Many folks just don’t realize that cardio exercises are not required in order to lose fat. I know plenty of people who are bodybuilders and have lean bodies who never do any of the traditional cardio activities. You can be a champion without doing any cardio at all. You do resistance training and work on your nutrition plan. That long, slow cardio routine you do wastes a lot of time that you can use for other things.

You’ll see that if you do interval training, you’ll see the fat come off your body in a lot less time. The good news is that intervals work for novices and experts alike.

So if you’re a beginner, you can keep using the treadmill. You’ll just use it differently. You’ll get a period of hard work followed by a slower recovery period and then do more hard work in a cyclical manner.

So you can see that it’s easy to phase in the interval approach to your workout program.

You’ll find that you work hard for a period and then slow down to a rate that’s below traditional cardio. As you develop your training, you’ll morph into a seven mph rate alternating with a three mph walk. You have to have a good contrast in intensity between the burst and recovery for intervals to be effective.

An advanced workout will probably start with an intense ten mph run and then recover at a three mph walk. One more thing: you want to keep your interval sessions short.

You don’t need to be doing this for forty five minutes, else you’ll lose your form and your benefits. Just do about six intensity-recovery cycles and you’ll be done with an effective workout. Once you get in the habit of interval workouts, you’ll never want to go back to slow cardio.