It’s not surprising that most treadmill consoles have a button for “fat burning” workouts. After all, just about everyone has set a goal for themselves to reduce their body fat percentage at some point or another. How do these exercises actually work? If you’ve been paying attention to exercise trends over the years, you may have noticed that fitness professionals haven’t always agreed about how to melt off fat and drop pounds. For example, people used to think that it took 20 minutes of cardio activity to reach “fat stores.” As a result, people striving for fat loss often focused on long-lasting, low intensity workouts. If you’ve seen people at the gym walking at a leisurely pace on the treadmill for an hour – they’re utilizing that sort of thinking.

So what’s the truth? Thanks to scientific studies, we now have a lot more information about how to really promote fat reduction. In an acronym: HIIT. This stands for high intensity interval training, and essentially boils down to two things: challenge and recovery, over and over. There are a number of exercises you can do that are high intensity – like sprinting – and can be performed in short bursts. For example, you might alternate a minute or two of running at 90% of your maximum heart rate with a few minutes of brisk walking.

You might be wondering, then, why cardio machines even have a “fat burning” option anymore. There are traditionalists out there who prefer the old-school ways, and there’s also nothing wrong with using low-intensity workouts to accomplish other fitness goals. But if you’re really interested in torching fat, you’ll take advantage of the robust “interval training” button that more cardio equipment is now incorporating. Because Gym Source loves staying on the leading edge of fitness, we carry a wide assortment of machines that will kick your workouts into high gear – and then back down for a minute, and then back up…you get the idea. Get started on your search by looking at the TRUE, Octane and Cybex cardio training equipment that Gym Source proudly carries.