ENERGY SYSTEM TRAINING FOR FAT LOSSBy: Alwyn Cosgrove It is important to understand that cardio refers to any exercise in which the heart and lungs are involved. This could be jogging, running, sprinting, swimming, circuit training etc. Quite simply - if you are elevating your heart rate and respiration rate, you are doing some form of cardiovascular work. Aerobic training refers to a state in which the cardiovascular work is performed. Aerobic literally means 'with oxygen'. It is a relatively low intensity state of exercise that can be maintained almost indefinitely (as long as oxygen is being supplied to the working muscles, in the required amounts - the exercise can be continued. This is aerobic training. All aerobic training is cardiovascular training. Not all cardiovascular training is aerobic. Hopefully that makes sense. Good. I'll buy that. How does it burn calories? Because the muscles are hard at work and demand extra oxygen to help them continue working. Hmmm. sprinting, sleeping, talking watching TV that ALSO burn calories by requiring work from the muscles. So no extra points for aerobic training.
Nope. Sorry - it doesn't exist. The fat burning zone is a concept that the body burns a greater amount of fat at lower intensity aerobic exercise than it does at higher intensities. This is a misinterpretation. It's true that the body burns a greater percentage of fat at lower intensities than at higher intensities, but taking this to its logical conclusion - the body will burn a greater amount of fat as a percentage lying on the couch than doing anything else right? And we know how good lying on the couch works for fat loss. It's the "as a percentage" line. At lower intensities the body may burn 50% of the calories from fat, while at higher intensities it may only burn 35% of calories from fat. However, at higher intensities you burn way more total calories, and more fat calories overall than you do at lower intensities. Think about a real world example - are sprinters (running 10-20s) fatter than marathon runners (2-2.5 hours of running). No. Actually sprinters carry less body fat than distance runners due to their muscle mass.
True but this isn't a desirable response. The only tissue that burns fat in the body is muscle. Yes - aerobic training does demand work from the muscles, but not as much as other activities. Aerobic training doesn't require the muscle tissue to stay around either. Aerobic training makes muscles more efficient at using fat (don't get excited - if your car became more efficient at burning gas - you'd be using less of it). So if muscle is the only tissue that burns fat, and aerobic training makes it smaller and more efficient at burning fat, then essentially you are creating a smaller, more efficient fat burning machine. That's not effective.
I'll cover this in more detail later but the short answer is no it doesn't. Metabolism is largely a function of how much muscle you carry. As aerobics does nothing to even maintain muscle, never mind building muscle, it will do nothing to contribute to raising your metabolism at rest. Sure, you'll burn calories while you're doing it, but will you burn any more at rest as a result of doing aerobics? No. And as you'll find out later, you may actually burn less. The Adaptation Conundrum The body literally adapts to anything we attempt to do by responding in the reverse manner. Don't drink any water? Your body tries to retain water. Does weight training build muscle? No it doesn't. What actually occurs is a breakdown of muscle tissue and the body adapts by building muscle.So if you burn a ton of calories doing aerobic training, that same body adapts to aerobic exercise by slowing your metabolism and allowing your body to store more fat. Same body - same system. The biggest problem with aerobic training is that you get better at it. In weight training, as you get better, you add more weight or more reps and there is literally no finish line. In aerobic training, the work required to run 5 miles will become less and less as you get fitter. So to continue to improve you either go further (do more work for the same amount of calories) or you run it faster. Going further kind of defeats the purpose. Now as I mentioned, there is no end point with weight training. However there is an end point with aerobic training. You will reach an intensity eventually that will be the end of the aerobic zone. Quite simply going any harder will send your body into the anaerobic zone. So at some point you're not doing aerobics any more. So, if you have to stop doing it at some point to get the benefits you seek why not do anaerobic work to begin with? Metabolism Your metabolism or your metabolic rate is what determines how many calories you burn each day - or more importantly for the purposes of this book - how many you need to maintain your current weight. Your metabolism is quite simply how many calories you burn in a typical day. It is affected and controlled by your thyroid, and is largely a factor of your muscle mass. To break it down further - every pound of muscle you put on requires approximately 50 calories per day to maintain. This doesn't take into account the calories burned in training to develop that muscle, or the calories burned in training to keep that muscle - these 50 calories are just the amount needed by that muscle to just sit there. So, one pound of muscle on your body requires approximately 50 calories per day. This equates to 18,250 calories per year or the equivalent of a little over 5lbs of fat. So you can see that gaining and maintaining even five pounds of muscle in your training program, will assist in burning off over 26lbs of fat over the coming year. So in order to really get the athletic look we want to develop, the key is not just how many calories we can burn during exercise, it's how many calories we can force the body to burn all the time. Raising your metabolism is the real key in long term fat loss and physique change. Caloric Expenditure In order to lose body fat, you must burn off more calories than you consume. Despite the proliferation of diets- low carbohydrate, low fat, high protein, high carbohydrate etc this simple rule remains. I don't want to talk about nutrition here as this is more than adequately covered in another chapter in this book, but suffice to say the caloric balance is still important. I've lost count of how many times I've heard people say "I barely eat anything - I eat like a bird and I still gain weight". Oh really. You are eating fewer calories than you need and your body is gaining weight? Impossible. This violates the law of thermodynamics. Usually it's a case of not really being aware of how much you are actually eating. Because let's face it - if your body was capable of producing body weight from nothing, then we better get you sent over to NASA or UNICEF immediately - with magical genes like yours, we might just be able to solve the Third World's hunger problem.
Fat loss is all about caloric expenditure. We must burn more calories than we take in, and the real key to doing this, as mentioned before, is not aerobic training, which will burn calories while you are doing it, its anaerobic training, which burns calories while you are doing it and increases the calories burned for hours afterwards. In the case of weight training, if we build muscle and keep it, that burns calories forever more. Even when you sleep! 
The key with anaerobic training is what is known as EPOC. Anaerobic exercise burns a ton of calorieswhile you are performing it. However, the metabolism remains elevated following this type exercise. (READ ENTIRE ARTICLE) |
