The Final Nail in the Cardio Coffin

Article posted on T-Nation by Rachel Cosgrove

Feeling soft around the midsection? Can't see your abs anymore? Feel the need to get lean in a hurry?

Slacking off on your diet and workouts can do that to you. In my case, training for an Ironman triathlon can do that, too.

What? Yeah, you heard me right. This is exactly how I felt after training for and completing in my first Ironman.

My body was soft, with no definition, and had definitely changed due to spending the majority of my training in the steady-state aerobic zone – the same "fat burning zone" many books and magazine still talk about.

I was in great shape as far as my endurance and cardiovascular system were concerned, but I had less noticeable muscle tone and didn't have the definition I was used to having in my abs and arms.

Put it this way: I didn't even want to wear a crop top at my race because I didn't have abs, to show. In fact, I felt like I had rolls for the first time ever! My body had started to look like that of a flabby endurance athlete.

I'd lost some muscle and looked soft and flabby, but I was still happy with my performance and thrilled that I accomplished my goal.

No crop top, 'cause there's nothing to show off.

All of my training was done to get ready to complete an Ironman, and all of my nutrition was eaten to fuel me for the workouts. At the time, my goal wasn't to lose fat, but I was still amazed at how little fat I lost.

I worked my way up to doing twenty hours of endurance training a week. I also kept track of every calorie I ate; making sure my nutrition was right on track. I thought I'd be able to eat whatever I wanted, but I couldn't. I had to watch myself to keep from gaining any weight, and I still maintained about 2,000 to 2,500 calories a day.

Some of the workouts included eight or nine-hour sessions where I'd go for a 10-mile run, then jump on my bike for a 70-mile ride, and finish with another 4-mile run. I also continued to lift weights twice a week, in an effort to maintain some muscle tone, but also to stay injury-free and somewhat strong.

My body quickly adapted and I was able to increase my mileage until I could go for a 16-mile run or a 112-mile bike ride like it was "just another workout." It was amazing to see how the body adapts to demands and how far you can push yourself.

Unfortunately, this was also exactly why I didn't lose much fat – my body was adapting to what I was doing. My goal was to get my body super-efficient at running 20 miles and riding a bike for 100 miles, so when it came time for my race, I'd be able to do it.

However, the more your body adapts the fewer calories you burn. So, I was doing more and more exercise without burning as many calories, and therefore I wasn't losing any fat.

But They Call It The "Fat Burning Zone"

During a steady-state workout (when you move at the same pace for a certain amount of time), your body does burn a higher percentage of calories from fat. This is where that "fat burning zone" myth comes from. On the surface, it sounds like you're burning more fat calories.

The outdated chart and categories that people still, unfortunately, rely on.

There are two big problems with this.

1. As I explained earlier, you burn fewer total calories as your body adapts. So even if you're burning a higher percentage of fat, you aren't burning as many calories overall. It's like winning 80% of a Lotto jackpot. It sounds good until you realize that the jackpot is just fifty bucks.
2. Your body actually becomes efficient at storing fat. Since you're now burning fat as your primary source of fuel, your body adapts and becomes very good at storing fat. Blame it on a dumb self-preservation mechanism built into the body's operating system.

374 Hours of Training = 5 Pounds Lost

In seven months of training, I calculated that I worked out for 374 hours – that's an average of over thirteen hours a week! If I burned just ten calories a minute, it adds up to 224,400 calories. Doing the math (at 3,500 calories per pound), 224,400 calories should equal sixty four pounds lost!

Needless to say, I did not lose 64 pounds. Over those seven months, training an average thirteen to fourteen hours a week, I lost all of five pounds. That... was... it.

Now, we've heard many of the fitness experts tell us that, "steady-state aerobics is not effective for fat loss, and we've heard the scientific research that interval training is more effective.

But, still, I thought it would've been more effective than this! A lousy five pounds after doing 374 hours of training, while keeping tabs on what I'm eating! It's enough to make a girl give up the gym and take refuge in a box of Krispy Kremes.

