Cardio Carnage For Fitness And Fat Loss

Back in May 2007, the UK version of Men’s Health published my Cardio Carnage program (pages 174-175). If you’re bored with your current workout, or you just want to try something a little different, Cardio Carnage is an extremely challenging and highly advanced four-discipline workout that uses several different types of high-intensity interval training (HIIT) to push your cardiovascular fitness to the next level.

It's also a great way to burn calories, and I’ll often use it to replace one of the interval workouts from the Fight Fat And Win program described in the Members-Only Area. However, because of the demands this type of workout puts on your body, I wouldn’t recommend doing it more than once or twice each week.

At the time, Cardio Carnage generated a lot of interest, and I still get questions about it to this day. But for reasons best known to my webmaster, the original article seems to have disappeared from my site.

So I’ve decided to publish it again, but this time I’ve added a few exercises to work your core, along with a video that shows you how to do each one. But be warned... it’s not for the faint hearted!

1. Stationary bike (10 minutes)
Warm up for 6 minutes on a low resistance level. For the next 4 minutes go "all out" at 100% effort for 20 seconds, followed by 10 seconds at a slow recovery pace. Do this 8 times. This is the infamous "Tabata Protocol" and has been shown to produce very rapid gains in cardiovascular fitness.

Core Exercise #1: Swiss Ball Rollouts 2 sets x 10-12 repetitions

2. Rowing machine (10 minutes)
Row at a 90-100% effort for 15 seconds on a medium-to-high resistance setting. Then row at 50% of your full effort for 45 seconds while keeping the resistance on the medium setting to give yourself time to recover. Do this 10 times.

Core Exercise #2: Swiss Ball Jacknife 2 sets x 10-12 repetitions

3. Treadmill (10 minutes)
Do 2 minutes at a high intensity followed by 2 minutes of low intensity work. Short and intense intervals aren't suitable for treadmills. For best results, you need to be able to increase and decrease the intensity of exercise very quickly and treadmills take too long to speed up and slow down. To get around this problem, the work and rest periods need to last longer than on any of the other machines.

I don't recommend using a heart rate monitor to measure intensity during this type of workout. Heart rate does not always equate with effort, and an over reliance on target zones can lead to false conclusions about the intensity of training.

Instead, I think it's far better to use a rating of perceived exertion, also known as the Borg scale. Developed by Swedish scientist Gunnar Borg, the rating of perceived exertion is your inner feeling of how hard you are working at a given time. It isn't a measure of how tired your legs are or how hard you are breathing, but rather your total perception of effort.

On the Borg scale, the perceived effort is assigned a rating between 1 and 10.

— 1 (nothing at all)
— 2 (weak)
— 3 (moderate)
— 4 (somewhat strong)
— 5 (strong)
— 6
— 7 (very strong)
— 8
— 9
— 10 (very, very strong)

Aim for an "8″ on your high-intensity work bouts and a "5″ for your recovery bouts.

Core Exercise #3: Plank Rotation 2-3 sets x 5-10 seconds in each position

4. Elliptical machine (10 minutes)
For the final 10 minutes, don't do any intervals and perform 10 minutes of steady state exercise at level of 7 on the Borg Scale.

If you’re not sure how to do the core exercises, then take a look at the video below, which comes courtesy of Craig “Turbulence Training” Ballantyne.

Although I don’t agree with Craig on everything (particularly his “just say no to cardio” stance), he’s done an amazing job of creating a fat loss exercise system that you can do at home with little or no equipment and still get great results.

You can use the core exercises to break up the cardio (as I’ve done), or you can do them all at the end of the workout.

If there's any aspect of the workout you need explaining in more detail, or if you have any other questions, please add a comment below.