When people come to me to learn how to lose weight quickly, they are usually pretty surprised to find out that I’m not a

huge fan of traditional ‘cardio’ – you know, that long, slow, boring, tedious stuff. Instead, I’d rather see you doing some

sort of intense circuit training.

(In case you didn’t know, circuit training is taking is a form of working out where you take different exercises and do them

back to back to back, all without rest. So, if you had 5 exercises, you’d do a set of the first one, then a set of the second

one, then a set of the third one, etc, all without resting between. Once you’d done a set of each exercise, take a short rest,

then repeat.)

But you might be wondering ‘why’? I mean, don’t you need to do cardio in order to build up your wind, have a strong

heart & lungs, decrease bodyfat, etc?

Nope. Not at all.

Here’s the deal – to accomplish all that stuff (which, by the way, is super important), you have to improve your

cardiovascular capabilities. And contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to do ‘cardio’ to do that – all you have to do is

breathe hard.

See, your body really has no idea what you’re doing. All it really knows is how hard it has to work, and in what kinda way

it has to do work.

Example.

Compare barbell squats to a leg press machine. There’s no little mechanism inside your body that triggers when you do

barbell squats to let you know that you’re doing squats, and to react differently to the squats than to when you do leg

presses. All your body knows, is that it has to exert force to move the weight.

Well, if barbell squats and a leg press machine make you exert force in pretty much the same way (i.e. – which muscles

you’re using, how you’re using them, etc), then why do so many people – me included – say that squats are so much

better than leg presses?

Because there are a ton of other processes involved that squats trigger your body into having to do that leg presses

don’t. Squats force you to support the weight on your shoulders, while leg presses don’t (the weight is on a machine).

Squats force you to balance, while the leg press doesn’t. Squats force you utilize much of the rest of the body for

stabilization, leg presses require you to just site down. Squats force you to move your body through air, vs moving a

machine that’s on a track.

See the difference? Squats force you to do a lot more stuff, even if you don’t realize it. Thus, squats are a ton more

effective.

Cardio is the same way. Your body doesn’t know if you’re running or on a bike or a rowing machine or doing circuit

training. None of those are ‘magic’ exercises that trigger your body into starting all the physiological processes that result

in improved cardio conditioning.

All you have to do is breathe harder – that’s all the body knows. When you’re breathing harder, you’re working harder.

When you’re working harder, you’re burning up more calories. And when you’re burning up more calories, you’re losing

more weight, and you’re doing it in a much quicker fashion.

So, it stands to reason that if you want to lose weight – and quickly – then improving your cardio is the path to get there.

However, like I said, though – doing traditional, long cardio just isn’t the best way of doing it. Circuit training makes you

breathe harder and is much more effective than boring cardio ever thought of being.

Besides, when you do intense circuit training, just like when doing squats, you end up having to do a bunch more stuff,

even if you don’t realize it. Stuff like:

-maintain balance and coordination on various different exercises

-be fast and explosive when you’re tired and not fully rested

-not only utilize all the muscles in your body (most of the time cardio focuses just on the lower body), but be able to do it

in an intense fashion

-go from being able to use one set of muscles to another set to another set to another set (this forces your individual

muscle groups to recover while your body as a whole is still working)

Then there’s the whole idea that you’re forcing yourself to be able to be strong, explosive, work a lot, etc., when you’re

tired and out of breath.

All of that is stuff that plain old cardio just doesn’t make you do.

See why circuit training is so much more effective, and why they’re the best way I know how to lose weight quickly?