Well, almost.

What more could we ask for? Maybe some common sense?

Fortunately, I now have first-hand experience that steady-state aerobics is absolutely, completely, utterly ineffective for fat loss. After working my way up to twenty training hours a week, I can tell you that long, steady-state endurance is not the answer for a defined, lean physique and it's a waste of time if your goal is fat loss.

It's only the answer if your goal is to complete an endurance event.

Learn to Love Intensity, Not Duration

Let's review some of the research:

• December 2006, Canadian researchers reported that just two weeks of interval training boosted women's ability to burn fat during exercise by 36%.
• In January 2007, a six-month study was published showing that adding aerobic exercise had no additional effect on body composition, over diet alone.
• In June of 2007, a twelve-month study was published which had the subjects doing six hours of aerobic exercise per week, training six days a week, for one year. The average weight loss was only three pounds for that one-year period.
• According to a British study, levels of Human Growth Hormone, which assists in building muscle and burning fat, skyrocketed 530% in subjects after just thirty seconds of sprinting as fast as they could on a stationary bike.
• Australian fitness researchers had eighteen women perform twenty minutes of interval training on a stationary bike – eight-seconds of sprinting followed by twelve seconds of recovery – throughout the workout, three days a week.

The women lost an average of five-and-a-half pounds over fifteen weeks, without dieting. Similar groups performing forty minutes of moderate cycling, three days a week, actuallygained a pound of fat over the same period. Two of the heavier women who did intervals dropped eighteen pounds.

• In a side-by-side comparison, researchers at McMaster University in Ontario measured fitness gains in eight interval exercisers – using twenty to thirty minute cycling workouts that included four to six thirty-second sprints – against eight volunteers who pedaled at a lower intensity for 90 to 120 minutes.

After two weeks, the interval group was every bit as fit as those who worked out three to four times as long.

Undoing the Aerobic Damage

After completing my Ironman, I made fat loss my primary goal for eight weeks. I eliminatedall steady-state endurance exercise. No running, biking, swimming, or anything else in the steady-state.

My workouts consisted of high intensity for short bursts, whether it was with weights or doing a metabolic interval session. I lifted weights three days a week, and I performed interval-training workouts on the other days.

I made sure the interval workouts weren't on a treadmill or a bike. I only used bodyweight-exercise circuits, along with kettlebell circuits, as my cardio workouts.

These metabolic cardio workouts would crank my heart rate up for two minutes, I'd recover, and then repeat. Doing these interval circuits, along with strength training, took up a total of five to six hours a week, nothing like the twenty to thirty hours of Ironman training!

What happened? Like magic, my abs came back!

I dropped fifteen pounds of fat in an eight-week period and my body returned to being strong, defined, and lean. I no longer looked like a flabby endurance athlete, and I did it in a quarter of the time, compared to the aerobic training.

Rumor has it that Justin Timberlake wrote a hit song after seeing this photo.

It Works, But Why?

One reason intervals are more effective is that they target more of your muscle. During endurance exercise, you use a lot of slow-twitch muscle fibers and too few fast-twitch muscle fibers. It's those fast-twitch muscle fibers that give you firm muscles and fast-tracked results.

Now don't get me wrong, I still enjoy heading out for a run or a bike ride occasionally, but I don't do it for fat loss. I do it because I enjoy it. Think about it. If you do a thirty minute walk at a steady-state, moderate pace, you'll shed about 150 calories.

If you mixed in eight thirty-second sprints, you'll burn closer to 200 calories. But the biggest factor is that after an interval session, your metabolism can stay elevated for a full day and you'll end up burning two to three times the total calories you'd expect to burn from lower intensity exercise.

Like that's not enough, intervals can also help to reverse the aging process. Fast-twitch fibers are the first to go when we age, largely because neurons stop communicating with them. Research has shown that you can increase neuron firing rates after just one week of training. With more muscles firing, you have more energy for life.

