Short, sharp bursts of activity have proven to be more effective than long, drawn-out exercise. (File photo)
In my previous post, we talked about nutrition and the role it plays in helping you get the most from your exercise program.
But what if the exercise you are doing is part of the problem? That is what we’ll be looking at in this post.
First of all, I would like to say that probably any exercise done for 30 minutes a day is better than nothing. But most of you have time consuming responsibilities like family, social or work/study commitments. This means that we need to be brutally efficient with our exercise programs. Maximum benefit, minimum time.
The only way to maximize your exercise benefits is to do the exercise that works for you even after you have left the gym. It would be like investing your money in a high rental yield property — it just keeps paying you back.
Unfortunately, the exercise that most people choose is long slow cardio exercise such as jogging, swimming or hours on the treadmill, bike, or elliptical trainer.
This kind of exercise burns mostly fat during the exercise. Which seems like a good idea, but actually INCREASES the chances of your body storing fat in the long run. In general, the body considers long, slow activity the same as “being lost in the jungle” which means it is best to store AS MUCH fat as possible to stay alive!
This is great if we are indeed lacking food, and indeed lost in the jungle. But in Singapore, we have an abundance of food, are not lost in the jungle and unfortunately, many of use already have more than enough body-fat!
Lots of bad stuff happens inside you when you do excess amounts of long distance cardio. After all, look at the people at a marathon. Many of them are fat and have average or unimpressive physiques despite hours and hours of cardio exercise.
Here are three main reasons why:
1) Cardio increases the amount of stress hormones you produce, and when your body is in “lost in the jungle stress mode” you store more fat, hurt your immune system, and damage just about everything from digestive system, to reproductive system. In the long run, this leads to symptoms of “adrenal fatigue” which means that your stress glands are worn out from making all those stress hormones. These symptoms include things like… tiredness, allergies, reduced short term memory, sleep difficulties, and difficulty losing weight despite hard work!
2) Cardio decreases the amount of muscle building hormones you have and in fact tells your body to burn off that lovely firm muscle because muscles use calories and less energy using muscle is what you want if in order to stay alive a long time in the jungle.
3) Cardio does use fat while it is being done, that is why many people who hear this, choose to do cardio. However they fail to realize that your body actually burns lots of amino acids when doing cardio and it gets those amino acids from… your lovely firm muscles! So you are “cannibalizing” yourself to fuel long jogs.
“Whoa, all this sounds bad Coach, what should I do?”
Well, if you LOVE running and it is how you wind down, relax or even catch up with friends, then go ahead and do some. 15 mins, 3 times a week is probably not bad for you.
But if your time is limited, and you want results fast, here’s what I recommend: 45 mins of properly designed resistance training done three to four times a week is the easiest way to burn fat. A qualified personal trainer should be able to help you with this.
Ideally, it should be customized for your level of flexibility, hormone profile, and current/past injuries. It saves time, it’s challenging, and it works.
If you do proper, fat burning resistance training four times per week, and eat a “caveman” style nutrition plan, most people should get optimum results. In fact a 2010 study at McMaster University in Canada showed that 10 x 1min cycling sprints worked as well for fitness and fat burning as 10 hours of conventional, moderate speed cycling! This kind of training has many more benefits, and none of the disadvantages of cardio listed above.
And you save time, which is what almost everybody in Singapore wants.
While there are many more advanced methods of interval training that I use with competitive athletes at our fitness center, here is one that should work for most people (assuming you have no orthopedic/joint issues, and no cardiovascular/heart conditions).
Because everybody is at different fitness levels, we shall use “perceived exertion” (PE) as the gauge of how hard to push yourself. It is a scale from 1 to 10.
- PE 1 - walking along the beach with your girlfriend/boyfriend/spouse
- PE 3 – very brisk walk/slow jog
- PE 8 – fast striding run
- PE 10 - being chased by a pack of hungry wild dogs
Get the idea? Now try this… (can be done by running, swimming, climbing stairs, biking etc in fact a variety is good to prevent overuse injuries), use a wristwatch to time yourself. The 1 minute at PE 8 never felt so long, and the 1 min rests at PE 3 never felt so short!
- 3 mins at PE 3 to warm up
- 1 min at PE 6 to get going
- 1 min at PE 3
- 1 min at PE 7-8
- 1 min at PE 3
- 1 min at PE 8
- 3 min at PE 3 to cool down
That’s enough for a first time. If you really did get to PE 8 (fast striding run) you should feel pretty worn out already… and you took a grand total of about 11 minutes of activity.
You can increase the number of sets of 1 minute at PE 8, followed by a minute at PE 3 as the weeks go by. I would build up to 8 sets of PE 8.
Once you get fitter, you will know you are pushing yourself when halfway through the workout, you feel like you may not make it all the way to the end!
That is what I call exercise. Both a proper resistance training program and an interval training program can elevate your metabolism for many hours even after the exercise is over, burning way more calories in the long run. This is the smart investment I was talking about at the start of the article. It literally is burning fat while you sleep!
But take note — build up to this over the course of several weeks.
There you have it. Cut out long, slow cardio. Do some intervals, do some resistance training and eat “caveman style”. Have fun in your workouts!
NOTES:
- A more technical explanation of whats going on inside that uses so many calories during recovery from intervals or resistance training on my website here
- The best book I have found about adrenal fatigue is by an adrenal specialist doctor. Dr James Wilson. The book is called “Adrenal Fatigue: The 21st Century Stress Syndrome” It is easy to read, and has good steps to improve your health. I use many of his recommendations with my clients.
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