I received the following question today via email:

Q: What’s up with being down on cardio? It seems like a relatively new position for trainers, and I’m wondering what’s behind it. I saw recently that someone was debunking the large metabolic burn rate previously quoted for muscle versus fat tissue, that the burn rate isn’t so high (but still higher than non-muscular tissue). Just wanting to understand.

I responded directly to the person who emailed me that question, but I figured I’d also post my answer here as well:

A: I’ve personally always hated cardio. I only learned in the past year or so that it’s completely unnecessary for fat loss, so since I already hated it to begin with, knowing how useless it is only makes me even more passionately against it.

The reason myself and plenty of other personal trainers believe that cardio is pointless has nothing to do with the metabolic rate of muscle vs. fat. The reason is that long slow cardio doesn’t burn as many calories as circuit training and high-intensity interval training (in half the time as you’d spend doing cardio). And there’s virtually no post workout calorie burn (EPOC) from doing long slow cardio, but circuit training and HIIT produce an elevated metabolism for up to 48 hours post workout. That’s the main reason that personal trainers who’ve stayed current in their training methodologies are against cardio.

I wrote a short article for Craig Ballantyne’s blog on how to ensure that you get results from your fat-burning workouts.

If, in that past, you’ve struggled to workout regularly, and you’re trying to get yourself into a solid routine of consistent exercise, I want you to focus on answering the following question:

What type of exercise will you enjoy enough to consistently stick to your workout program, and put forth a genuine effort each and every time you workout?

My friend Mike Howard wrote a great article on the 8 Most Overrated Health Trends. Lots of great info there, including:

CrossFit: Arbitrary and extreme programming, no concept of progression, flimsy certification process, inadequate screening and rhabdomyolysis… not so good. Go with a coach/system that addresses the aforementioned.

Most people are lost when it comes to effective exercise. If you pay attention to everyone else at your local gym and mimic what they’re doing, you’ll surely end up with zero results just like the vast majority of people at your local health club.

Here are a few examples of ways that I want you to be different:

1) Avoid machines

Most of the machines at your local health club are gimmicky and will give you a worse workout than you’d get if you just focus on compound exercises with free-weights. Also, most machines at your local health club have chairs attached to them, and chances are you already sit down enough during the day, so ideally you shouldn’t be sitting down while doing your resistance training workout.

2) Avoid most isolation exercises

Isolation exercises means only one joint is moving, and only one muscle group is working. Two great examples of isolation exercises are biceps curls and triceps pushdowns. You’ll get much more bang for your buck if you perform compound exercises that move multiple joints and work multiple muscle groups. Examples of compound exercises that work your arms more effectively are pushups and rows.

3) Cut down on the chatter and focus on having a good workout

There are 168 hours in the week, and for great results you only need to exercise for 3 of those hours. But great results will not be achieved if you’re more preoccupied with having social hour instead of an effective workout. When you’re exercising, try to remind yourself about the relatively small amount of time you do spend working out each week, and focus on using that time to have a great workout, and leave the socializing for another time.

4) Choose the Concept2 rowing machine instead of the elliptical trainer.

Have you ever noticed that the Concept2 rowing machine at your local health club is almost always available while there are crowds of people peddling away on the elliptical machines? Stay away from the elliptical machine, and instead get on the rowing machine for 10 to 15 minutes an effective and time-efficient high-intensity interval training workout.

Remember that most people do not see any results from the time they spend in the gym, so if you do the same thing most people do, you’ll get the same results most people get (i.e. zero results). So don’t be afraid to be different, as being different is likely the only way you’re going to get results.

There’s no shortage of fat loss articles on the Internet. Check out any random fitness website or blog and you’ll find countless articles about how you can achieve the fat-burning results that seem to elude so many people.

But something is missing from most of those fat loss articles. Very few of them address the most important factor to achieving fat loss. Sure, they all cover exercise, nutrition, motivation, planning, etc, but that’s not rocket science. Most people will see great results if they just improve their diet a bit and perform a few basic weekly workouts.

But those other articles almost always leave out the most critical factor to achieving results:

You must enjoy your workout program otherwise you’ll never stick to it with any amount of consistency. And if you don’t stick to your workout program and exercise consistently, it doesn’t matter how effective the program is, you will not see any substantial results from it.