It is time to bury the myth of using long, slow steady-state cardio to burn up fat, for good. No more spending hours and hours on a treadmill, elliptical, or bike. I've worked with many figure competitors to get them lean and defined using interval-style workouts, with a full-body strength training routine, and they've had great success.

Body built by Cosgrove, strength training, and intervals.

R.I.P. Aerobics

Get off the treadmill, stop spinning your wheels, and push yourself in the gym if you want to lose some serious fat. Take it from me, I finally learned first hand. It's time to put the last nail in the coffin of using aerobics for fat loss, bury it for good, and do some high intensity, interval dancing on its overdue grave.

About the Author

Rachel Cosgrove is a fitness professional who specializes in getting women of all ages into the best shape of their lives. She owns and operates Results Fitness with her husband in Santa Clarita, Ca. She has a BS in Exercises Physiology and earned her CSCS from the National Strength and Conditioning Association.

She has competed in fitness competitions, triathlons, and powerlifting. She has also been featured in Women's Health Magazine, Muscle and Fitness Hers, Shape Magazine,Fitness Magazine, Men's Health, Men's Fitness, and Oxygen. For more information on Rachel visit www.RachelCosgrove.com.

Get Strong! Stay Strong! (and quit doing cardio!)

Chris

Why Women SHOULD'NT Run

Copied from DangerouslyHardcore.com website

Here’s another article re-edit/rerelease. This one was originally published on EliteFTS.com, and we’re presenting this updated and polished-up version today in case you missed it the first time around.

I’m not sympathetic.

When I look at the fat guy in the gym wasting his time doing forearm curls to lose weight, I feel no sympathy. When a big tough meathead gets stapled to the bench by 365 pounds—after trying and failing with 315—I don’t feel any sympathetic pangs there, either. Even when I see a girl spend a half hour bouncing back and forth between the yes-no machines—the adductor and abductor units—only to have trouble walking the next day, I can’t muster even an iota of pathos.

Nobody told these people to do these things.

Then, however, I watch my friend Jessica running on the treadmill—day after day, year after year—like a madwoman, and going nowhere. Her body seems to get softer with every mile, and the softer she gets, the more she runs. For her, I feel sympathy, because the world has convinced her that running is the way to stay “slim and toned.”

There’s a Jessica in every gym. Spotting them is easy. They’re the women who run for an hour or more every day on the treadmill, setting new distance and/or time goals every week and month. Maybe they’re just interested in their treadmill workouts, maybe they’re training for their fifth fund-raising marathon, or maybe they’re even competing against runners in Finland via some Nike device. Doesn’t matter to me, because years of seeing my friend on the treadmill has exposed the results, which I’m not going to sugarcoat:

She’s still fat. Actually, she’s gotten fatter.

I’ve tried to rescue her from the clutches of cardio in the past, but my efforts didn’t work until a month ago, when she called to tell me that a blood test had confirmed her doctor’s suspicion: She had hypothyroidism, meaning her body no longer made enough thyroid hormone.

Her metabolism had slowed to a snail’s pace, and the fat was accumulating. This was her body rebelling. When Jessica asked for my advice, I told her to do two things: To schedule a second test for two weeks later, and to stop all the goddamned running until then.

I’m not here to pick on women or make fun of them. There are men out there who do the same thing, thinking cardio will wipe away the effects of their regular weekend beer binges. It’s more of a problem with women, though, and I’m targeting them for three very good reasons:

1.  They’re often intensely recruited for fund-raisers like Team-In-Training, lured by the promises of slim, trim bodies and good health resulting from the months of cardio training leading to marathons—in addition to doing something for charity.

2.  Some physique coaches prescribe 20-plus hours per week of pre-contest cardio for women, which essentially amounts to a part-time job.

3.  Steady-state activities like this devastate the female metabolism. This happens with men, too, but in different ways.

