot do the resistance training as well and the resistance training is going to be the bigger driver for so much of our metabolism so you're putting the cart before the horse here by trying to do more cardio to burn fat but you're ultimately missing out on what's really going to allow you to burn fat long term so make your cardio adjustments so that you're pushing it but not so much that you're detriment to your actual resistance training next one is one that's really hard to manage unless you occasionally track food which I don't recommend a lot of people do because it becomes rather orthorexic and obsessive and it can cause a problem but maybe doing it from time to time when you do cardio it triggers a pretty serious gin response what that means is over the subsequent hours after doing cardio you're a lot more hungry than you normally would be and you're hunger is going to be much more much greater than the calories that you actually expended with your cardio workout if I go out and I run and I burn 600 calories I'm going to come back and I'm probably ravenous for like three or four hours it's way way way too easy for me to overeat more than 600 calories just by the sheer hunger episodes so you have to be aware of that and there's no way to override that other than just your prefrontal cortex and being able to manage but just be very aware of it because just because you added more cardio doesn't give you a license to eat whatever you want you should compensate those calories a little bit but you don't want to overcompensate this next one number seven is one of my ultimate favorite ones and it's one that totally goes by the wayside that is not increasing antioxidant intake okay when you resistance train sure you cause stress to the body we always think of it we always think like okay I'm lifting weights I'm tearing muscle fibers and rebuilding them 100% % but when you're doing cardio it's this constant burn that creates a lot of oxidative stress there are a lot of lot of lot of published papers out there that demonstrate that high endurance work or heavy amounts of cardio increase the risk of upper respiratory and lower respiratory infections this is no joke this is a very real thing people that are in serious training blocks are getting sick all the time because they beat themselves up now that's going to happen more with cardio than it is with resistance training because espe the load on the lungs right what you need to be paying attention to is upregulating your antioxidant intake so that means a a lot of fruits a lot of veggies to get the antioxidants in but don't be afraid of taking things like eonia vitamin E alphalipoic acid is a really good one like 300 to 600 milligrams of alphalipoic acid on days that you do a lot of cardio to counteract it even simple vitamin C even things like ashwagandha things like that that can help regulate these things those are all very powerful antioxidant tools also even uh like things like luteolin is a really good one as well you can do a little bit of research offline about this on how to like actually get the best antioxidant for you but the bottom line is by increasing whole fruits and veggies you're probably getting a good majority of it but a lot of us don't pay attention to that another big mistake and a caveat especially a mistake for beginners is mixing your cardio with your weight training now full disclaimer when you are Advanced for example with Crossfit that is a perfectly acceptable thing do I do it yes how many times do I do burpees and then jump into deadlifts or box jumps and then jump into deadlifts all the time but when you are getting started and your goal is fat loss and you're not at a point in your body composition that you're happy it's not exactly the most advantageous thing to do and the simple reason is you're mixing Energy Systems you're putting emphasis on your cardio for 30 seconds but it's taking away from the emphasis on your resistance training for 30 seconds and vice vers versa so the emphasis on your resistance training is taking away from your cardio you're not able to get into that comfortable Zone where you're actually oxidizing fat as well even though your grandiose ultimate calorie burn is very high you're putting yourself in a spot where you're really just squeaking out a little bit it's almost like you're becoming a jack of all trades master of none and you're getting like 70% Effectiveness in each category so try separating have a very clear line of delineation between your resistance training and your cardio at least until become more experienced this last one number nine is arguably the most important when it comes down to sustainability and I hope that you've stuck with me through here okay this is having fun with it now what do I mean by that the best way that you can do cardio is by doing something that you don't realize you're doing cardio with so what I mean by that is throwing a backpack on and going for a hike with a friend or going out and playing soccer or football or something your cardio is going to be in that zone that you want it to be and you're going to have fun and it's not going to feel like work the moment it becomes miserable the moment it goes into a different region of your brain and it's categorized and filed into an area that you don't want to tap into unless you need to and you've created a terrible pavlovian response with it I enjoy running running is not a chge for me that's why I choose to do it if I choose to do other forms of cardio it's not as fun I like to hike I like to throw a heavy backpack on I like the grind of that but I also like going with my family and throwing my daughter on my back and feeling a hike that way where it's a hard workout but I'm enjoying time with my family and it doesn't feel like it trust that's going to be the secret sauce Above All Else as always keep it locked in here on my channel we'll see you tomorrow