Reducing My Cardio to See What Happens

I am going to try an experiment over the next month or so. I am going to reduce the cardio I do to see how that impacts my progress towards weight loss and a fit body. I have been reading a number of materials, primarily the Vacation Body Blueprint over at Fitness Black Book, Eat Stop Eat by Brad Pilon, and this podcast over at AdonisLifestyle.

As I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, I have been working on a calorie restriction and find that it has been working well for me. I am not going crazy, just really watching what I am eating. Now I am going to see what impact less cardio is going to have.

The important thing to note is that I am not going to cut out my regular bike commutes to and from work. I am fortunate enough to live in an area (Stavanger, Norway) that allows me to bike 12 kms to work and 12 kms back at the end of the day. What I am going to cut out is the extra sessions I have been doing for HIIT, particularly the session I do on Saturdays.

Another change I am going to make is to make at least two of my commuting sessions HIIT sessions. Instead of just pedalling away at a constant rate as I usually do, I am going to mix it up and really mash the pedals for anywhere from 30 to 60 seconds followed by 90 seconds of my normal cadence. I think this should allow me to get the heart rate a lot higher for short periods of time and hopefully ramp up my fat loss.

The two primary benefits of doing this as I see it is that I have more free time (that extra Saturday session can be tough with a young family) and I will have more rest time for recovery. I will still do my Turbulence Training (which has been unbelievable – I am actually getting bigger biceps) three times per week for resistance training.

I will report back on this in a bout a month and let you know how it works.

(Photo Credit)