Max OT cardio? Really?

Hey Guys!

So I was reading about the best ways to do cardio to lose fat, and I came upon this method called Max OT Cardio, where you do 16 min sessions of super intense cardo and it's supposed to keep your metabolic rate really high throughout the day and therefore you burn more calories when not working out. The thing is, does it sound too good to be true? Is is right for women (it was on a bodybuilder website)? Has anyone tried it and gotten good results? Is it safe?

I'd appreciate any information that I can get from real people who have tried it! Thanks!

16 minutes of super intense sounds like an oxyomoron to me. You can't sprint for 16 minutes. Supper intense tends to be short spurts. At least for me.

OTOH I think all cardio has follow on effect. Your body keeps burning calories for quite awhile after wards.

Hi there!  I have tried Max OT cardio and yes, it is a good, effective workout and I lost weight doing it.

Of course, there is a downside and that for me was that it gets very hard very quickly and I found myself avoiding working out because the thought of such a demanding workout was overwhelming. 

Now, I don't think you shouldn't try it, but keep that in mind and maybe progress slower than they suggest.

I think it's very safe if you are using your machine correctly.  I did a warm up before I started and a cool down afterwards with some stretching.

Good luck!

     I perfer HIIT cardio to Max OT cardio myself.  The difference is that Max OT will try to force your body into anerobic respiration for the entire duration of the exercise while HIIT will alternate between aerobic exercise and full out anerobic exercise for short durations.  I usually do something like this, go to a track and take one fast paced walk around the track.  Then after the first lap I sprint full out for the streight parts of the track and slowly walk around the curved parts of the track.  There is a lot of research and opinions out there on this type of exercise vs the normal aerobic type exercises.  Main reasons I like it is becuase a HIIT session should only last 10-15min and usually burns the same or if not more then a normal 40 min jog around the track.  

I have a hard time sticking to any program that I read about so I tend to do what feels right to me.

Now that I have my heartrate monitor, I've noticed that my HR stays higher for longer if when I do my regular 1 hour of cardio, I spend the last 10 minutes literally trying to exceed my theoretical maximum heartrate. Doesn't matter if I'm running, cycling, elipticalling, or swimming, I do that and I just feel better for the rest of the day....

Now if I could only force myself to go to the gym in the mornings rather than at night, I'd probably see some real progress.

So long as you are doing your cardio exercise in the mornings, there will be an all day effect. I alternate between a few different cardio workouts, and I find the one that increases my all-day resting heart rate the most is what terrier08 described as "HIIT Cardio". I typically do 5 iterations of jogging 400m, then sprinting 200m, which puts me at about 16-17 minutes of workout.