" CARDIO" IS GARBAGE
5 Reasons Why Your Current Cardio Training Should
Be Tossed Out in 2009.
Part 3 of 6
REASON #2: YOU ARE ONLY BURNING CALORIES WHILE YOU WORK OUT
How awesome would it be if you could burn calories while you sat in your office at work? Or on the couch at home? Or in the shower? No, this is not a written commercial for one of those fat-stimulating, pulsing electrode belts that you put on to make our abs contract... I would not push that nonsense on you, believe me. But these "calorie-burning wishes" are absolutely possible... when you exercise the right way!
Allow me to introduce you to EPOC. No, it isn't a group of those little fuzzy guys from "Return of the Jedi", and it's not some futuristic robot either! It stands for Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption, and it is one of the key training and fitness concepts that ABSOLUTELY needs to be acknowledged in workout-design for a real, results-oriented fat-loss program. You see, your body goes into physiological chaos during exercise. It maintains a certain calm, "systems-flowing-smoothly" state while at rest, but this rest is significantly upset once activity begins. Take a look at some of the things that occur, once you begin working out (this is not an exhaustive list, by any stretch, but gives you a rough idea of some of the changes):
1.Heart function is significantly altered, to increase necessary cardiac output of blood to the body
2.Circulatory system is in complete flux of constriction and dilation, depending on the site in your body
3.Digestion slows down, to allow other, more important, systems to perform their jobs
4.Internal cooling systems of sweat and respiration kick in to dissipate heat out of the body
5.Release of different hormones are either stimulated or retarded, based on need
There is a high energy cost to all of this, to fully fuel all of this increased activity. This is where the overall calorie-burning of your activity comes in. For those of you that do a lot of work on treadmills, ellipticals, or bikes, this represents the "Calories Burned" number that your screen reads to you following your workout (you should know, however, that these machine calculations are HIGHLY inaccurate.. more on that some other time!)
But once you leave the gym, that's where the EPOC comes in. It represents the calorie burning AFTER you get done exercising. Yeah, you can burn calories after you stop! In fact, everyone does. That chaos that I mentioned above certainly uses a bunch of calories while you are active... but if that activity time involves the right type of programming, your energy expenditure can stay elevated for many hours after you get done! In one example, cited by Alwyn Cosgrove in his book Afterburn, he looks at some average numbers for energy expenditure. The average oxygen consumption (or Calorie burning) following a normal bout of exercise is about 15 Calories per hour. For a lower intensity bout of exercise, where this EPOC would stay elevated for about 3-5 hours, this would amount to an additional Calorie-burn of around 75 Calories. Not bad, and if you total that up over 5 days of exercising, you now have 375 total Calories burned during down time!
Take that example and multiply it by the fact that we know that higher-intensity exercise, involving a lot of musculature and performed in an interval format, will bring about a higher hourly Caloric consumption for EPOC, greater than the 15 Cal/hour cited above (the actual amount is very dependent on the intensity of exercise). Now, factor in the research, that shows that EPOC stays elevated for up to 24 hours with these high intensity interval workouts, and now we're talking! With the right program, you can literally transform your body into an energy burning, fat-shattering furnace during all hours of the day!
The disturbing thing about most peoples' current "cardio" workouts, is that they are missing out on all of this. You don't get all of the additional Calorie burning with the standard "jog-on-a-treadmill-at-one-pace-for-30-minutes" program. With that type of workout, the EPOC is only minimal, with a low hourly expenditure and an elevated period for only an hour or two post-exercise. The message here is that old-school "cardio" falls short of the total Calorie burning that you can actually get, if you just alter the workout a bit. It would be like your wife or girlfriend winning a full day's worth of complimentary treatments, facials, waxing, massage, and nails at a high end day-spa... only to go in and just get her hair cut!
So, again, how great would it be if you could burn calories during a post-lunch staff meeting at work? Or maybe while you are on the phone at home at night? Possibly while you are sitting at your desk grading papers? These scenarios are totally possible, if you structure your workouts the right way!
With this 3rd part to this series, we are now beginning to see that, if you truly want to reach your goals, it is critical that you begin to change your workouts. Next week's installment will further back this up, as we go over the third reason you should throw out those old, stuffy ideas regarding "cardio"...
Reason #2: "Your 'cardio' does nothing to add muscle to your frame."
Yours in Strength,
Jesse
PS. The latest in fat burning programs is already available online!! Take a minute to check out www.worldwidesportsperformance.com!
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