Believe it or not, cardio and your weight routine can coexist. In fact, combining these two aspects will lead us to the ideal exercise routine, where we will involve all areas of our body and where we will also save more time.
By increasing the intensity in our training we will increase our blood pressure and the amount of calories we can burn, things that also improve our cardiovascular health. All this without neglecting our primary goal, which is weight training.
5 ways to incorporate cardio into your weight routine
1. Vary the rest
One of the simplest ways to alter our heart rate and, of course, to increase it, is to vary the rest between sets. But if the goal is to incorporate cardio, then that time between sets should be as short as possible to demand from our aerobic system.
A good way to do this is to use a pyramid system . For example, at the end of the first series we only rest for thirty seconds and continue with the second. Then we rest only twenty, then only ten.
It is obvious that this system cannot be implemented with the maximum load, so it is best to reduce the weight, but thanks to it we will be able to burn a lot of fat.
2. Use both hands
Many more calories are burned in exercises that use more muscle groups. In this way, when attacking a muscle or group of muscles, it is always better to use that variant where both hands or arms are used.
For example, if we are going to train biceps, we will burn more calories doing a barbell bicep curl than doing a concentrated bicep curl. In this way, the aerobic system of the body is much more activated.
3. Reduce the weight of your exercises
Normally, in strength training, it is about lifting the maximum possible load by doing few repetitions or for a short time (45 seconds, for example), which is logical if we seek to increase our strength. But, to incorporate a cardiovascular element into our routine , we need to involve our aerobic system much more. For this we need to do more repetitions, or keep the movement for longer.
To make that possible we must reduce the weight we lift. Since the goal is to gain strength while burning calories , we must achieve a balance between weight and exercise time or repetitions.
4. Do plyometrics.
Plyometrics are explosive and powerful exercises that are designed to increase our strength, speed, and endurance. All of these ingredients are necessary to burn enough calories and gain strength at the same time .
The most popular explosive exercises are the jump squat and plyometric push-ups, but they are not the only ones.
To get the most out of plyometric exercises, it is best to do sets of fifteen repetitions: this will keep our heart rate at its maximum capacity.
5. Go beyond conventional exercises
The normal thing in a strength training is to do a well-defined weight routine in the gym, but we can go further and do exercises outside the routine that force the body to move in unconventional ways that it is not used to and that also give us strength and explosiveness at the same time. The perfect example for an exercise of this type is the Burpee, an exercise characterized by the large amount of calories burned in each repetition.
Reference
- Migala, J. 6 Easy Ways to Add Cardio to Your Strength Workout. For Dailyburn [Revised January 13, 2018]
