Dr. Pain
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Now anyone who has been around for a few weeks or more knows my opinion on CARDIO! (you can always search it out too, use my number).
But if I were to do cardio, or suggest it to others, I would have to mention this:
I had a few debate go rounds with Clarance Bass a few years ago over cardio, at what intensity promotes the most fat loss. It came down to semantics (words and meanings), we parted in agreement over certain principles!
Here are some ideas:
One
Two
And this is what started the debate:
-------------------------------------------
Q. Is it true that low-intensity aerobic exercise is the best way to lose fat?
A. No. It is true that the body's reliance on carbohydrate as an energy source increases as intensity increases; the higher the exercise intensity,the greater the use of carbohydrate stores. This is the basis for the often heard recommendation to keep exercise intensity low in order to maximize the loss of body fat, or to "stay in the fat-burn zone." I don't buy it and neither should you.
Professors Jack H.Wilmore (University of Texas at Austin) and David L. Costill (Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana) expose the fat burn fallacy in their beautifully designed textbook Physiology of Sport and Exercise (Human Kinetics, 1994): "Low-intensity aerobic activity does not necessarily lead to a greater expenditure of calories from fat. More importantly, the total caloric expenditure for a given period of time is much less when compared with high-intensity aerobic activity."
To illustrate they give the example of a 23-year-old woman who exercised for 30 minutes at 50% of her VO2 max on one day, and for 30 minutes at 75% on another. The total calories from fat were the same - in both sessions she burned 110 calories of fat. Most importantly, however, in the higher intensity workout she expended about 50% more calories for the same time period, 220 total calories for the 50% intensity workout and 332 for the 75% session.
For an average 40-year-old male the calories from fat would be about 145 in both sessions, but the total calories burned during the higher intensity workout would be 435 compared to only 290 in the low-intensity session, again 50% more. That's a big difference and over time the higher-intensity sessions will produce far more fat loss.
I asked Dr. Robert Robergs, director of the Center for Exercise at the University of New Mexico and co-author of EXERCISE PHYSIOLOGY: Exercise, Performance and Clinical Applications (Mosby, 1997), how the fat burn fallacy got started. He isn't sure but believes people simply like the word "easy." He thinks they grab on to the idea, because it makes easy training "more readily acceptable." Nevertheless, he says, "You can't convert a relative contribution to an absolute value; it's the total amount of calories [burned] that's most important."
"There is another issue too," Robergs adds, which makes the intensity of the workout important for fat loss. A more intense approach, he explains, "is more conducive to improving the muscle's ability to use fat." The more fit you become, the more likely you are to use fat as fuel. "When you become more fit you are just better able to metabolize fat for any given activity you do," Robergs stresses. In other words, you not only burn more calories during workouts, you burn more fat 24 hours a day
---------------------------------------------
My contention at the time ( the later infomation from Dr. Robergs was not there yet)was that if in both examples the same fat calories are burnt, then the excess from higher intensity is precious glycogen and LBM! We finally concluded that a faster metabolism, burning more calories, potentially fat caloires, for hours after the exercise bout was beneficial!
Since then, it has been clinically proven a few times that HIIT works (there are also studies that suggest diet alone is as beneficial as diet and cardio). Jacob has a good article on it.
A while ago, my friends at Beverly posted an article suggesting a combination of traditional cardio and HIIT. This make perfect sense, one of the above articles advised against HIIT more than twice a week, too much stres to the body!
Here is the Beverly article:
Best Explanation
Here is the most pertinant part of that article:
--------------------------------------------
I???d like to present a research study relating the effects of a HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) cardio program versus a more traditional cardio (TC) program.
One group (TC) performed uninterrupted cycling on a stationary bike for 20 weeks. They started at 30 minutes; 4 days per week and at the end of 20 weeks had increased to 5 days per week at 45 minutes.
