PoloTech Cardio

The groundbreaking PoloTech Shirt tracks key biometric data—heart rate, breathing depth and balance, calories burned, and more—and streams it directly to your iPhone. It’s a major advance in wearable technology, made even more powerful by the PoloTech App, which features three exclusive workouts that adapt, in real time, to data captured by the PoloTech Shirt. It’s like having a personal trainer in the palm of your hand, and it’s only available with the PoloTech Shirt.

To help you get the most out of the App’s three workouts—which focus on strength, cardio and agility—we’ve put together three 21-day plans, pulling from each of those workouts and offering tips on what to eat and when. (For more, check out “PoloTech Strength” and “PoloTech Agility.”)

Take the PoloTech Cardio workout to the next level with the following 21-day plan, which helps melt fat and define muscle, for a calorie-burning workout that’s as efficient as it is productive. The plan’s first week will attack the entire body with fast-paced cardio and agility workouts, with two strength workouts thrown in to build strong leg and upper body muscles. The next week will include a greater emphasis on movement and less on strength. The final week of the program will revert back to the original full-body workouts, but with no rest day at all.

What you’ll need:
A small space for running in place, squatting and jumping, and some dumbbells.

Why it works:
You’ll be moving a lot and resting little. And when we say 30 minutes of cardio, that means go for a run, cycle, row—anything that gets your heart pumping. (Ideally outdoors: In a Utah State University study, habitual outdoor runners completed a 5K run four minutes faster than treadmill runners. In another study, outdoor rowers burned 26 percent more calories during a race than those on indoor rowing ergometers did.)

One other word about this routine: It’s designed to elicit muscle hypertrophy, not necessarily big muscle gains, although increased strength is a natural by-product of any kind of resistance training. Of course, if you feel dizzy or faint, take a break.

Key data points:
Mainly your heart rate and breathing depth. The PoloTech App knows which zones to target and will get you working for maximum effect.

Being on a hard-core cardio program is going to make you hungry. You’re going to want to eat and eat and eat. That’s why this program calls for six meals a day, to keep you from making hunger-driven food mistakes while also feeding your body the nutrients it needs to recover and perform. To lose weight, shoot for less than 2,000 calories a day. To build more muscle, add more protein.