This is the only type of cardio we should do fasted, because as you can read in this article http://www.jissn.com/content/11/1/54/abstract fasted cardio doesn’t bring you any additional benefits.

We can conclude that it isn’t relevant, in terms of fat loss, for us to do fasted cardio, contrary to what many people may think. Most people think about the amount of fat they burn during exercise and not about what happens throughout the 24 hour period. When the total caloric deficit is the same throughout a period of 24 hours, the fat loss will be the same as long as all the other factors are the same (for example, protein consumption).

Watch out! The phrase we wrote was “fasted cardio doesn’t bring any additional benefits”. In this case we must underline the word additional. For example, if a certain individual that is on a caloric deficit diet starts stagnating within his results, evidently, if he starts doing fasted cardio he will get results, because he will increase his caloric deficit due to more exercise. What we mean is that this article states that there aren’t any additional benefits from being fasted while you do cardio. The main problem with steady state cardio is that despite it being quite effective in terms of calorie expenditure for that short period of time, our body can adapt to it and start becoming dependent.

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When we talk about athletes, they can’t become dependent of doing fasted cardio to be successful in losing fat. Fat loss isn’t an immediate process, it occurs throughout days, and not hours.

When we do fasted cardio we have the advantage of being able to do 2 daily sessions of cardio, which should not be a solution either, because we believe the diet should be the foundation for all of our results, not cardio sessions. That would make us hostages of these cardio sessions in order to burn fat.

Speaking in more scientific terms, if we want to burn more fat during exercise, we will burn more fat during rest and vice-versa. What we mean is that fasted cardio reduces the thermogenic effect, compared to when we eat before a cardio session. So, if we eat before physical exercise, we will increase fat burn through the increase of body heat and of our metabolic rate (thermogenic effect).

On the other hand, fat loss is a process that involves 2 factors: lipolysis and oxidation. Lipolysis is the process where fatty acids are released from our adipose tissue (fat) into the blood stream. That’s where tissue like the heart, liver and muscle can absorb them and oxidize them for energy production. During exercise, what limits total fat loss is oxidation, not lipolysis. During exercise our body tends to release many more fatty acids that it is capable of oxidizing for energy production. Fatty acids in excess, that aren’t oxidized, are simply given back to adipose tissue.

In conclusion, fasted cardio causes a greater release of free fatty acids than other forms of cardio. But, that doesn’t mean that it increases the fat oxidation rate. So, there isn’t any difference between traditional cardio and fasted cardio.

On the other hand, HIIT cardio brings various benefits when compared to other forms of cardio. It’s been proven more efficient for fat loss throughout an extended period of time and is also more effective in maintaining muscle mass. Anyway, we recommend you read these two articles that demonstrate the main advantages of implementing HIIT cardio in our routine:

http://www.fmh.utl.pt/…/112/LaursenIntervalTraining.pdf 

http://www.jissn.com/content/11/1/16

Like we have already told you, if you’re interested in building an athletic and muscular physique, HIIT (high intensity interval training) should be the most prominent type of cardio in your program. It has been proven that HIIT is more beneficial for fat loss in the long run and that it helps maintain muscle mas when you follow a balanced diet.

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We can do these sessions anywhere. For example, we can sprint on the street for 15-30 seconds at maximal intensity, followed by low intensity recovery for 1-3 minutes. After that we can easily increase the difficulty of our sessions, because all we have to do is increase the duration of our sessions, by increasing sprint duration or number, or even by cutting recovery time.What’s important in HIIT sessions isn’t the speed we hit but the intensity with which we perform the intervals.

We aren’t saying we should do HIIT everyday, because that would lead to a decrease in performance in our weight training. On the other hand, we aren’t saying that low intensity steady state cardio is useless. We should use a combination of both to maximize fat loss, without sacrificing the intensity of our weight training.

To wrap this up, an extended caloric deficit must be implemented mainly through our diet. Like this we will consider cardio as the “last card in hand” at an advanced phase where we are already in a big caloric deficit.