Cardio Kills?

If you been on this blog more than once you know that I prefer cardio intervals for fat loss over long duration, steady state cardio.

Here's an excerpt from an excellent article by Darin Steele that I recently came across.


The common myth that jogging is better for fat loss, fitness, & health is a strong one that is wrong;

The old school text books & simple minds say; "To burn fat, you must stay in the fat burning zone (heart rate between 50-65%) for 60-70 minutes. You don't start burning fat until about 20 minutes into the work-out. So if you do a 70 minute session, you will get 50 minutes of fat burning.

I am going to clear this up for you once and for all. You see, for fat loss, it is not about where your body gets the energy from the work-out for (slow go cardio / fat, interval / glycogen) nearly as much as it is total calories.

You see, the instant that you are done with low intensity jogging, your body is done burning calories. But, do an intense set of intervals, and your body burns calories for the 2-4 hours after the work-out. So the total amount of calories burned form intense interval far exceeds that of jogging type cardio.

Another big advantage that you get with interval cardio that most do not know about is that it changes the way your body stores your calories in the future: and in a very good way. You see most of the benefits of exercise come after the exercise is completed. It is how the body adapts and changes. Tear down muscles by weight lifting, and in the 1-2 days after, the body repairs the tiny micro tears back so they are a little bigger & stronger.

Well, cardio is much the same way. When you do low intensity jogging type cardio, your body says, "It's a good thing I had that fat there to supply energy for that work out". So it makes sure that it has plenty of fat there in preparation for the next "slow go cardio" session.

But when you do intense intervals, your body says, "It's a good thing I had that glycogen in the muscles for that interval cardio". So when it breaks down your future meals, it stores more of the carbs as glycogen in the muscles and the liver in preparation for the future "Interval Cardio" sessions. In essence, your gas tanks enlarge with useful energy. This is great for at least two reasons.

The entire article is here.

More Benefits of Interval Training

I've been singing the praises of cardio intervals for fat loss for quite a while now. However, if you've ever wondered whether intervals produce heart related benefits like those of slower cardio training, check out the article link below.

Don't get hung up on the fact that the study participants performed all-out 30 second sprints. Regardless of your age or current fitness level, you can do interval training.

For example, if you currently walk on the treadmill for 20-30 minutes at 3.4 mph, you could instead try walking at 3.7 for 60 seconds and then slow down to 3.0 for a 60 or 120 second recovery. That's considered one interval. Repeat that pattern 6 times, cool down and you're done.

(Obviously, you need to prepare your body properly for this type of workout. If you're doing nothing but cardio that day, warm up for at least 5 minutes before your first interval. If you're doing intervals after a a strength training session, you can probably get by with just 3-5 minutes on the treadmill before starting the intervals. Listen to your body. If you feel like you need to warm up longer, do it.)

You just need to understand that performing cardio intervals is not a matter of speed; it's about intensity. The goal is to challenge yourself in short bursts at a intensity that you couldn't maintain for longer periods.

Everyone is different. While 3.7 mph for 60 seconds would be a challenge for one person, it would be too slow for someone else but it doesn't matter. The actual speed or resistance you use isn't important.

On a scale of 1 to 10, you want to feel like you're working at an 8 or 9 during the hard part of the interval. If you're currently really out of shape, work up to that level.

The recovery (slow) part of the interval should be performed at a much easier level of 3 or 4 out of 10.

So if 3.7 mph challenges you, that's what you should do. If it's too easy go faster; if it's too hard, slow down.

Because of the intensity of this type of exercise, limit interval training to 3 times a week.

Fat loss, time saving, and cardiovascular health benefits. If you're not currently doing cardio intervals, why not?


Brief, Intense Exercise Can Benefit The Heart, Study Shows
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Cardio Intervals for Fat Loss and Health

I haven't beat the drum for cardio interval training lately so here's an excerpt from an article in the June issue of Men's Health.

One quibble. Unless someone is training for a race, I prefer to keep the intense part of the interval to a maximum of 60 seconds. At 2 minutes you've moved into aerobic intervals and you obviously can't maintain the intensity of shorter bouts.

What would impress me is you doing high-intensity intervals as your cardiovascular training. That means alternating between intense bursts of activity and fixed periods of less-intense activity or even complete rest. In fact, you can achieve more progress in a mere 15 minutes of interval training (done three times a week) than that guy grinding away on the treadmill for an hour. An intelligent man draws maximum benefit from a minimum time investment, and smarts are sexy. So are abs, a benefit of this training style. Researchers at Australia's University of New South Wales found that intervals burn three times as much fat as running twice as long at a moderately hard, steady pace.

But interval training's benefits don't end with heart health, fat incineration, or the preservation of that most precious of commodities, your time. Most sports worth playing involve stopping and starting, not running at one pace, so you'll rule on the court or field. What's more, your muscles will learn to contract more forcefully. Ultimately you'll live longer, too, because intervals elevate the good cholesterol that makes your arteries whooshing streams and not plaque-strewn rapids.

How can stopping and starting during cardio do all that? Pretend you're back (or still) in college, and I'm your hot new teaching assistant. Class is now in session, so pop the lid off your latte and listen up.

Lesson 1: When your muscles contract repeatedly during intense training, they quickly use all available energy. So your body searches for fat. While that's going on, your body is quickly losing its ability to flush metabolic by-products from muscle. Ever heard of the burn? That's a buildup of ammonia and other bad stuff. Along with burning, this waste interferes with your body's ability to contract muscles forcefully. If you don't learn to manage the burn properly, your workout is doomed.

Lesson 2: When repeated bouts of high-intensity intervals are separated by short rest periods, each bout begins with a lack of available energy, and muscles that are already fatigued. "Interval training stresses energy systems in the body that aren't accustomed to being used," says Jeramie Hinojosa, M.S., director of the East Texas Medical Center Olympic Center, in Tyler, Texas. "Blood supply to cells increases, the cells use oxygen more efficiently, and the enzymes that help create energy also increase. This improves fitness." What's more, recovery from interval training forces the body to continue burning fat for energy. This all leads to an increase in postworkout calorie burning.

Lesson 3: There are lots of ways to do intervals. Over time you can adjust your ratio between rest and work, change the intensity of your work segment, or alter the length of the entire session. The new interval program that my university colleagues and I have developed produces truly amazing results, and it's perfect for people who don't like endurance training. As part of an experiment to test the ability of a dietary supplement to flush metabolic waste products from muscle tissue, we put a group of active college students (36 men and 33 women) through 6 weeks of high-intensity interval training on the stationary bike. Instead of the usual 30-seconds-on, 30-seconds-off approach, we had the students pedal intensively for 2 minutes, rest completely for 1 minute, and then repeat that sequence four more times. That's only 10 minutes of training! Even with the warmup and rest periods, they were looking at a 20-minute time investment.

After 3 weeks and a total of nine workout sessions, all 69 participants saw huge improvements. The maximum amount of oxygen they could consume--a measure of cardiovascular fitness -- increased 11 percent. What's more, they were able to pedal 12 percent longer and complete 44 percent more work. After 6 weeks, the improvements were even more dramatic -- 18 percent in fitness, 17 percent in time to exhaustion, and nearly 100 percent in work completed.

Break Your Speed Limits

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