Whenever someone needs to lose weight the most common advice is for them to eat less and up the cardio. And jogging has been one of the most popular forms of cardio for the longest time. But is jogging really an effective method to get you to lose weight and look ripped? The answer to that is yes it can help you lose weight and it can help you burn some body fat and get more defined. However, the real question should be..” is it the most effective out of all the approaches to get you ripped.” And the answer to that is no, and today I’m going to explain exactly why that is. First, let’s start with the very basic fact that all jogging is going to do for you in regard to Fat loss is help you burn off a few extra calories. These few extra calories can lead you to a greater overall calorie deficit which will end up causing you to burn some extra body fat. But what if we lifted weights instead of jogging or what if we played some basketball or what if we even sprinted for less time? would jogging still be the most efficient way to burn those extra calories? Well, luckily we could figure this out. Jogging burns about four hundred calories per hour. Lifting weights burn about 250 calories per hour. And that’s not including the afterburn effect that you’ll experience when your body continues burning calories after weight training to return to homeostasis. And it’s also not talking about circuit weight training which will burn a lot more calories than traditional weight training. Then for basketball believe it or not playing a half court game burns about five hundred fifty calories per hour, and a full court game will burn around 747 calories an hour. That’s a lot more than jogging. And last but not least sprinting…are you ready for this… sprinting Will burn 200 calories in two and a half minutes. Obviously, that’s way more than what you can burn jogging.

For a long time, it was believed that sprinting and other forms of high-intensity cardio would burn more calories from carbohydrates while jogging would burn more calories from fat. However, it is now known that this is simply untrue. Let’s say that when you’re jogging you’re burning 60% of your calories from fat and 40% of your calories from Carbs. And let’s also say that when you’re sprinting it’s the reverse 60% from carbs and 40% from fat. The percentages don’t matter nearly as much as the number of total calories that you burn that you wind up taking the percentages from. If you burn a lot more calories during your sprinting workout then you’re still going to wind up burning more fat during that workout even if it’s based on a smaller percentage. On top of that, it’s been shown that even if you do burn a higher percentage of fat during your jogging workout when you’re done your body is just going to switch over to burning more carbs throughout the rest of the day. Like I said earlier really the only thing that jogging can do for fat loss is burning a few extra calories during that workout. So The most efficient way to reduce calories is definitely not by jogging. especially because after you jog you’re going to be hungry and you’re going to want to take those calories right back in. The most efficient way to reduce calories and also the most efficient way to get ripped is by doing it through your diet. And if you want to supplement with some additional cardio to burn off even more calories jogging doesn’t seem like it’s the best choice when compared with sprinting for example or even a game of basketball.

Another thing that you should know is that excessive cardio..and jogging once or twice a week for thirty minutes wouldn’t be considered excessive cardio, but if you were to do excessive cardio you could be sacrificing muscle mass which is metabolically active tissue, meaning it burns fat just by being there. Also, part of looking shredded is having defined muscles so we don’t want to do anything that’s going to sacrifice muscle mass. Again doing a couple cardio workouts are not going to do this but if you do it every day you’re going to have a problem and you’re definitely not going to be able to build muscle while doing that. The bottom line is that jogging is an excellent tool for detoxifying your lungs and your body in general and it can help you burn some additional calories but there are way better and more effective ways to maximize your fat loss through cardio. High-intensity interval training is one of those ways. You can do sprints.

Check out my client Ben’s transformation where he lost a whole bunch of fat.