Well, I just saw what might very well be the most insanely idiotic workout ever posted on YouTube. It was called the “HIIT Tabata Cardio Interval Workout”. Good grief. Stay tuned next week for the “Killer Anearobic Aerobics Workout” on Monday, followed by the “Non-Impact Plyometics Extreme Toner Circuit” on Wednesday, and capped off  on Friday with the “Functional Training Meathead Bodybuilding Isolation Extravaganza”.

Be very careful where you get your workout information from, particularly if you get your info online. The vast majority of fitness trainers posting workouts online are astoundingly stupid and completely lack even the most rudimentary knowledge about how to have safe and effective workouts. Following those morons will waste your time and get you zero results at best, and get you injured at worst.

HIIT (high-intensity interval training) is the very antithesis of cardio. They are opposites. Different ends of the spectrum. Hot and cold. Wet and dry. Etc.

With HIIT, you workout extremely hard for a short period of time (10 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds, whatever), then rest, recover, and repeat for a certain number of rounds.

With cardio, you workout at a fairly low intensity that allows you to perform the exercise for a long period of time (20 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour, whatever) with no rest.

HIIT is one of the very best ways to burn maximum fat in the shortest possible time spent exercising.

Cardio is one of the best ways to piss away your time and get no results, unless your desired result is an overuse injury.

To summarize, cardio exercise is completely different than HIIT, one is effective (HIIT), the other isn’t (cardio), and there are a lot of dumbasses posting bad workout videos online.

Here’s a complete list of the home workouts that I’ve updated and rereleased in the past week or so, including a summary of the changes I made to each ebook.

Home Workouts · $19.95 · (more info)

This ebook is the original Mode Athletics 90-day resistance band workout program, and the only program in this list that didn’t get any changes besides the updated styling of the ebook.

The Home Workouts program features 3 separate 4-week fat-burning exercise programs that are performed with resistance bands. The workouts (9 different routines) are in circuit training format and get progressively more difficult as you go through the 90-day program.

High-Intensity Interval Training · $9.95 · (more info)

This is ebook is a collection of 5 high-intensity interval training workouts. The original ebook released back in 2008 included examples of a beginner, intermediate, and advanced HIIT workout.

The updated ebook features 5 brand new HIIT workouts, each designed to be performed with a different piece of equipment, or with no equipment at all (e.g. rowing machine, stationary bike, jump rope, hill sprints, bodyweight cardio).

Abdominal Circuits · $9.95 · (more info)

This ebook is a collection of 5 workout routines that focus on crunchless abdominal training. The original version of this ebook included starter and advanced crunchless supersets and trisets.

The updated ebook features 5 brand new abdominal workouts. The new workouts include various squatting, lunging, and pressing, exercises mixed in with many of the best static and dynamic plank exercises, making these workouts true belly-fat burning abdominal circuits.

Bodyweight Challenges · $9.95 · (more info)

This ebook is a collection of 5 bodyweight workout routines in challenge format (i.e. perform a series of exercises and reps as quickly as possible while maintaining proper form). The original ebook included 3 bodyweight challenge workouts.

The updated ebook features 2 additional bodyweight challenge workouts that are significantly more difficult than any of the 3 challenges from the previous version.

Bodyweight Circuits · $9.95 · (more info)

This ebook is a collection of 5 bodyweight workout routines in circuit format. The original version of this ebook featured starter bodyweight trisets and 2 advanced bodyweight circuit training workouts.

The update ebook features 5 brand new bodyweight workout routines in circuit format. Each workout consists of 2 separate 5-exercise circuits. All 5 of the workouts in this ebook are pretty challenging, and are geared towards intermediate to advanced exercisers.

Hotel Workouts · $9.95 · (more info)

This ebook is a collection of 5 hotel workout routines done with resistance bands. The original ebook included 2 beginner hotel workouts and 2 advanced hotel workouts.

The updated ebook features 5 brand new hotel workouts. All 5 of the new workouts are pretty difficult, but since they focus on resistance band training (i.e. resistance can be easily adjusted), these workouts are also perfectly suitable for beginners.