My entire philosophy as a personal trainer is geared towards ensuring that my clients enjoy their workouts. Because if you enjoy your workouts, you’ll not only exercise more consistently, but you’ll also exercise more intensely when you do work out. And exercise consistency and intensity are two of the most important components to a results focussed fat-loss program.

So rather than trying to determine how you can improve your exercise consistency and raise the intensity so that you see the results you’re striving towards, simply focus on answering the following question:

What type of exercise will you enjoy enough to consistently stick to your workout program, and put forth a genuine effort each and every time you workout?

Discover the answer to that question, and you’ll find that the other important components will also fall into place.

Perhaps home workouts are the answer for you. What’s great about home workouts is that by saving yourself the travel time to and from your gym (as well as packing your gym bag, changing, waiting for equipment, etc), you’ll find that you can do your entire home workout in roughly the same amount of time that it would take you just to travel to and from your local health club. So convenience is a huge part of enjoying your home workouts. When you realize how convenient and simple home workouts are, you’ll be less inclined to associate negative thoughts with your exercise program.

And don’t be fooled into believing that you need to invest in a lot of expensive home gym equipment in order to have effective home workouts. In order to have a balanced total-body home workout, all you need are some simple and inexpensive pieces of portable exercise equipment.

If you’re trying to find an answer to the question of how to enjoy your workouts, check out my YouTube channel for a variety of home exercise videos showing how simple and fun home workouts can be.

If you enjoy the videos, don’t forget to subscribe to my channel and that way you’ll be kept up to date with all my new videos that show you how to burn fat at home with minimal equipment, and hopefully have a lot of fun in the process.

I received the following question today via YouTube:

I’m curious, do you ever workout with weights? The reason I ask is that I’m getting a little tired of working out in the gym with weights and stuff.

My answer is posted below:

No, I do not workout with weights any more. I haven’t so much as touched a barbell or dumbbell in nearly a year.

I stopped working out with weights approximately one year ago after I got extremely bored with exercising at my local health club. I had been exercising in gyms and health clubs ever since I was 15 years old (I’m 31 now), and last year after a decade and a half of that scene I just plain got sick and tired of exercising that way.

After officially deciding that I do not want anything to do with gyms and health clubs any more, I’ve spent most of last year learning how to have effective workouts at home, or outdoors, with little to no equipment. Part of that journey involved launching an Vancouver boot camp program where I learned through trial and error exactly what works, and what doesn’t work, when it comes to effective “gymless” workouts.

Here are a few suggestions based on my discoveries over the past year:

1) You absolutely positively do NOT need to lift weights to get ripped and into the best shape of your life. Take a look at gymnasts. Most of them have never lifted a barbell or dumbbell before in their entire lives and they are among of the most shredded and chiseled athletes on earth.

2) In order to effectively work your legs without any weights, you need to do one-leg exercises. Your legs are simply too strong to get a great workout doing bodyweight only exercise where you’re lifting with both legs (e.g. bodyweight squat, prisoner squat, y squat, etc). But only a very miniscule percentage of the population can do unassisted 1-leg pistol squats, so one of the reasons why I love suspension gym training is that it allows you to effectively do assisted 1-leg squats while you work towards being able to do them unassisted. 1-leg squats on the suspension gym are as effective, if not more so, than any two-leg exercise you could do you in your weight room with a barbell on your shoulders.

3) Suspension gym training WILL provide you with a total-body workout that’s every bit as effective, if not more so, than any workout you could ever have at a health club with free weights and all of the most modern and expensive machines.

4) Resistance bands WILL also provide you with a total-body workout that’s every bit as effective, if not more so, than any workout you could ever have at your local gym using free weights and expensive machines.

5) Combining suspension gym training with resistance band training WILL give you a total-body muscle sculpting workout that’s SUPERIOR to any health club workout. Period. End of story. I guarantee that. I truly consider the ultimate home gym (or just gym, period) to be the suspension gym combined with resistance bands.

So to summarize: no, you do not need to lift weights to get in amazing shape. You can have the same, or better, workouts at home using just a couple of pieces of inexpensive equipment such as the suspension gym and resistance bands.

I hope this response was helpful.