The perfect exercise routine involves the right mix of cardiovascular and strength training. Heather Milton, a senior exercise physiologist at NYU Langone Health, discusses how to get in shape with the right balance. Following is a transcript of the video.

The exercises you want to choose to maximize your fat loss are the ones you’re going to be able to maintain for a prolonged period of time that will use the most amount of muscle groups.

I’m Heather Milton. I’m a senior exercise physiologist at NYU Langone Health. Everybody has different preferences in terms of the types of exercises they do in the gym for cardiovascular exercise or weight loss.

Some people like stairs. Some people like the treadmill. Some people like elliptical training. The idea is that you basically want to get your heart rate up till you’re at least at a modest intensity.

So that means you want to make sure that your heart rate is increased as well as your breathing rate. I recommend that if you are trying to lose weight to always accompany cardiovascular exercise with strength training， because you are able to increase your metabolism to maintain higher metabolisms outside of the gym if you do strength training along with cardiovascular training.

If we talk about the most amount of fat burning you can get all in one session ，while you’re at the gym， that’s going to be the higher intensity cardiovascular exercise. However you don’t want to do all high-intensity exercise unless you’ve properly prepared yourself by doing at least four weeks of moderate intensity exercise before you start doing higher intensity.