Super Strength Workouts · $9.95 · (more info)

This ebook is a 4-week strength program done with resistance bands. The original program included 2 workouts designed for a 3-workout per week schedule (i.e. Monday, Wednesday, Friday).

The updated ebook features 4 brand new resistance band workouts designed for a 4-workout per week schedule (i.e. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday). This is currently the only Mode Athletics workout routine performed in straight superset format.

David decided to share his words of wisdom on my Facebook page today, so I decided to post some highlights here for you to laugh at.

One of the first things David wrote on my Facebook page is his thoughts about how my workouts compare to running:

I can get a better workout running for 10 minutes then [sic] you can get from a half hour from any or [sic] your so called piddly HIIT workouts.

Wonderful. In David’s twisted universe, running for 10 minutes will provide him with a better workout than 30 minutes of high-intensity interval training. I don’t even think the most passionate and vocal supporters of running would ever claim that running even comes close to burning the same amount of calories as HIIT, much less going off the deep end like David and claiming that 10 minutes of running beats 30 minutes of HIIT.

Next up is David’s thoughts on EPOC (excess post-exercise oxygen consumption):

By the way EPOC is crap plain and simple. You only burn an extra 50 calories and that is considering you do approx an hour at high intensity and only trained althletes can maintain that kind of effort for such and [sic] extended period of time.

So David thinks EPOC is crap and you can only burn an extra 50 calories from EPOC and only if you exercise at a high intensity for an hour. Never mind the Smith and McNaughton study from 1993 that showed men could burn an extra 140.5 calories from EPOC after a 30-minute high-intensity workout, and women could burn an extra 121.5 calories from EPOC after a 30-minute high-intensity workout.

Next up, David rationalizes that the “population” getting fatter is evidence that HIIT workouts don’t work:

Let me ask you this. If these so called new workout techniques are so great and efficient, then why is the population getting larger?

I dunno, David, perhaps the population getting fatter has something to do with what the population is eating? Nah, it can’t be that. Must be that HIIT workouts are ineffective and thus the world is getting fatter. Good thinkin’.

After criticizing HIIT and how useless it is, David then mentions that he’s been doing HIIT for years:

HIIT is stolen from sports and we have been doing it for ages.

I’m not even sure what to think about that.

Then David goes on to claim that somehow “cross-country” (running? skiiing? he doesn’t say) qualifies as HIIT:

You want high intensity then go find a local cross country team and train with them for a week. You will then understand what true HIIT is and not none of this pansy circuit training stuff.

Never mind that to anyone who isn’t insane, cross-country running and skiing is the very epitome of endurance training (i.e. completely different than HIIT), in David’s twisted world the best form of high-intensity interval training is low-intensity non-interval cross-country training.

Thanks, David Peters, for your words of wisdom.

“High-intensity interval training is twice as effective as normal exercise,” said Jan Helgerud, an exercise expert at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. “This is like finding a new pill that works twice as well. … We should immediately throw out the old way of exercising.”

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.

High-intensity interval training (HIIT) involves a series of maximum intensity efforts followed by low intensity recovery periods. A study at Laval University in Quebec, Canada suggests that HIIT trainees lost 9-times more fat than those who performed traditional aerobic cardio sessions (i.e. 20-60 minutes of long boring cardio).

Example HIIT workout on the recumbent exercise bike:

• Begin with a light 3-minute warm-up at 60 RPM
• Increase the intensity to 100+ RPM for 30 seconds
• Reduce the intensity to 70 RPM for 1 minute
• Repeat that interval system 3 to 6 more times
• Finish with a 3-minute cool-down at 60 RPM

Depending on your fitness level, you may need to adjust the difficulty by either increasing/reducing the length of the work/rest periods, increasing/reducing the intensity of the max efforts by peddling faster/slower, or raising/lowering the resistance on the exercise bike. The goal during the work period is to work as hard as possible, so that by the time the rest period arrives, you have no choice but to slow down so that you can recover and allow your heart rate to come down.

If you’re not seeing results from the time you spend in the gym, it’s possible that you’re doing too much low-intensity cardio, and not enough high-intensity interval training.

For high-intensity workout programs in Vancouver that produce real results, check out our outdoor boot camp program.