If you get up at 5:30am to drive an hour to work, only to get home
at 6pm and then have to launch right into carting the kids around,
who can blame you for not working out? Not when it takes 45 minutes
to do cardio, and another 30-45 minutes for isolation bodybuilding
workouts.

If that's the way you have to exercise to lose fat, then practically no normal person is going to be able to pull that off.

But when you look at the science, you'll see that you can get more
results in less time. You just have to increase the intensity of
the workout, but at the same time, you can cut your workout time in
half (or more!).

I am convinced that an effective fat loss workout can be done in 45
minutes or less, and that long, slow, excruciatingly boring cardio
is not necessary for you to get the body you want. Please, read
on...

In
last week's newsletter, I spoke about the 3 biggest training mistakes
as well as my top 3 training tips to help you get more results in less
time. Here I go into detail on the superiority of interval training
when compared to traditional aerobic exercise:

Q: What is the role of interval training vs. steady state aerobics
in a fat loss program?

Answer:
Interval training is more important than cardio. First of all, it gets
more results in less time. And with "lack of time" being the number one
reason most people do not participate in a training program at all,
clearly intervals are the winner here.

Now
let's just assume that lack of time is not a problem. Well, interval
training is still more effective because it applies more "turbulence"
to the muscle. Or in scientific terms, interval training results in a
greater metabolic stress on the muscle.

And that causes more calories to be burned in the important 23.5
hours per day when you are not exercising.

From
there, the muscle must work to recover, repair, and replenish the
energy that was used in the training. It is much more metabolic work
for the muscle to recover from interval training (and strength
training) than it is to recover from aerobic training.

Therefore, in the post-exercise period, interval training results in more calories burned.

In fact, I just read a new study from Australia that shows interval
training is superior to slow cardio for fat loss.

The researchers, Trapp & Boutcher put WOMEN through a 15 week
study where one group was a control, one group did intervals (20
minutes of alternating sprints and recovery), and one group did 40
minutes of slow cardio.

The
interval group lost 2.5kg of fat in 15 weeks on average (with one
subject losing 7.7kg of fat), while the slow cardio group lost only
0.4kg of fat over 15 weeks on average.

The results speak for themselves.

So
don't get hung up on how many calories are burned during a training
session with aerobic training. That is not nearly as important as how
many total calories your body burns over the course of the day - and
you will burn more with interval training.

And
for those that subscribe to the fat burning zone as being important,
again, you aren't looking at the big picture (the 24-hour calorie
burning period). Instead, those that believe in the importance of the
fat-burning zone have a myopic view of how the body works.

The same message applies to those people that live and die by the
cardio on an empty stomach method. You're "nickel and dime-ing" the
fat loss process, when really it's a much bigger budget to balance.

Look
at the big picture. Get your nutrition in order, then focus your
workouts on brief, intense strength and interval training workouts that
increase your metabolism for the next 24 hours.

Get your very own copy of Turbulence Training & the Nutrition Guide
here: www.TurbulenceTraining.com

Sincerely,

Craig Ballantyne, CSCS, MS
Author, Turbulence Training