Exercise intensity was 60% MHR at the beginning of the study and by the end it had increased gradually to 85% MHR
TC performed an average of 90 cardio sessions over the 20-week period
Over the 20 weeks the TC group lost an average of 5 points on the sum of their skin folds or about 1% bodyfat. The HIIT group performed the following cardio program for 15 weeks (5 weeks less than the TC group)
Twenty-five 30-minute sessions of Moderate Intensity Cardio (70% MHR)
Thirty-Five HIIT sessions
Intensity of HIIT sessions was increased by 5% every three weeks
The HIIT sessions were broken down as follows:
19 short interval sessions consisting of an easy 5-minute warm-up at 50%, then 10-15 sets of short interval work (15-30 seconds each followed by a one minute rest)
17 longer interval sessions consisting of an easy 5-minute warm-up, then 4-5 sets of 60 ??? 90 second interval work each followed by the same length rest period. Note: Rest periods are not stop pedaling, but pedaling at an intensity level of 50-60% MHR
HIIT performed a total of 60 sessions over the fifteen-week period. The HIIT group lost an average of 14 points on the sum of their skin folds or about 3% bodyfat
The caloric expenditure for the (TC) group was actually more than double that of the HIIT group, yet the HIIT group lost nearly triple the amount of fat!
Tremblay, A, et al: Impact of exercise intensity on body fatness and skeletal muscle metabolism. Metabolism 43, No 7:814-818, 1994
In Summary:
Cardio is good for your health! But as practiced by most bodybuilders it is not necessarily best for fat loss or keeping your lean muscle mass. Forty-five minutes to an hour of low intensity cardio often will cause you to lose muscle. Yes, it???s true that during low intensity cardio more fat (not necessarily bodyfat but lipids in the blood and from the muscle as well) is burned as fuel than at higher intensity levels. However, we have found that it???s not just during, but also after cardio that fat may be burned. High intensity cardio seems to be better suited to the competitive bodybuilder than the more popular low intensity method.
Here???s why:
A favorable hormonal environment is created by high intensity cardio including a growth hormone response
High intensity cardio causes the ???fat burning ??? response to last for hours after completion of your cardio session
High intensity cardio takes less time and yields better results.
--------------------------------------------
So, if I ever did any cardio, this is probably what I would do!
DP
But if I were to do cardio, or suggest it to others, I would have to mention this:
I had a few debate go rounds with Clarance Bass a few years ago over cardio, at what intensity promotes the most fat loss. It came down to semantics (words and meanings), we parted in agreement over certain principles!
Here are some ideas:
One
Two
And this is what started the debate:
-------------------------------------------
Q. Is it true that low-intensity aerobic exercise is the best way to lose fat?
A. No. It is true that the body's reliance on carbohydrate as an energy source increases as intensity increases; the higher the exercise intensity,the greater the use of carbohydrate stores. This is the basis for the often heard recommendation to keep exercise intensity low in order to maximize the loss of body fat, or to "stay in the fat-burn zone." I don't buy it and neither should you.
Professors Jack H.Wilmore (University of Texas at Austin) and David L. Costill (Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana) expose the fat burn fallacy in their beautifully designed textbook Physiology of Sport and Exercise (Human Kinetics, 1994): "Low-intensity aerobic activity does not necessarily lead to a greater expenditure of calories from fat. More importantly, the total caloric expenditure for a given period of time is much less when compared with high-intensity aerobic activity."
To illustrate they give the example of a 23-year-old woman who exercised for 30 minutes at 50% of her VO2 max on one day, and for 30 minutes at 75% on another. The total calories from fat were the same - in both sessions she burned 110 calories of fat. Most importantly, however, in the higher intensity workout she expended about 50% more calories for the same time period, 220 total calories for the 50% intensity workout and 332 for the 75% session.
For an average 40-year-old male the calories from fat would be about 145 in both sessions, but the total calories burned during the higher intensity workout would be 435 compared to only 290 in the low-intensity session, again 50% more. That's a big difference and over time the higher-intensity sessions will produce far more fat loss.
