Cardio and weight training are effective ways to burn your belly fat. Medical and fitness experts suggest different types of exercises for belly fat. But when it comes down to cardio vs weight training for belly fat, it’s a considerable matter of which one is more perfect.
However, Cardio and weight training can both play a different role during your exercise period. The article will explain to you which is more effective for reducing your belly fat and help you get better results.
Table of Contents
What is Cardio & How it Works
Cardio is explained as any kind of exercise that gets your heart rate up. This exercise is also known as “Aerobic exercise”. The exercise helps you to build large muscle groups in your body and keeps your heart beating faster. However, it is the most powerful type of exercise for your cardiovascular system.
Cardio uses the large muscles of your body in movement over a certain period of time, holding your heart rate to at least 50% of its highest level. Regular cardio exercises give you a more vigorous cardiovascular system, providing more oxygen to the cells in your muscles.
Benefits of Cardio
Cardio exercise helps improve your overall health, increases your heart rate, and enriches your cardiovascular system. It also supplies more oxygen to your body’s muscles. The exercise has a ton of emotional, mental, and physical benefits. Such as:
- It boosts your circulatory system
- Enriches your cardiovascular system
- Improves sleep health
- It contributes to weight loss and helps to achieve healthy body weight.
- Supporting mental health
- Enhancing your brain and memory performance
Does it Helps Reduce Belly Fat
Many studies show that cardio exercise helps in reducing belly fat and liver fat. Including a minimum of 30 minutes of cardio exercise is the best idea to reduce belly fat in your daily workout routine. However, there are many types of cardio exercises that you can do to reduce your belly fat.
Recommended Cardio Exercises
There are various kinds of Aerobic or Cardio exercises you can perform to lose your belly fat. Here is the list of the most recommended cardio exercises to reduce your belly fat and liver fat. Remember that you can do many of these exercises to improve your cardiovascular health.
Running or Walking
A moderate motion of running and walking is a great way of burning belly fat and calories. It is not only the best cardio to reduce belly fat but also the most economical way to maintain the muscle groups of your body. You can choose outdoors to walk or run in nature which would be great cardio for your mental health. Alternatively, you can use a treadmill too.
Cycling
Cycling is one of the great ways to get rid of calories and belly fat. You can perform cycling outdoors or on a sanitary cycle at the gym or you can do it at your home. To get great benefits from exercise, keep cycling at a high intensity at intervals for 2 minutes, then you have to slow down for a minute. Repeat this for as long as possible to get the highest benefit from your cycling aerobic exercise sessions.
Elliptical Trainer
The elliptical trainer is also one of the best cardio to burn belly fat.
It was initially designed to minimize the impact on the knees and hips while permitting a great cardio exercise to lose belly fat. Activate more glutes and leg muscles by adding a high incline on this machine. This is great cardio to reduce your belly fat.
Swimming
Swimming is a whole-body exercise and a great cardio workout to shed belly fat. While swimming, you’re basically fighting gravity without getting a break to stay afloat. This makes your swimming useful in burning calories. To get the best result, you should swim down the length of the pool and then back as fast as you can.
Jump Rope
The jumping rope is one of the best cardio exercises to reduce belly fat. This cardio is very cheap, easy to do, increases your foot speed, and burns lots of calories. As a result, your belly fat reduces. Jumping rope needs minimal tools and is an easy cardio exercise to lose belly fat at home and on the go.
Best Cardio Machines
The key is to determine which cardio machine used and reconditioned exercise equipment works best for you and will motivate you to keep you coming back. Each one has its own characteristics and features that cater to different capabilities and preferences. The following are among the most popular and effective cardio workout machines used for reducing belly fat.
Elliptical Trainer
Elliptical Trainers are among the great cardio workout exercise machines to reduce your belly fat. The machines engage your whole body during the cardio workouts. Therefore you can burn more calories and, as a result, diminish your fat stores more.
Sensible exercise on this cardio machine that feels as easy as walking gets you a calorie expenditure of 302 calories within 30 minutes.
Treadmills
Treadmills are one of the best cardio exercise machines to lose belly fat. On this machine, you can choose your exercise plan according to your fitness level. You can arrange your cardio exercise plan following the below directions:
- Walking at a fast speed: 170 calories within 30 minutes.
- Running at 8mph: 459 calories within 30 minutes.
