A Fat-Burning Cardio Program You Won’t Hate

Get out the big bag for Goodwill, because with author JJ Virgin’s cardio program, soon your shirts will look like sacks and that great skirt you shimmied and tortured yourself to zip up last season will have the people in your life saying, “Did you lose weight? That skirt is hanging off you.” From Six Weeks to Sleeveless and Sexy

Bursting is the key to your cardio workout on this program. This special type of training will get you fit in just minutes each week. It’s the most effective and efficient way to teach your body to become a fat-burning machine. It’s short but intense intervals of exercise done for just 30 to 60 seconds each. You won’t get the limbs of your dreams just by lifting weights because you “hate cardio.” I promise that you won’t hate it anymore because my cardio bursting takes very little time and the intense portion is over with before you can blink. Think about it this way: don’t you have four hard-core bursts in you? I know that most of you do.

Your mission with bursting is to work hard enough that you can’t go a second longer. Think back to the relay races you did as a kid. You would line up on the playground and then run as hard as you could go to get to the finish line, tag your friend, and then you would have to rest for a minute or two. Your lungs were burning, and your legs couldn’t move one more millimeter. As adults, we seldom have that exhilarating feeling. What makes you feel this way is lactic acid, a by-product created in your body when you use a lot of energy in a short time. When you raise your lactic acid levels, you trigger the release of human growth hormone (HGH). This is said to be “the hormone of youth” because it’s at a high level when you are younger and helps you maintain muscle mass, burn fat, and keep your skin looking dewy and supple.

When you work at high intensity, you also use a lot of carbohydrates for fuel. Now, I know you’re thinking: But wait, I want to burn body fat for fuel! Well, it turns out that when you burn more carbs during exercise, you store them back better after exercise (to give you energy for the next go-round tomorrow) and you burn more fat. After all, you are exercising for a short time each day, but you are living all day long; by exercising hard and burning more carbs during exercise, you teach your body how to burn more fat all day long, which has a much bigger impact on your metabolism and your body composition.

Because bursting is intense, it has a much bigger “metabolic cost” than walking or steady-state aerobic exercise. It creates an oxygen debt, which your body has to pay back after you are done exercising. What this means to your metabolism is that it has to work harder afterward to recover from the intense exercise you did. This doesn’t happen after a daily walk. After all, that is just controlled falling, and your body is acclimated to walking about.

I want you to start by bursting in 30- to 60-second intervals to accumulate four total minutes every other day. You can increase to 8 minutes of total bursting as you increase your stamina. You will follow your burst by recovering for double that time — that is, 1 minute for every 30-second burst. I call this active recovery because you’re still moving but you’re not bursting. For example, you will sprint for 1 minute and then walk for 2 minutes. Or you will run up the stairs for 30 seconds and then walk down easy for a minute. Or jump rope hard for 1 minute and then walk around for 2 minutes. The easy recovery phase helps you buffer the lactic acid so you can go hard again in the next round. You will then be able to accumulate more lactic acid over the session, which will trigger a great growth hormone response. And the fitter you are, the longer that growth hormone stays around.

Don’t use your heart rate as a guide, as by the time your heart rate gets high enough on the monitor, you should be long done! Instead, pay close attention to your exertion level.

Think of it this way: You work out on a scale of 1 to 10. When you burst, you should be in the 9–10 zone of toughness and exertion when you are finished. You should think you couldn’t go another step. Some people might get to this point after 30 seconds, others after 45 or 60 seconds. That’s fine as long as you’re exerting yourself. If you feel you could burst for 90 seconds, you’re not going hard enough. You should never be able to get past 60 seconds, and you should be slightly breathless. If you can talk on your cell phone while you are doing this, you’re not bursting. You’re not bursting on the bike at the gym if you can simultaneously work on a crossword puzzle.

To reiterate: you will never burst longer than 60 seconds. If you can get to 60 seconds and keep going, you need to increase your intensity. The adjustment might happen to you in a matter of days because your progress will be quite amazing and you will be blown away at how quickly you will be able to increase the intensity of your bursting.

As you continue to burst, you will find that other physically exerting challenges, such as running up and down the stairs in your house and racing after your kids, suddenly seem easy. Your energy throughout the day will soar too. Oh, and the scale will also start heading south because you’ll be burning more fat than ever before.

Bursting Cheat Sheet

• Warm up for 3 minutes.

• Burst for 30–60 seconds.

• Recover for 1–2 minutes.

• Repeat to accumulate 4 total minutes of bursting (8 if you are already in great shape and want to take it to the next level).

• Cool down for 3 minutes.

• You’re done. Really, you’re done.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JJ Virgin, author of Six Weeks to Sleeveless and Sexy: The 5-Step Plan to Sleek, Strong, and Sculpted Arms (Copyright © 2010 by JJ Virgin & Associates, Inc.) has successfully coached Hollywood elite, rock stars, heavyweight champions, Olympians, and CEOs into shape using her powerful weight loss  program. She is an on-camera nutrition and fitness expert, writer, professional speaker, and radio personality on nationally syndicated shows, including two seasons as the nutrition expert on Dr. Phil.  A board-certified 25-year veteran of the health and fitness industry, she lives in Palm Desert, California.

MORE ARTICLES BY THE AUTHOR

• Arms Are the New Accessory
• How to Stay Committed to Your Exercise and Weight Loss Goals
• Is Stress Making Your Arms Chunky and Your Waistline Expand?
• What to Eat to Burn Fat and Lose Weight

LEARN MORE

• Read Chapter 1 of Six Weeks to Sleeveless and Sexy
• Browse more books about health and fitness