I hate a lot of things about the fitness industry, but over-prescribed cardio would have to be at the very top of my list. I’m not talking about walking here, nor am I referring to appropriate HIIT cardio. This is about running, cycling, stair-climbing, or elliptical cardio done for hours at or above 65 percent of your max heart rate. The anaerobic threshold factors into this, obviously, but I’m painting gym cardio in very broad strokes here so everyone will understand what I’m railing against.

Trashing steady-state cardio isn’t exactly a novel idea, and the better physique gurus figured at least a portion of this out years ago, when they started applying the no-steady-state-cardio rule to contest preparation. They failed, however, to point out the most detrimental effect of this type of training—one that applies specifically to women:

Studies—both clinical and observational—make a compelling case that too much cardio can impair the production of the thyroid hormone T3, its effectiveness and metabolism[1-11], particularly when accompanied by caloric restriction, an all too common practice. This is why many first or second-time figure and bikini competitors explode in weight when they return to their normal diets, and it’s why the Jessicas of the world can run for hours every week with negative results.

T3 is the body’s preeminent regulator of metabolism, by the way it throttles the efficiency of cells[12-19]. It also acts in various ways to increase heat production[20-21]. As I pointed out in previous articles, this is one reason why using static equations to perform calories-in, calories-out weight loss calculations doesn’t work.

When T3 levels are normal, the body burns enough energy to stay warm, and muscles function at moderate efficiency. When there’s too much thyroid hormone (hyperthyroidism), the body goes into a state where weight gain is almost impossible. Too little T3 (hypothyroidism), and the body accumulates body fat with ease, almost regardless of physical activity level. Women inadvertently put themselves into a hypothyroid condition when they perform so much steady-state cardio.

In the quest to lose body fat, T3 levels can offer both success and miserable failure because of the way it influences other fat-regulating hormones[22-31]. Women additionally get all the other negative effects of this, which I’ll cover below. Don’t be surprised here. This is a simple, sensible adaptation of a body that’s equipped to bear the full brunt of reproduction.

Think about it this way: Your body is a responsive, adaptive machine that has evolved for survival. If you’re running on a regular basis, your body senses this excessive energy expenditure, and adjusts to compensate. Remember, no matter which way we hope the body works, its endgame is always survival. If you waste energy running, your body will react by slowing your metabolism to conserve energy. Decreasing energy output is biologically savvy for your body. Your body wants to survive longer while you do what it views as a stressful, useless activity. Decreasing T3 production increases efficiency and adjusts your metabolism to preserve energy immediately.

Nothing exemplifies this increasing efficiency better than the way the body starts burning fuel. Training consistently at 65 percent or more of your max heart rate adapts your body to save as much body fat as possible. After regular training, fat cells stop releasing fat the way they once did during moderate-intensity activities[32-33]. Energy from body fat stores also decreases by 30 percent[34-35]. To this end, your body sets into motion a series of reactions that make it difficult for muscle to burn fat at all[36-41]. Instead of burning body fat, your body takes extraordinary measures to retain it.

Still believe cardio is the fast track to fat loss?

That’s not all. You can still lose muscle mass. Too much steady-state cardio actually triggers the loss of muscle[42-45]. This seems to be a twofold mechanism, with heightened and sustained cortisol levels triggering muscle loss[46-56], which upregulates myostatin, a potent destroyer of muscle tissue[57]. Say goodbye to bone density, too, because it declines with that decreasing muscle mass and strength[58-64].

And long term health? Out the window, as well. Your percentage of muscle mass is an independent indicator of health[65]. You’ll lose muscle, lose bone, and lose health. Awesome, right?

When sewn together, these phenomena coordinate a symphony of fat gain for most female competitors after figure contests. After a month—or three—of 20-plus hours of cardio per week, fat burning hits astonishing lows, and fat cells await an onslaught of calories to store[66-72]. The worst thing imaginable in this state would be to eat whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted. The combination of elevated insulin and cortisol would make you fat, and it would also create new fat cells so you could become even fatter[73-80].