- Jogging at 5mph: 272 calories within 30 minutes.
- Climbing: 272 calories within 30 minutes.
Stationary Bike
When it comes to reducing belly fat, a stationary bike is great cardio exercise equipment. Cycling on a stationary bike not only burns your calories but also reduces your belly fat.
You might incorporate HIIT stationary bike sessions into your belly fat loss program when you’re skilled in moderate-paced cycling. Then increase the intensity at which you ride to 75-85 % of your highest heart rate and go for 20-30 minutes at high speed to gain even more effective results.
Precautions While Doing Cardio for Belly Fat
You need to take some precautions when doing cardio to lose belly fat. Otherwise, your efforts to lose belly fat may fail. Remember that the more you care about your cardio workouts to lose belly fat, the more your efforts will be effective. So, you need to take the following precautions while cardio for belly fat.
Don’t drink too much alcohol
Alcohol is seriously harmful to the human body. Many research suggests that drinking too much alcohol can make you achieve belly fat. Observational analyses link heavy alcohol consumption to a greatly raised risk of developing central obesity, that is, extra fat storage around your waist.
Don’t eat a lot of sugary food
Sugar holds fructose, which has been linked to several regular diseases when you consume it in excess. Consuming too much sugar including heart disease, fatty liver disease, type 2 diabetes, and obesity.
On the other hand, observational analyses show a relationship between high sugar intake and increased abdominal fat. Therefore, it’s essential to recognize that more than just purified sugar can lead to your belly fat gain.
Overdoing your workout
There is no doubt that if you work out harder and work out more, your belly fat will melt away. But that’s not a great way to reduce belly fat. It can lead to hating workouts completely. It may be the cause of your injury that will sideline you.
Thus, if you wish to reduce your belly fat and enjoy your cardio workout session, you should take the precautions in this section.
What is Weight Training & How it Works
Weight training is a kind of muscle training that uses weight for resistance. The training provides stress on your muscles that cause them to adapt and get stranger. It strengthens your heart, and it is similar to aerobic exercise.
You can perform weight training with free weights, such as dumbbells, barbells or by using weight machines. You can also boost your strength via other types of resistance exercises, such as by operating your body weight.
Weight training works naturally on your body. It decreases your lean muscle mass naturally with age. It also increases the bone density of your body.
Benefits of Weight Training
There are a lot of benefits of weight training. By performing weight training, you can increase your metabolism to help you burn extra calories. The training also can help you enhance and preserve your body muscle mass at any age.
However, weight training helps you become stronger. The incredible benefits of weight training are given below:
Makes you stronger
Weight training makes your body stronger. The strength of your body allows you to do daily tasks easily. It also improves your metabolism. However, weight training increases your muscle mass and overall work capacity.
Decreases abdominal fat
You know that fat stored around the abdomen, such as visceral fat. It is responsible for an increased risk of chronic diseases, including nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and certain types of cancer.
Many studies have shown the advantages of weight training exercises for reducing abdominal and also total body fat.
Can help you appear leaner
Weight training builds more muscle in your body and decreases a significant amount of fat as well. So, you will appear leaner. That means the muscle is denser than fat. Therefore, weight training decreases your belly fat.
However, weight training builds stronger and larger muscles showcases in your body by losing body fat. Alternatively, it loses your belly fat.
Burns calories efficiently
Weight training helps boost your metabolism in the following two ways:
Firstly, increasing muscles boosts your metabolic rate and are metabolically more efficient than fat mass.
Secondly, research shows that your metabolic rate increases up to 72 hours of training. So, you’re burning your extra calories hours and even days after your weight workouts.
Does it Helps Reduce Belly Fat
Weight training is an important way to burn your belly fat. Many research has shown that when your body is at rest, muscles burn off more calories than fat. Therefore, having more muscle tone can help you to burn off more fat in your body. Another research also found that weight training can boost lean weight while decreasing fat. It can also boost your metabolism at the same time.
Here are some weight training exercises you include in your workout routine.
- Lunges
- Bicep curls
- Tricep kick-backs
- Squats
Recommended Weight Training
Weight training exercises are highly recommended by many experts to burn belly fat. But the question is, which exercise should you perform? Here are some weight training exercises, these help you burn your belly fat.
