Cardio ab workouts involve push ups, high knees, burpees, and jumping lunges. This workout is 30 seconds for each exercise with NO REST.
High Knees
Push Up, Knee to Chest
Jumping Lunges
Burpees Without a Push Up
Perform all these exercises in a circuit. Do each exercise for 30 seconds then immediately go to the next exercise without rest. Always focus on good technique. Poor mechanics can lead to injury.
When should you do cardio ab workouts?
To understand when you should do cardio, it’s important to understand the difference between anaerobic and aerobic activity.
Aerobic is where you are creating energy or ATP by utilizing oxygen. Slow steady cardio is an example of aerobic. Anaerobic activity means “without oxygen”. So with anaerobic, your body is creating energy without oxygen.
When you are exercising aerobically, you are mainly using fat for fuel and using very little glucose. Anaerobic activity or high interval training, you are using more carbohydrates as a fuel source, while using a lot less fat.
What’s Best? Cardio Pre-Workout or Post-Workout?
I’m a fan of doing cardio post-workout, but maybe not for the reason you think.
There is a protein enzyme that is responsible for us building muscle – Mtor. This is an enzyme that triggers muscle growth or protein synthesis. Then we also have an enzyme that works against M-tor… this is AMPK.
Endurance or aerobic activities increase AMPK, which then decreases the Mtor. Basically, resistance training is less effective when cardio is done beforehand.
Performance of weight training with cardio before will also typically result in a reduction in strength.
Doing cardio before hand KILLS your weight training workout.
Llifting heavy weights is a great way to increase your metabolism and increase growth hormone levels. If you are carrying around more muscle, then you have more metabolic load on your body. This results in your body burning more fat to maintain the muscle.
If you put the cardio at the end of the workout, then you don’t have to deal with those strength and power issues and the MTor signaling issues.
Cardio Ab Workouts Finisher
We stay low on the ground and no equipment necessary.
This is pretty intense. This is repeated exercises that focus on the core. Good to have a pad for your elbows. Doing 10 rounds total. This workout is more of a finisher.
Here are the exercises…
Regular Front Planks, Plank to Crossover, Half Burpees, Mountain Climbers, and Push Ups.
Start the workout by getting down in a front Plank Position. Do knee to elbow planks for a total of two reps. Immediately go into the Plank to Crossover.
For the Plank to Crossover, move the hands into plank position. Go knee to elbow for a total of two reps.
Half Burpees are next. Move to half burpees and perform a total of two reps.
Next is Mountain Climbers for a total of four reps.
Now do two Push Ups.
It’s not a lot of reps and it may seem you are moving through rounds pretty fast, but by the time you get to round 5, you should be really feeling it.
If you want to do this as a full workout instead of a finisher, you could do 50 rounds.
Good luck!
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