Best Cardio Workout Videos

Interval Cardio Workouts, Fitness Workout DVDs and Home Workout Videos

Cardio workout DVDs help your martial arts training.

Flashy cardio workout DVDs promise fun and funky dance moves for men and women that often seem disconnected from any other workouts you may do. The best cardio workouts build off your martial arts training, whether you are a white-belt beginner or black-belt advanced fighter. Too often cardio dance workouts are mostly half-hearted, somewhat effective exercises that double as so-so dance routines for the clubs. Instead, literally kick your fitness videos collection up a notch by including home workout DVDs that incorporate kicks, punches, and other movements associated with martial arts.

These cardio workout DVDs are an effective way to improve your martial arts abilities. Interval cardio workouts, such as those taught by Chalene Johnson on TurboFire®, are about short bursts of high intensity exercise that kick up the body's fat-burning systems. Johnson's home workout DVDs use a lot of kicks and punches because martial arts are the very definition of short bursts of high intensity action. A cardio dance workout just can't generate that same intensity.

There's a good reason cardio workout DVDs, such as Tony Horton's P90X®, include martial arts-inspired exercises and routines. The best cardio workouts couple resistance training with exercises that get the heart rate up. The P90X fitness workout DVDs have days devoted to kenpo and yoga because you have your cardio, muscle work, and stretching all in one, while also practicing a functional and useful skill.

But cardio workout DVDs don't have to be teaching kicks for you to get your kicks. The INSANITY® fitness workout DVDs by super-athlete Shaun T deal heavily in plyometrics, exercises that increase your explosive power. These fat burning cardio workouts not only will add snap to your kicks and punches, but will also give you the lift for your aerial moves. A cardio dance workout isn't going to help much with that roundhouse kick to the head you've been working on.