Bicep curls
The Bicep curl is one of the best belly- fat burning exercises. It is a highly recognizable exercise that works on your upper arm muscles. However, curl is the best workout for seeing results in strength and definition.
Squats
Squatting is a wonderful exercise that targets your legs and lower back muscles. It can help you strengthen your muscles and burn fat. However, if you perform a squat without learning the proper form, it may cause an injury.
Lunge
The lunge is a great exercise that works on your lower body muscles. It offers multiple interpretations to emphasize the quadriceps, glutes, hamstrings, and more. Lunge exercise builds muscles and burns fat in your body.
Tricep kick-backs
The tricep kick-back is a separateness exercise focused on the triceps brachii muscle in the back of your arm. Perform tricep kick-backs exercise by bending forward and lifting your arms behind you. Although this triceps exercise has several interpretations, it generally needs a pair of dumbbells.
Abdominal Crunch
The abdominal Crunch exercise is an activity in which the body is brought into a sitting position from one lying on the back. This exercise not only burns your belly fat but also can help the belly appear flattered and more.
Best Weight Training Machines
Weight training machines are varied in type and function. While using these training machines, you can use your own body weight for exercise. You can use these like squats and push-ups.
There are several types of weight training machines in the marker. Here are some machines:
Cable lat pulldown
The Cable lat pulldown machine is a fine weight training machine. While using this machine, you usually pull a weighted cable to face level. This exercise basically works on your large muscles below the shoulder blade and either side of your back.
Seated cable row
This weight training machine is used to target latissimus Dorsi muscles. To exercise on this machine, you usually sit on a platform and grasp a handle that you pull toward you. Here you maintain a straight back while pressing the shoulder blades.
Unilateral low pull
The Unilateral low pull is basically a paddle-type machine. The machine has separate grips on either side and a chest pad for support, permitting you to pull with either or both arms in a downward path similar to a swimming stroke. Using this machine you can target your shoulder and lats.
Precautions While Doing Weight Training for Belly Fat
If you really wish to burn belly fat by doing weight training, you have to do a systematic workout on a weight training machine. So, you have to maintain the precautions below:
Don’t skip the warm-up
You know that cold muscles are more amenable to injury than warm muscles. So, before lifting weights, you should warm up with 5 to 10 minutes of brisk walking or other aerobic or cardio activity.
Don’t overdo
If one set of exercises is enough for you, then you should not perform an additional set of exercises. Because extra exercise takes up your extra time, it may cause overload injury.
Don’t ignore the pain
If an exercise causes pain, then you should stop the exercise. Try the exercise again if you don’t feel the pain. Whoever, you can try the exercise with less weight.
So, Which One to Choose?
When it comes to burning belly fat by doing cardio vs weight training, it’s very confusing which one should choose. Both types of exercises are really good for reducing belly fat.
However, we suggest you perform the cardio exercise. Studies show that burning your belly fat is very effective and a great way to improve your health.
Mistakes You Should Avoid While Doing Exercises for Losing Belly Fat
People often make some mistakes while doing exercise to burn their belly fat. For this reason, they didn’t get the expected result. Here are the mistakes you should avoid.
Not eating
In order to lose belly fat, you might think you need to stop eating. But you should not starve yourself without any reason. It may be the cause of other dangerous behaviors.
Skimping on protein
Research says that while maintaining fat-burning muscles, increasing protein intake may help you lose weight. So, you should not skimp on protein during your exercise period.
Overdoing your workout
Undoubtedly, if you work out more, your belly fat will melt away. But overwork may be the cause of injury. So, you need to maintain a workout routine.
Doing cardio only
Cardio is seriously great for belly fat burning. But you should also add some weight training if your big goal is. So, you have to make a perfect combination with both exercises.
Not having a plan
For every work in your life, you must have a solid plan. So, you should have a proper exercise plan during your fat-burning period. This will help you to reach your goal.
Must Follow a Healthy Diet
If your goal is to burn your belly fat, you must follow a healthy diet. A healthy diet is essential to get a perfect result while doing a fat-burning workout. eating a variety of foods, you can maintain your healthy diet.
Conclusion
It’s time to break free from the discussion of cardio vs weight training exercises for belly fat. Both the exercises are important for your belly fat burn. But remember that doing cardio exercise can help your fat-loss goals. In many other ways, weight training exercise is more effective for muscle build and can also help tone your body shape.