I asked Dr. Robert Robergs, director of the Center for Exercise at the University of New Mexico and co-author of EXERCISE PHYSIOLOGY: Exercise, Performance and Clinical Applications (Mosby, 1997), how the fat burn fallacy got started. He isn't sure but believes people simply like the word "easy." He thinks they grab on to the idea, because it makes easy training "more readily acceptable." Nevertheless, he says, "You can't convert a relative contribution to an absolute value; it's the total amount of calories [burned] that's most important."
"There is another issue too," Robergs adds, which makes the intensity of the workout important for fat loss. A more intense approach, he explains, "is more conducive to improving the muscle's ability to use fat." The more fit you become, the more likely you are to use fat as fuel. "When you become more fit you are just better able to metabolize fat for any given activity you do," Robergs stresses. In other words, you not only burn more calories during workouts, you burn more fat 24 hours a day
---------------------------------------------
My contention at the time ( the later infomation from Dr. Robergs was not there yet)was that if in both examples the same fat calories are burnt, then the excess from higher intensity is precious glycogen and LBM! We finally concluded that a faster metabolism, burning more calories, potentially fat caloires, for hours after the exercise bout was beneficial!
Since then, it has been clinically proven a few times that HIIT works (there are also studies that suggest diet alone is as beneficial as diet and cardio). Jacob has a good article on it.
A while ago, my friends at Beverly posted an article suggesting a combination of traditional cardio and HIIT. This make perfect sense, one of the above articles advised against HIIT more than twice a week, too much stres to the body!
Here is the Beverly article:
Best Explanation
Here is the most pertinant part of that article:
--------------------------------------------
I???d like to present a research study relating the effects of a HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) cardio program versus a more traditional cardio (TC) program.
One group (TC) performed uninterrupted cycling on a stationary bike for 20 weeks. They started at 30 minutes; 4 days per week and at the end of 20 weeks had increased to 5 days per week at 45 minutes.
Exercise intensity was 60% MHR at the beginning of the study and by the end it had increased gradually to 85% MHR
TC performed an average of 90 cardio sessions over the 20-week period
Over the 20 weeks the TC group lost an average of 5 points on the sum of their skin folds or about 1% bodyfat. The HIIT group performed the following cardio program for 15 weeks (5 weeks less than the TC group)
Twenty-five 30-minute sessions of Moderate Intensity Cardio (70% MHR)
Thirty-Five HIIT sessions
Intensity of HIIT sessions was increased by 5% every three weeks
The HIIT sessions were broken down as follows:
19 short interval sessions consisting of an easy 5-minute warm-up at 50%, then 10-15 sets of short interval work (15-30 seconds each followed by a one minute rest)
17 longer interval sessions consisting of an easy 5-minute warm-up, then 4-5 sets of 60 ??? 90 second interval work each followed by the same length rest period. Note: Rest periods are not stop pedaling, but pedaling at an intensity level of 50-60% MHR
HIIT performed a total of 60 sessions over the fifteen-week period. The HIIT group lost an average of 14 points on the sum of their skin folds or about 3% bodyfat
The caloric expenditure for the (TC) group was actually more than double that of the HIIT group, yet the HIIT group lost nearly triple the amount of fat!
Tremblay, A, et al: Impact of exercise intensity on body fatness and skeletal muscle metabolism. Metabolism 43, No 7:814-818, 1994
In Summary:
Cardio is good for your health! But as practiced by most bodybuilders it is not necessarily best for fat loss or keeping your lean muscle mass. Forty-five minutes to an hour of low intensity cardio often will cause you to lose muscle. Yes, it???s true that during low intensity cardio more fat (not necessarily bodyfat but lipids in the blood and from the muscle as well) is burned as fuel than at higher intensity levels. However, we have found that it???s not just during, but also after cardio that fat may be burned. High intensity cardio seems to be better suited to the competitive bodybuilder than the more popular low intensity method.
Here???s why:
A favorable hormonal environment is created by high intensity cardio including a growth hormone response
High intensity cardio causes the ???fat burning ??? response to last for hours after completion of your cardio session
High intensity cardio takes less time and yields better results.
--------------------------------------------
So, if I ever did any cardio, this is probably what I would do!
DP
