Cardiovascular routines are always going to come up short compared to working your entire physique when it comes to losing fat and shaping you bod. Aerobic exercises are not effective. They were a short fad, but they are proven not to work, even though people seem to be stuck doing the wrong thing. Even you heart’s going to be better off when you get all your muscle groups worked in a resistance program.
Additionally, you gain because you reduce your risk of the injuries that so often result from cardio.
You can use the machines at your gym if you want, but you need to use them for interval training and combine that with strength training to get an effective workout in less time. You can do drills that use your body’s weight to get yourself into awesome shape to get benefits that far outweigh anything you’ve done in traditional cardio.
I’m talking about things like squatting, push up variations, and rowing that will build muscle, burn fat and increase your strength. You’re right: I’m saying that you don’t have to get involved with heavy barbells bench-presses, or other free-weight activities.
What I’m telling you to do can be done at home because you don’t need a lot of gear: just yourself.
Of course, you can always add weights if you want to, but the importance is geting your entire body involved in your exercises so you can get a great fat burning session done in a short amount of time. To illustrate this, suppose you were doing a squat with or without dumb bells. This removes leg-extensions and leg-curls that you’d use machines at the gym to perform.
When you perform pushups or DB chest presses, you’re going to avoid chest flies and tricep extenders using the equipment. Doing the chinup is going to replace pulldown machines and bicep curling.