I won’t name names, but I’ve seen amazing displays of gluttony from some small, trim women. Entire pizzas disappear, leaving only the flotsam of toppings that fell during the feeding frenzy. Appetizers, meals, cocktails and desserts—4000 calories worth—vanish at the Cheesecake Factory. There are no leftovers, and there are no crumbs. Some women catch this in time and stop the devastation, but others quickly swell, realizing that this supposed off-season look has become their every-season look.

And guess what they do to fix it? Double sessions of cardio.

This “cardio craze” is a form of insanity, and it’s on my hit list. I’m determined to kill it. There are better ways to lose fat, and there are better ways to look good. Your bikini body is not at the end of a marathon, and you won’t find it on a treadmill. In fact, it’s quite the opposite if you’re using steady-state cardio to get there. The show may be over, and the finish line crossed, but the damage to your metabolism has just begun.

Don’t want to stop running? Fine. Then stop complaining about how the fat won’t come off your hips, thighs, and ass. You’re keeping it there.

And as for Jessica, my friend whose dilemma sparked this article? She took my suggestion and cut out the cardio. Two weeks later, her T3 count was normal. Go figure. 

Very well put.  Ive never been a fan of running esp for fat loss.
Get Strong! Stay Strong!
Chris

Over the Wall Exercise for Whole Body Conditioning/Rehab

Think about climbing over a fence when you were young.  When was the last time you did that?  Its actually a great whole body exercise!  Here's a great exercise that works the arms, core, legs and is sure to get your heart rate up!  Simply just find a half wall or a bench works well too.  Place your hands on the bench and supporting your weight with your arms jump over the bench.  Land w/ knees bent and do not let hands leave bench.  Go back and forth for desired reps and sets.  If you do have half wall as seen in picture, simply climb up and over and repeat for reps and sets.  I use this often in my shoulder and knee rehab when the patient is past the acute and subacute phases of tissue healing and is ready to progress to more advanced ex to prepare them to return to work or sport.  Construction workers, police, military and fire personnel all climb and jump over things.  So, I need to prepare them and make sure they are ready to go and confident in their physical abilities.  This in essence is truly functional training/rehab.  Using the bench is an easy alternative and less demanding for those not ready or able to climb a wall.  I always try to think of all the ways my pts will utilize their bodies in their sport, work or recreational activities and progress them to activities and movement that replicate that.
Get Strong! Stay Strong!
Chris

Shoulder, Core and Calories Burned, All in One!

Here is a great exercise that works shoulder stability, core AND really gets your heart pumpimg, which equals more calories burned.  I'm a big fan of getting more bang for your buck and this exercise does just that!  All you really need are some weights, a flight of stairs and a desire to look and feel better.
This can always be started holding the weights at shoulder level and just walking straight ahead.  To challenge your core moe try doing this only holding one weight overhead.  Or, how about one weight overhead and the opp carried down at your side (farmer carry).
Get Strong!  Stay Strong!
Chris

One Day at Band Camp.......

Heres a good workout that only requires a couple super bands.  Each group is done as a superset. 3-4 sets
A)  Band chest press 15-20 reps
      Band Rows 15-20 reps

B)  Band Lat Pulls or Verticle Pull Downs  15-20 reps
     Band Upright Rows  15-20 reps

C)  Band OH Squats  15x
      Band Speed Curls x 20-30

Rest as needed between ex and sets. 
Should copmplete in 40-50 min.

Get Strong! Srtay Strong!
Chris

Secret Weapon to Burn Fat and Pump Your Muscless

If you want a piece of equipment that can provide, strength, power, fitness and fat loss all in one check out the video below and stay tuned for some cool PT/fitness applications!  My patients love it.  Our athletes, pro and amateur, love it!  Check this out!  And you guys thought I forgot about the PowerMax!  Still cranking on it daily.

Get Strong! Stay Strong!

Chris