kobrennen的部落格

My favorite quote is "time is the only thing in this world you can never get back, so why waste it" - anonymous. Once that second has gone by its gone forever. Once that day has finished its gone forever. Once your workout is over it's gone forever. Did you use it wisely$%:

There is a lot of information out there of fitness, especially fat loss. Why with all the fat loss information out there is the world continuing to get fatter and fatter$%: It's not because of lack of information. Could it be that we're getting the wrong information$%: People hire personal trainers and expect to get results. There are some great trainers but the unfortunate reality is that most personal trainers are clueless when it comes to fat loss. Which means that most of the 100 billion dollars being spent on fat loss (products, trainers, pills, diets, etc.) every year isn't being used very effectively. The only proof you need are the growing numbers showing how fat we're all actually getting.

So let's analyze. When you step into a commercial gym what do you see$%: I see about every piece of cardio equipment being used and most of the resistance machines being sweated on. I'll save my ideas on machines for my next article so let's focus on the cardio machines. Most people doing cardio are either reading magazines or watching the television in front of them doing a slow-steady pace in their "fat burning zone." I can't fight the fact that you burn fat during that time, but I can fight the fact that the 45 minutes you just spent "burning" that fat was totally useless.

Enter interval training. Most people have heard about it, some know the process of it, but barely anybody uses it. Interval training is the type of training where you work at a higher intensity for a set amount of time and then "rest" at a lower intensity for a set amount of time and then repeat the process. Interval sessions can run anywhere from 12-30 minutes. I usually stick between 14-20 minutes with my clients.

Here's why doing interval training will get you to shed the fat, though. We need to think about the whole picture when it comes to fat loss, not just the time being spent in the gym. The whole goal of fat loss is to boost your metabolism and keep it high for as long as possible so you can burn fat the whole day. Doing slow steady cardio burns fat for the time you're on the bike or whatever you choose to use, but once you step off and are done then that's it, no more fat burning. Interval training doesn't burn that much fat while doing it. But that doesn't matter. Once you step off the machine after doing interval training your metabolism is high for hours and hours after the session. That's what you want. You want to be able to burn as much fat as possible when you aren't in the gym.

When you mix interval training with PROPER weight training (which I'll talk about in another article) your metabolism will be pumping on all cylinders for days and days. Let me show you an interesting study so you can understand what looking at the whole picture will do for you. *KEY NOTE: some people aren't ready for interval training so I recommend just resistance training at first (proper resistance training). But if you are decondtioned to the point where walking at a higher pace is tough then walk at a high pace for as long as you can and then slow down until you feel you can get back up to a higher pace again. That's interval training for the beginners.*

A study looked at what effect endurance training (long cardio) vs. interval training had on fat loss. The endurance group went for 20 weeks and the interval training group went for 15 weeks. At the end of the study the total number of calories burned by the endurance group was 28661. The total number of calories burned by the interval group at the end of the study was 13614. The interval group burned less then half the amount of calories then the endurance group. However, the interval group showed THREE times greater subcutaneous fat loss. That shows you that it's not what you burn during the session; it's what you do to create a metabolic shock to your body so it stays at higher for longer periods of time.

Tremblay A, Simoneau JA, Bouchard C.
Impact of exercise intensity on body fatness and skeletal muscle metabolism.
Metabolism. 1994 Jul;43(7):814-8.

It also brings up the issue if calorie counting really matters, but again, I'll talk about that later. We need to start questioning everything we're doing when it comes to fat loss because the world should not be getting fatter with all the information out there.

So are you wasting you're time in the gym$%: