So, I hate running...

[JaxMMA]

While I do not mind running outside (in a park), at the moment I'm only limited to treadmill at the gym due to schedule with work and school. The problem is, there are very few things that are more boring than running on a treadmill.
So, instead of running I started substituting in jump rope and eliptical.
Do you guys think this is an OK substitute for running?

My current workout routine is 2 days of heavy lifting (5x5), a day or two of circuit training/HIIT (mostly stuff from Ross' Infinite Intensity), and one day MMA training (technique only). I'd like to throw in some moderate intensity cardio before lifting for warmup and after lifting for cooldown, or possibly just do it on one of the days off.

Suggestions, opinions, advice...all welcome.


Thanks.

[Cuong Nhu]

I recall hearing somewhere that jumping rope burns more calories then running at a moderate pace for an equal amount of time. That aside, I much prefer running. Partly because I hate jumping rope with a passion. However, as a short term (1-3 months) it's not a bad substitute for running. However, I'd personally fight tooth and nail to get back to being able to go running. Running streets/trails has advantages that simply cannot be reproduced in the gym on a treadmill, on a track, or with jumping rope.

[holyheadjch]

I wouldn't bother with the elliptical. Waste of time.

If you're specifically looking for cardio work, calisthenic circuits are the way forward.

[Dizzyj]

I wouldn't bother with the elliptical. Waste of time.

Why's that? Does it not provide benefits for the effort required? Haven't heard that before.

[holyheadjch]

Why's that? Does it not provide benefits for the effort required? Haven't heard that before.

What does it train you for other than using an elliptical?

It has also been shown to exacerbate certain lower back injuries (src= http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Health/20100726/elliptical-injury-100726/) and has been shown to be a highly predictive factor in the development of girly men (src=Every Gym on the planet, ever)

[icefield]

running is great for cardio because its easily measurable, keeps your HR at a constant rate (which is what is needed for changes to occur) and works the whole body, ellipticals do basically the same thing, so although its popular to bash them and yes they lock you in a single plane of motion, (so do bikes and rowers by the way) they are fine as a substitute for running

the old jumping rope burning more calories comes from bruce lee, if you are looking to do constant steady state cardio whether its running, skipping or machine work calories burned will be pretty much the same, look at the outcome you want to achieve and then see if what you have access to allows you to achive your goals

[icefield]

What does it train you for other than using an elliptical?

It has also been shown to exacerbate certain lower back injuries (src= http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Health/20100726/elliptical-injury-100726/) and has been shown to be a highly predictive factor in the development of girly men (src=Every Gym on the planet, ever)

what does running train you for other than running? the fact is your goals will determine if the equipment can help or not if a piece of machinery allows you to measure output and distance, allows you to keep your HR constant and warm up the whole body then it is usefull

[holyheadjch]

what does running train you for other than running? the fact is your goals will determine if the equipment can help or not if a piece of machinery allows you to measure output and distance, allows you to keep your HR constant and warm up the whole body then it is usefull

You're kidding right?

Life may occasionally require you to run, thus training oneself to run is not a wasted effort. Elliptical trainers pretty much exist solely within a gym, so unless your goal in life is to become one of those women who can stay on ellipticals for hours at a time, you're training nothing.

If ellipticals were the only way of warming up or even one of the better ways of warming up, I wouldn't be too bothered by them, but they're just another artefact of the fitness craze that brought you pink plastic dumbells and a thousand and one different ab workout infomercials.

Ellipticals = Fail.

[JaxMMA]

I'm quitting ellipticals from today because holyheadjch is calling me girly now :)

Like I said, I don't mind running outside it's just that with school and work right now I don't have the time to do it in the morning and running on a treadmill at the gym (when I go during the night) is a snorefest.

I'm not so much concerned with burning calories during this slow paced, steady cardio because, as I mentioned already, I have 2 days a week when I do HIIT/Circuit training.

Good discussion so far. Thanks everyone. :cool:

[icefield]

its not about the equipment used its about the outcome sort, if the equipment allows you to work at the required rate for the required duration then its good, if it doesnt allow you to reach your desired outcome its of no use its as simple as that

[Glock 18]

I thought I was the only one who hated running with a passion, OP.

I do the obligatory warm-up jog, but focus on skipping rope for building cardio. Works well enough for me, plus the higher degree of intensity makes up for the shorter amount of time spent doing the exercise as compared to jogging.

But I could be wrong though.

[icefield]

I thought I was the only one who hated running with a passion, OP.

I do the obligatory warm-up jog, but focus on skipping rope for building cardio. Works well enough for me, plus the higher degree of intensity makes up for the shorter amount of time spent doing the exercise as compared to jogging.

But I could be wrong though.

you are right but you are also wrong :)

some adaptions of the body require a long time under tension to create and you have to put the long sessions in regardless of the equipment used, and some dont it depends on what you are trying to acomplish,

[Doublejab]

Personally I hate running on a treadmill as well.

Jump on a rowing machine instead :cool:

[JaxMMA]

Personally I hate running on a treadmill as well.

Jump on a rowing machine instead :cool:

My gym just recently got one of these, which I'll try to utilize more often:


http://www.comparestoreprices.co.uk/images/co/concept-2-indoor-rowing-machine.jpg

[Mike Flanagan]

I wouldn't bother with the elliptical. Waste of time.

I'll just correct that for you.

I wouldn't bother with the elliptical. Waste of time for me.

Everyone is different, some exercises work well for some but not for others.

The elliptical trainer gets not just your legs but also your arms working. As such it certainly engages the major muscle groups - arguably better than running does. I don't see how anyone can doubt that it can be used effectively to work the heart and lungs.

Just because many people use it in a 'girly' way doesn't mean you have to use it like that. You can increase your speed, you can also crank the resistance right up. You can vary the emphasis on which muscle groups are working most, you can interval train, etc etc.

Its main advantage IMO is that it removes impact on the knees. I simply cannot run as an exercise. Any significant amount would play havoc with my knees, and also my dodgy ankle.

Is it the best cardio exercise? Probably not. Is it convenient, effective and low impact? Absolutely.

It really depends on the individual on what's the best exercise(s) for them. Making blanket judgements is not terribly helpful IMO.

Mike

[JaxMMA]

I'll just correct that for you.

I wouldn't bother with the elliptical. Waste of time for me.

Everyone is different, some exercises work well for some but not for others.

The elliptical trainer gets not just your legs but also your arms working. As such it certainly engages the major muscle groups - arguably better than running does. I don't see how anyone can doubt that it can be used effectively to work the heart and lungs.

Just because many people use it in a 'girly' way doesn't mean you have to use it like that. You can increase your speed, you can also crank the resistance right up. You can vary the emphasis on which muscle groups are working most, you can interval train, etc etc.

Its main advantage IMO is that it removes impact on the knees. I simply cannot run as an exercise. Any significant amount would play havoc with my knees, and also my dodgy ankle.

Is it the best cardio exercise? Probably not. Is it convenient, effective and low impact? Absolutely.

It really depends on the individual on what's the best exercise(s) for them. Making blanket judgements is not terribly helpful IMO.

Mike

My major issue with running (on treadmill) is that its reaaallly boring. That's the reason why I switched to eliptical...

However, I was talking to a friend this morning that works the front desk at the gym and according to him the owner is in the talks with property managers to allow us to put two large tractor tires in the parking lot behind the gym. If this goes thru, it will be awesome because finally we can do tire flips, sledgehammer swings, sled pulls, and there will be at least 200-300m of space for sprinting. I don't mind sprinting because it's short, intense, and there's not time to be bored :)

[axelb]

running on a treadmill sucks the biggun. nothing more boring. Some gyms I have been to had a tv up which relieves the boredom if you like whichever generic channel is on.

much rather be outside or doing something else. I prefer jump rope if i can't do a run outside.

[JaxMMA]

running on a treadmill sucks the biggun. nothing more boring. Some gyms I have been to had a tv up which relieves the boredom if you like whichever generic channel is on.

much rather be outside or doing something else. I prefer jump rope if i can't do a run outside.

All of the treadmills at my gym have TV's, but there's nothing interesting to watch :D

[harukoraharu]

If it has to be treadmill you could vary the pace between a comfortable and a moderate for 2 minutes or do an incline starting on 2% adding a percent every minute or two upto 10% then back to 2% if that isn't too much like the HIIT you already do. I'm not a big fan of treadmill though found when doing shorter intervals I have to concentrate more on breathing and technique so less bored. The same when running outside if the pace is too slow I get bored. I no longer see the point in having a PB for treadmill runs as they are not equivalent to real distance runs.

[Socrastein]

You're already doing heavy lifting and intense anaerobic intervals 4x/week. What do you think you need the extra low intensity cardio for?

You won't get any increased benefit to your endurance from doing aerobics if you're already doing the kind of stuff you described. What you will end up doing is wasting a lot of time slowly ruining your posture and degrading the quality of your soft tissue.

If you are looking to accelerate some fat loss efforts, stop eating cheat meals instead of adding in time on the elliptical.

If you are just looking for a way to warm up for your lifting sessions, time on a treadmill or elliptical is about as useless as you can get. You need to be doing tissue work and dynamic movements that are specific to the lifts you plan to do that day.

its not about the equipment used its about the outcome sort, if the equipment allows you to work at the required rate for the required duration then its good, if it doesnt allow you to reach your desired outcome its of no use its as simple as that

This may be true if every piece of equipment effected our movement patterns and posture the same exact way. This couldn't be further from the truth however. The movement you choose to repeat thousands of times for your cardio is going to have a unique and significant impact on your body. These things are NOT as simple as you imply.

Since you already hate running, it seems pretty obvious to me that you should leave it out of your program and stop trying to find a good substitute for it. Stick with the compound lifting and hard intervals, and use whatever time you have left to do something fun! Go spend time with a girl or something, don't look for ways to spend even more time in the gym.

And seriously, the elliptical sucks. For everyone. That is all.

[Kuma]

Being stuck on a treadmill myself, I can sympathize. There are many ways to make it more interesting though. Here's a few ideas:

**Our treadmill has the track markers on it, so one of my favorite things to do is jog the short ends and sprint the long ends.
**You can pyramid up the speed as well, starting off at a relatively low mark (say, 6mph) and every 30 sec add 0.1mph until you're hitting 10+mph or more. Once it gets too rough, drop back down to say 6mph and do it all over again.
**Mixing in calisthenics is a good idea. Run 1/4 mile at a fast pace, then crank out reps with several different calisthenics (can be all upper body or lower body, make sure you do some abs too) before hopping right back on and doing it again. You can also do this timed (say run 5 min, then do 60 sec of a few different exercises).

There's a lot of different ways to mix it up.

[Tout Prêt 1888]

if you hate running try cycling

[Mike Flanagan]

Go spend time with a girl or something, don't look for ways to spend even more time in the gym.

That sounds like stirling advice!

And seriously, the elliptical sucks. For everyone. That is all.

But that just sounds like a blanket statement, which is rarely a good thing. I don't understand how you can make such a statement when unaware of any one individual's goals and current situation. Its just too arbitrary. Surely it must depend what the individual is trying to get out of it.

Mike

[icefield]

yes machines lock you into movement patterns, but how much effect does this actually have on anyone, all the pro rugby teams have stationary bikes on the sidelines to help them warm up are they wrong?

And we are not talking about thousands upon thousands or constant motions in the same plane, a few sessions a week will not affect his motor patterns that much if he is doing other sessions on other equipment

The fact is if it assists towards your desired goals it’s useful, if it doesn’t its not, and steady state aerobic sessions have effects on the body and the heart that anaerobic sessions don’t have, it’s a simple as that

[Rhizome]

Ohh yes running is boring enough but when its just in the garage on the treadmill it drives me insane even with music.

Jump ropes going to be great for cardio, elliptical is ok also.

Pity you couldn't work some bag work in also, bag work is one of my favorite tools for cardio, plus its sport specific also for us martial artists.

[JaxMMA]

You're already doing heavy lifting and intense anaerobic intervals 4x/week. What do you think you need the extra low intensity cardio for?

You won't get any increased benefit to your endurance from doing aerobics if you're already doing the kind of stuff you described. What you will end up doing is wasting a lot of time slowly ruining your posture and degrading the quality of your soft tissue.

If you are looking to accelerate some fat loss efforts, stop eating cheat meals instead of adding in time on the elliptical.

If you are just looking for a way to warm up for your lifting sessions, time on a treadmill or elliptical is about as useless as you can get. You need to be doing tissue work and dynamic movements that are specific to the lifts you plan to do that day.



Some good points...
My primary goal at the moment isn't fat loss, altho it's not ignored either. The idea of doing more low intensity/aerobics came from one of the instructors saying that I'd need some low intensity to bridge in between high intensity and heavy lifting.
Maybe throw in low intensity once a week? I don't have problems doing warmups with compound exercises if that's a more effective way.



Pity you couldn't work some bag work in also, bag work is one of my favorite tools for cardio, plus its sport specific also for us martial artists.

Unfortunatelly the bag we have right now at the gym is useless...it's too light, swings too much, and the location where it's hung isn't really good either. I'm looking into bringing my own 6ft bag if they're willing to put it up.

[LilBunnyRabbit]

As rocket said, you might want to try cycling.

Depending on how far you have to travel for the gym/school/work it may well fit into your schedule a lot better. If you're cycling at a decent pace, and the distances aren't too long, you can replace any commuting/travelling with a fitness workout instead.

[Socrastein]

But that just sounds like a blanket statement, which is rarely a good thing. I don't understand how you can make such a statement when unaware of any one individual's goals and current situation. Its just too arbitrary. Surely it must depend what the individual is trying to get out of it.

I don't have to know your goals or situation to tell you that doing 1000 situps before bed every night is a stupid idea. I agree that many things are contextual and relative, but a great many things aren't.

These are all things the elliptical cannot do, or cannot do as effectively as something else that takes less time and has fewer drawbacks:

Increase strength
Increase speed
Increase anaerobic endurance
Increase aerobic endurance
Increase metabolism
Increase muscle mass
Increase ratio of fast twitch muscle fibers
Improve agility
Improve posture
Improve soft tissue quality
Improve movement quality
Improve balance
Improve body composition

So, assuming you want to be stronger, faster, leaner, and more athletic (not a huge assumption I feel) you should not be bothering with the elliptical. There is only one thing the elliptical is good for:

Increasing the feeling that you're working out even though you aren't

If that's your primary goal, you're right: I made a blanket statement :)

The idea of doing more low intensity/aerobics came from one of the instructors saying that I'd need some low intensity to bridge in between high intensity and heavy lifting.

I figured it was something like this. I've heard this too. It's false. High intensity anaerobic exercise improves your aerobic capacity at the same time. It doesn't work the other way around however.

So if you only do aerobics, you'll need to incorporate anaerobics to have good anerobic endurance. However, if you only do anaerobics, you already have great good aerobic capacity.

Anyone who says otherwise just doesn't understand the physiology behind these things.

[JaxMMA]

Just an update:

So our gym finally got the approval from property owner that we can use the back parking lot as long as we dont leave stuff laying around in the middle of the lot, create excessive noise, and no one gets killed.
Few days ago someone brought in two large tires (~300lbs at least), sledgehammers, and a sled. Plenty of space now for sprints.
Really, I don't know what else could I ask from a commercial gym :)

[liero]

That's awesome! No more machines then?

[JaxMMA]

That's awesome! No more machines then?

Machine free!! :)

[seiken steve]

Is it immoral to hate you right now?

[JaxMMA]

Is it immoral to hate you right now?

Only a little :)

[chrispy]

I wouldn't bother with the elliptical. Waste of time.

If you're specifically looking for cardio work, calisthenic circuits are the way forward.

I have to totally disagree with that statement. I dropped about 50 pounds just doing the elliptical and eating the right things in just around 3 months.. and now, and additional 5 months later with added training programs from a trainer at the gym I've lost a total of 80 pounds, all the while my only cardio at the gym was the elliptical.

[Socrastein]

I dropped about 50 pounds just doing the elliptical and eating the right things in just around 3 months

This is why we use something called Science that helps us determine which variable had the greatest effect on fat loss. To my knowledge, every study that has controlled for diet and looked at the affect a few hours a week of low intensity aerobics has on fat loss has shown that cardio added little to zero additional fat lost.

In other words, you lost the weight because you were "eating the right things", not because you were pumping your legs and arms on a machine for extended periods of time.

You have to be very careful about jumping to conclusions about "what works for you" because you can't objectively determine exactly what is and isn't working when you use a variety of approaches.

[liero]

In other words, you lost the weight because you were "eating the right things", not because you were pumping your legs and arms on a machine for extended periods of time.


Sorry pal but I have to disagree with you.

But the low impact cardio would of helped with the weight loss. IN ADDITION to dietary change

I'm not advocating that everyone get on the trainer. But it could be useful for a very heavy person who has had a sedentary lifestyle to loose some weight and develop some GPP before they move onto something more intense. Could help prevent injury and what not.

[chrispy]

This is why we use something called Science that helps us determine which variable had the greatest effect on fat loss. To my knowledge, every study that has controlled for diet and looked at the affect a few hours a week of low intensity aerobics has on fat loss has shown that cardio added little to zero additional fat lost.

In other words, you lost the weight because you were "eating the right things", not because you were pumping your legs and arms on a machine for extended periods of time.

You have to be very careful about jumping to conclusions about "what works for you" because you can't objectively determine exactly what is and isn't working when you use a variety of approaches.


Yes eating right did help I am sure, it's the combination that had the most effect I am well aware. My point was that using the elliptical as your cardio is NOT a waste of time, as least it was not for me. I've used it as the only cardio (besides the warm ups at my club which are warm ups not a workout routine and playing hockey once a week) to go from someone who was capable, but would be winded after about 2 or 3 minutes and was categorized as obese in march of 2010, to having the body and stamina of an athlete since about mid august.

The real determining factor in there however was not what I did exactly.. but the dedication to the change in overall lifestyle.

[seiken steve]

warm ups at my club which are warm ups not a workout routine and playing hockey once a week)

The real determining factor in there however was not what I did exactly.. but the dedication to the change in overall lifestyle.

+ eating right Plus doing MAs plus whatever else you where doing at the gym.

There are now more and more confounding variables making it neigh on impossible to say that the elliptical was a deciding variable in the weight loss.

While i don't see the elliptical as useless i just see it as... pointless.
Why bother when you can run, cycle, skip etc. (aside from injuries)

[SenseiMattKlein]

JaxMMA, if boredom is your issue, try this. Get on the lifecycle or exercise bike with your favorite martial arts/fitness magazine, you will be surprised how fast an hour goes by, and when you get off the bike, not only will you be sweating, you'll be more knowledgeable. Been doing it this way for years and love it. Works on the step machine as well.

[chrispy]

(aside from injuries)

Like knees that have been torn on 2 separate occasions that dislike high impact things like running for loooong stretches of time.

Did I say it was the elliptical that was THE deciding factor in my weight loss? No.

I said it was not useless for cardio, it is the ONLY daily, meaningful cardio I did and I went from being able to last about 15 minutes and gasping for air, to going at a much higher rate for over an hour and not being out of breath, or energy at all.

Is it the greatest thing since sliced bread? For me, sure it was, for someone else maybe not. All about personal preference. But for my part, as someone who used the machine as a tool to reach my goals, I think I have a pretty strong idea of what worked for me thanks very much.

[JaxMMA]

JaxMMA, if boredom is your issue, try this. Get on the lifecycle or exercise bike with your favorite martial arts/fitness magazine, you will be surprised how fast an hour goes by, and when you get off the bike, not only will you be sweating, you'll be more knowledgeable. Been doing it this way for years and love it. Works on the step machine as well.

In most cases I'd try to keep my cardio under 30 min and as intense as possible. For me to go an hour on a bike/treadmill it would have to be slow paced and that's not good for muscle mass.

[Frodocious]

In most cases I'd try to keep my cardio under 30 min and as intense as possible. For me to go an hour on a bike/treadmill it would have to be slow paced and that's not good for muscle mass.

I do my cardio the same way as you, although I will occasionally go for a long bike ride. If I'm training slow enough to be able to read a magazine, then I'm not training hard enough to make it worthwhile.

[Socrastein]

Sorry pal but I have to disagree with you.

But the low impact cardio would of helped with the weight loss. IN ADDITION to dietary change

I'm not advocating that everyone get on the trainer. But it could be useful for a very heavy person who has had a sedentary lifestyle to loose some weight and develop some GPP before they move onto something more intense. Could help prevent injury and what not.


I appreciate you voicing a dissenting view, no need to apologize. You may disagree with me, but I'll state again that all the science I have seen on the subject (certainly not everything there is under the sun) does AGREE with what I'm saying. If I have to choose between scientific research and what I know about exercise science and the subjective opinion of someone who likes the elliptical, you're not leaving me a tough choice.

If you have any evidence that shows diet + low intensity aerobics is worth the extra effort over diet alone, I would be all over that.

Everyone knows a pound of fat is approximately 3500 calories.

Even if you spent an entire hour on the elliptical, you'd be lucky to burn 400 calories (I'm being pretty generous with that amount). So if you were on that thing EVERY SINGLE DAY for an hour, you would burn a fraction of a pound a week.

7 hours of effort for less than one pound of fat loss!? Are you kidding me?

Would that help? Yes. Is it a complete and utter waste of time when you analyze the cost to benefit? Absolutely yes.

My clients work out no more than 4 hours a week, most of them only 2 hours a week, and they average between 1.5 to 4 lbs of fat lost a week. Why would I bump them up to 9 hours a week just to make that 2.4 to 4.8 lbs? That's a complete waste of anyone's time.

And keep in mind, just as chrispy emphasized, you get better at it over time and it gets easier and easier. So that hour may burn 400 calories at first, then after a few weeks you have to go for 90 minutes or longer to get that same 400 calories.

The elliptical helps people lose fat the same way walking to the bus station, vigorously washing your body in the shower, walking a block with a bag of groceries, and other activities that hardly burn anything but contribute a small amount to total activity levels.

There aren't a lot of people saying that they lost weight by eating the right things and brushing their teeth vigorously 3x a day! It would only be slightly more ridiculous.

[chrispy]

And keep in mind, just as chrispy emphasized, you get better at it over time and it gets easier and easier. So that hour may burn 400 calories at first, then after a few weeks you have to go for 90 minutes or longer to get that same 400 calories.

The elliptical helps people lose fat the same way walking to the bus station, vigorously washing your body in the shower, walking a block with a bag of groceries, and other activities that hardly burn anything but contribute a small amount to total activity levels.

There aren't a lot of people saying that they lost weight by eating the right things and brushing their teeth vigorously 3x a day! It would only be slightly more ridiculous.

I don't know how easy you go on the elliptical but in an hour I burn about 1000 calories on it and have done so at that pace since early June.

That is not to say i do that every day now... in fact now I only use the elliptical to warm up, but I still go at that 1000cal/hour pace just only for 20 minutes.

Honestly as someone who did lose 80 pounds total to suggest I would have lost that much weight while brushing my teeth and eating right is insane at best. Experience lives right here, I'm not going on theory or whatever, I did it. The was nothing easy about it.. I basically ran on the elliptical for increasingly longer periods of time, upping the difficulty and burning more and more calories. Of course there were other changes in the lifestyle to achieve the overall goal. Once I was at a decent weight then I changed the routine, added other programs and such.


If you have any evidence that shows diet + low intensity aerobics is worth the extra effort over diet alone, I would be all over that.

Also I think there is a distinction to be made between low impact, and low intensity. There was nothing "low intensity" about how I approached my time at the gym thanks very much.

[Socrastein]

I don't know how easy you go on the elliptical but in an hour I burn about 1000 calories on it and have done so at that pace since early June.

You must be pulling that number off of the machine itself. Those are entirely inaccurate, an attempt to make people think they're getting a great workout so they'll keep using the product. I don't know what else to say about that, it's commonly known among coaches and trainers that you never bother with what the machine tells you you're burning. They're not just off by a little bit; they're not even worth considering.

Science > Cardio Machine Caloric Expenditure Estimations

Honestly as someone who did lose 80 pounds total to suggest I would have lost that much weight while brushing my teeth and eating right is insane at best.

You're committing the fallacy of association. It takes the form of "X occured at the same time or after Y did, therefore Y caused X".

"Significant fat loss occured at the same time or after spending a lot of time on the elliptical, therefore spending a lot of time on the elliptical caused significant fat loss".

It's an error of reasoning, and a very common one among exercise enthusiasts. Probably THE MOST common one next to appeals to authority (Arnold did it, so if I do it I'll look like Arnold...)

Also I think there is a distinction to be made between low impact, and low intensity. There was nothing "low intensity" about how I approached my time at the gym thanks very much.

You're right, there is a distinction between low impact and low intensity. The elliptical is still both however, no matter how you slice it.

Aerobic exercise is the lowest intensity of exercise possible aside from doing nothing. If aerobics aren't low intensity, then what is???

I've used it as the only cardio (besides the warm ups at my club which are warm ups not a workout routine and playing hockey once a week) to go from someone who was capable, but would be winded after about 2 or 3 minutes and was categorized as obese in march of 2010, to having the body and stamina of an athlete since about mid august.

I don't want to diminish your accomplishments at all Chrispy. You seem to think that because I said the elliptical sucks for fat loss that your 80lbs lost is somehow diminished. That's not the case at all. As someone who has lost nearly a 100lbs myself (used to weigh 300lbs) I know very well how hard you had to have worked and how much discipline it must have took.

Your statement that doing aerobics on the elliptical gave you the body and stamina of an athlete is frankly very insulting to athletes! You're comparing yourself and your elliptical workouts to people who push their strength, speed, explosive power, and anaerobic endurance to the max week in and week out.

To put yourself in the same category as people who deadlift twice their bodyweight, can sprint 400m in less than a minute, can jump 10+ feet from a standing start, and perform other amazing athletic feats because you can ride the elliptical for a long time without feeling super winded is very demeaning to people who know how to train correctly.

To sum up: it's awesome you lost 80 lbs by eating better, the elliptical wasted dozens if not hundreds of hours of your time for minimal results at BEST, and NO, being good at the elliptical does NOT make you an athlete, or even athletic. It makes you good at the elliptical and that's it.

Do you own stock in some leading elliptical machine company or something? :thinking:

[chrispy]

To sum up: it's awesome you lost 80 lbs by eating better, the elliptical wasted dozens if not hundreds of hours of your time for minimal results at BEST, and NO, being good at the elliptical does NOT make you an athlete, or even athletic. It makes you good at the elliptical and that's it.



I had a big reply here.. but it's ridiculous. You are convinced I wasted my time and am good at nothing beside moving my legs in a oval pattern.

I have physical, statistical, anecdotal and performance based proof and results that tell me completely otherwise.

[Socrastein]

I have physical, statistical, anecdotal and performance based proof and results that tell me completely otherwise.

As I mentioned before, I'd be willing to look at any evidence or proof you have of the claims you've made. If I'm missing out on a big fat loss tool, I need to know for the sake of everyone I train!

[SenseiMattKlein]

In most cases I'd try to keep my cardio under 30 min and as intense as possible. For me to go an hour on a bike/treadmill it would have to be slow paced and that's not good for muscle mass.

Fair enough JaxMMA. But we are not all trying to build muscle mass. For myself, the goal is to stay lean, so I am on that bike for almost an hour. The first 25 minutes is slow/moderate, which is when I read. Then I amp it up real hard for the last 30 minutes all out, then rest, then all out. Believe me, when I get off that bike my heart is pumping and I am sweating. It keeps me lean, I don't need the muscle mass at my age.

[SenseiMattKlein]

I do my cardio the same way as you, although I will occasionally go for a long bike ride. If I'm training slow enough to be able to read a magazine, then I'm not training hard enough to make it worthwhile.
Frodoucious, the trick is to do it in an interval-type way, slow and fast. During the slow parts I read, and during the fast parts I suffer. lol, but it works.

[chrispy]

As I mentioned before, I'd be willing to look at any evidence or proof you have of the claims you've made. If I'm missing out on a big fat loss tool, I need to know for the sake of everyone I train!

Now I'm not saying that all I have done is the elliptical, lets keep that straight. I'm saying that as far as cardio training all I did was the elliptical. Since June I have been on trainer designed programs using the weights and such at the gym too, but for cardio, it's the elliptical training wise (and leg day is a hell of a cardio work out - but my increase in stamina and such predated 'leg day'.

My results come to me in many forms. My trainer also trains the varsity teams for the college that the gym I go to is attached to. And according to her, I do things that varsity athletes 10 years younger than me (I'm 31) cannot do, things like ab workouts and numbers of burpees without stopping and pushups during fitness assessments and whatever else - those are her words, not mine.

And frankly when each time we do a fitness assessment and my trainer goes "holy crap! I have not seen results like this ever" I take that as a good sign.

I play (ice) hockey, I played before our season ended in March just as I was beginning to work out... when I was able to play a few games in a summer league I had only been doing something more than the elliptical for about a month. I had gone from someone that was out of breath and gasping for air on every shift to someone that hardly had to breath heavily at all. I could take 5 minute shifts at a higher pace than I could take 1 minutes shifts only a few months before. Now with the addition of muscle building programs I do have the explosive speed I was hoping for. I've gone from a 3rd tier utility player, to a top tier one. If I was in this shape when I was younger I would have been on my university team I have no doubts.

Is the elliptical solely responsible for this? Of course not. However, it played a HUGE part in what became of me throughout this process. Would I have ended up at the same results replacing the elliptical with running everyday? or on a bike? or doing a fitness class or whatever? yeah maybe, probably even... but using it as a tool worked for me. And I'm sure that had something to do with my approach. Yes I have seen people lollygagging along on the elliptical, going at a pace that doesn't work up a sweat.. I've seen people reading magazines on tread mills and stationary bikes too. I can assure you, if I had been going at that pace I wouldn't be saying that ANY machine had helped me out at all.

I used the elliptical in place of other things for a few reasons. Knees being one and I live in Canada and it was good to have something I could do rain or snow or shine indoors.

[Frodocious]

Frodoucious, the trick is to do it in an interval-type way, slow and fast. During the slow parts I read, and during the fast parts I suffer. lol, but it works.

I do interval train when I'm doing cardio and if you interval train properly (with a martial arts fitness related goal in mind) you don't need to spend an hour doing it.

[harukoraharu]

Yes. Even short durations of pyramid training / shuttle runs can be a really good workout and there isn't really long enough at one pace to get bored. I also do this on the ergo rower as part of my warmup before lifting. I haven't seen anyone read magazines while running or rowing but am prepared to be amused if you have :)

[JaxMMA]

I do my cardio the same way as you, although I will occasionally go for a long bike ride. If I'm training slow enough to be able to read a magazine, then I'm not training hard enough to make it worthwhile.

I used to go for long bike rides before, but time won't permit me now:rolleyes:
Most of the time when I do slower paced cardio at the gym I try to keep it under 30 minutes. If during that time I'm able to read, it's too slow - not that there's anything wrong with going that slow.

Fair enough JaxMMA. But we are not all trying to build muscle mass. For myself, the goal is to stay lean, so I am on that bike for almost an hour. The first 25 minutes is slow/moderate, which is when I read. Then I amp it up real hard for the last 30 minutes all out, then rest, then all out. Believe me, when I get off that bike my heart is pumping and I am sweating. It keeps me lean, I don't need the muscle mass at my age.

Understandable :cool:
We all have different goals.

Some good discussions in this thread...

I do interval train when I'm doing cardio and if you interval train properly (with a martial arts fitness related goal in mind) you don't need to spend an hour doing it.

I think if you do interval training right you WON'T be able to do it for an hour :D

[Frodocious]

I used to go for long bike rides before, but time won't permit me now:rolleyes:
Most of the time when I do slower paced cardio at the gym I try to keep it under 30 minutes. If during that time I'm able to read, it's too slow - not that there's anything wrong with going that slow.

I think if you do interval training right you WON'T be able to do it for an hour :D

Absolutely agree, if your goals are to get fit for martial arts, then intense intervals are the way to go, that is not to say long slow workouts cannot be of benefit. I think they are a good way to introduce people to exercise without frightening them off, but to maximise time and benefits intervals are the way to go.

[Socrastein]

It keeps me lean, I don't need the muscle mass at my age.

It's nearly impossible to be lean in any significant sense of the word without much muscle mass. Even with a little bit of fat, if you also have a little bit of muscle then your body fat percentage will be relatively high. I have to burst this bubble to skinny fat guys all the time who are at 20% or higher BF even though they're a small 160 or less.

Also, anaerobic workouts make you leaner than aerobic workouts. Sprinters are on average significantly leaner than endurance athletes across the board. When you use fat as your primary fuel (aerobic exercise) you train your body to STORE FAT as it's primary fuel.

When you use glycogen as your primary fuel (anaerobic exercise like JaxMMA mentioned) you train your body to STORE GLYCOGEN as it's primary fuel. Since glycogen is primarily stored in our muscles, you end up with a lean physique and full muscles, assuming the diet is good.

What makes you think muscle mass isn't a big deal as you get older? A study at Tufts university found that muscle mass and strength are the two biggest predictors of longevity.

Read that again.

More than your cholesterol, blood pressure, triglyceride levels, bmi, bodyfat percentage, or anything else you might think was the biggest predictor of how long a human would live, it turns out the strongest, most muscular people are statistically the longest to live, all other things being equal.

So I would say, good sir, that you absolutely need muscle mass. You just don't realize it ;)

Is the elliptical solely responsible for this? Of course not. However, it played a HUGE part in what became of me throughout this process.

I appreciate you taking the time to respond, but I didn't see any of the "physical, statistical, anecdotal and performance based proof" you mentioned. So far everything is just anecdotal.

And while I don't know anything about your trainer and can only speak in generalities, 99% of fitness professionals don't know anything about how to train people effectively. The odds aren't in your favor that you're paying someone who knows what they're doing.

If I remember correctly you alluded that you warm-up for your workouts with cardio. Is that correct? Did your trainer also tell you the elliptical would be a good start because you have bad knees? If so, that tells me unequivocally that you have a terrible trainer, and therefore I can't help but discount her statements as to what amazing shape you're in. You may still be a total badass in the gym, but I can't determine that from what a poor trainer has to say about you.

Simply put, bad trainers don't know what amazing shape is, and they don't know how to get anyone into it.

Since I'm asking you for evidence, it's only fair I post at least one of the studies I've been alluding to.

Kramer, Volek et al.

Influence of exercise training on physiological and performance changes with weight loss in men.

Med. Sci. Sports Exerc., Vol. 31, No. 9, pp. 1320-1329, 1999.

This study used three groups of people. One group was on a diet, another was on the same diet and did aerobics 3 times a week starting at half an hour and working up to just under an hour. The third group was on a diet, did aerobics, and also incorporated resistance training.

The group that only ate better lost 14.6 pounds of fat in 12 weeks.
The group that ate better and did over 36 cardio sessions lost one more pound of fat (15.6 lbs average).
The group that ate better, did cardio, and lifted weights lost a bit over 21 lbs of fat.

One extra pound for THREE MONTHS OF CARDIO. Hey, a pound is a pound. But that's 8 hours that could be better spent on an infinite number of things.

[chrispy]

My trainer did not suggest the elliptical at all.

My trainer trains athletes at college

My trainer teaches the fitness courses (i do not know the names of them or whatever) for the relevant programs at the college that the gym is linked to.

I'm pretty sure she knows what she is doing.

as for stats... how about

June 10 2010
(my first assesment at the gym after doing 3 months of stuff on my own)
BMI 24.4: (in march it was 33)
waist circumference: 93cm (March it was 122cm i measured that myself though)
sum of 5 skin folds: 88mm

Sept 2
BMI: 21.9
waist circumference: 81cm
S5SF: 39mm

Since September my BMI has gone up due to gains in muscle mass.
Don't worry though, I totally expect you to shoot down these measurements as BS

Those are the ones that have had the most change.. but I've gone from being a fat guy to 6 pack abs, huge muscle endurance improvements and so on.

But I really get the feeling that unless I sign a pro contract by the end of the week anything that has been done you are going to find an issue with. That YOU clearly are an expert personal trainer and therefor unless I'm at your gym training with you my trainer is a moron.

I have my results. I have seen measurable goals achieved and passed. I've seen my performance in competitive sport increase exponentially. I don't need your approval to feel good about it, the work I've done, my trainer, my process or my results.

[Socrastein]

I don't see a point in discussing things further if you're going to start to play the victim.

As someone who is so keen on good results, I'd think you would relish a conversation over the possibility that you could be doing things even better than you already have been.

You seem to interpret "Congrats on transforming your body, here are some ways you could exercise even smarter for better results!" as "You are a complete failure because you didn't do everything perfectly". Take it down a notch, you're reading too much into what's being said here. The elliptical sucks, you don't. Your trainer probably sucks, but you're still awesome. George Bush was a terrible president, but you know what Chrispy? You lost 80 flippin' pounds. Who cares if Dubya sucks. Stop taking everything so personal! This kind of self-pity is probably what got you so out of shape in the first place, don't succumb to it.

You can ALWAYS do things better. Always. Always. Always. Quit being such a stick in the fitness mud my friend.

The fact is, it takes one to know one. You're not a trainer, so you don't know what a good trainer is. I can't confidently say what makes a great doctor, dentist, lawyer, accountant, sky diver, or any other profession that I am not in. But I can confidently say what makes a great trainer. Your profile says you're in tech support. I actually used to be a 300lb technology specialist! I would repair computers, offer support, set up networks, etc. I think it's safe to say we both know a really stupid techie when we see one... agreed? Your trainer doesn't know a good techie from a bad one, and you, my hockey playing Canadian computer nerd, do not know a good trainer from a bad one.

All that being said, those are some good looking stats. They don't demonstrate anything with regard to the efficacy of the elliptical, but they definitely demonstrate that you've made some tremendous progress. What else was on the assessment she put you through?

[chrispy]

I'm totally not of the victim attitude, and what made me a big guy in the first place was that I ate lots and did little But aside from that, I'm responding personally because honestly you don't know boo about my trainer and I think it's pretty silly to suggest she sucks without any kind of personal meeting and exchange don't you? I really do doubt that the college would be paying her to instruct people and train athletes, along with her personal trainer job at the gym if she was no good. I'm very content to stop there on that subject.

I did not do a fitness assessment when I started to go to the gym in March, I wanted this to be something that I did for myself. (Now though I REALLY wish I had!! I weighed 103kg or so (about 228lbs and had a BMI of over 33. From March 11 to June 10 pretty much all I did was the elliptical then mid may I just used a few random machines to do weights.

Starting on June 10 I first began a full body work out, then we switched to different days like upper and lower.. focusing on muscle endurance, I being the nerd I am told her she was looking to build Batman not The Hulk. We've been through a number of programs and only recently have changed to the idea of purposely building muscle mass, and that was due to my own resistance I can say. I did not want to 'gain weight' and had to get over that idea that putting weight back on meant i was getting fat y'know?

So keep in mind that March 11, I weighed 103kg, BMI over 33, and god knows how awful the rest of these stats would have been!

......................10-Jun...13-Jul...2-Sep....12-Nov
Heart Rate.........48.........37.......47.........49 At rest
BP Systolic........127........113......115......121
BP Diastolic........56.........60........67.........7 7
Weight (kg).......77.3.......72.5.....69.3......72.5
Height (cm).......178........178......178......178
BMI..................24.4.......22.9.....21.9..... 22.9
Waist Girth (cm) 93...........85.5.....81 no visible abs 83 (yay i have abs now without flexing!)
Skin Folds(mm)
Triceps..............20...........9........6...... ....5
Biceps...............13...........6........5...... ....4
Subscapular......21.5.......14.5......12........11
Iliac Crest.........24.........13.5......10........10
Medial Calf........9.5..........8.5.......6.........5
So5SF............. 88..........51.......39.........35
Push-ups..........20..........26.......35.........60
Trunk Flex........39.5........37.5.....41.4......41
Vert Jump (cm).270.........272.......278.....280 (this is the reach I had, not that my feet were that high off the ground)

I'm not trying to convince anyone I've found the magic bullet to weight loss in the elliptical. I'm saying it has totally worked for me in helping to begin and continue what I set out to do. the numbers on it may be way off base, but since I used the same machine nearly every time, they were consistent data. They were numbers that I continued to push higher and while I went to the gym with no guidance to begin with it was something I could see improving along with the improvement I could feel in what my body was capable of.

Are there better ways, no doubt, I'm 100% certain that I could ask you, or my trainer, 'hey what's a better way to do a cardio workout?' and I would get all sorts of info about it. I have by reading what's here already. But the 'best' exercise is the one that gets the guy like I was off the couch and doing something consistently I think. There are always going to be better ways and new theories and all that. But what I did, worked for me.

[Socrastein]

I'm responding personally because honestly you don't know boo about my trainer and I think it's pretty silly to suggest she sucks without any kind of personal meeting and exchange don't you? I really do doubt that the college would be paying her to instruct people and train athletes, along with her personal trainer job at the gym if she was no good. I'm very content to stop there on that subject.

I guess you disagree with the "takes one to know one" notion then.

I'll respect your wish to cease discussion of the subject, so I don't see why the rest of your post was necessary if you didn't wish for it to be addressed.

Again, congrats on the fat loss. I wish you the best in your continued progress.

[chrispy]

I guess you disagree with the "takes one to know one" notion then.

I'll respect your wish to cease discussion of the subject, so I don't see why the rest of your post was necessary if you didn't wish for it to be addressed.

Again, congrats on the fat loss. I wish you the best in your continued progress.

I meant discussion on whether my trainer sucks or not, not in total.

And yes I do disagree with the notion of 'takes one to know one' for instance I don't have to be a professional hockey player to know that Crosby is better than some fourth line scrub, or I don't have to be a good actor to be able to tell when someone sucks at that too.

[Socrastein]

I meant discussion on whether my trainer sucks or not, not in total.

I asked for more assessment info to get an idea of what the quality of training you had received was, then you gave me all the information as well as some info on how you were trained and asked that we not discuss how your progress and program reflect on your trainer.

And yes I do disagree with the notion of 'takes one to know one' for instance I don't have to be a professional hockey player to know that Crosby is better than some fourth line scrub, or I don't have to be a good actor to be able to tell when someone sucks at that too.

I didn't mean you have to belong to a field to identify the absolute worst in said field. If your trainer made you fatter, weaker, and injured you then obviously you wouldn't have to be a great fitness professional to see that your trainer sucks. If we go to the other extreme, which I wasn't talking about, then it's obvious that the very best in the world are going to be better than people that aren't on that level. I wasn't comparing your trainer to Mike Boyle or Charles Poliquin, who are arguably the greatest coaches/trainers on earth. I imagine Crosby is like the Boyle of hockey, as I don't actually know anything about hockey.

No, what I meant was if you have 20 trainers that are all minimally competent, only a really good trainer will be able to understand what makes some better than others. You have to know a lot of anatomy to know if someone is wrong when they talk about the rotator cuff, for instance. You have to know a lot about exercise programming to be able to look at a program and decide if it's very good or not, and what's good or bad about it. If you don't know what it takes to assess someone effectively, you can't judge the assessment methods of someone. You see what I'm getting at?

Obviously if some techie tries to fix a computer and it goes "Fizzle... POP!" they suck. But what if they DO fix it, how do you know if they're a great techie? You have to know what CAN be done to know what the guy DIDN'T do, and only a good fellow techie knows enough to determine that. Maybe a better techie could fix it faster? Maybe one guy has to replace a part, whereas a better guy can figure out how to fix the issue without replacing anything. The laymen doesn't know the difference. The professional does. It takes one to know one.

Do you still find this concept disagreeable?

[SenseiMattKlein]

I do interval train when I'm doing cardio and if you interval train properly (with a martial arts fitness related goal in mind) you don't need to spend an hour doing it.

Depends on what your goals are. You don't start burning fat until about 30 minutes into a cardio workout. The additional 30 minutes is about fat burning and it works for me. Why rush it? I actually enjoy the time on the bike.

[Socrastein]

Matt, where did you hear that you don't burn fat until half an hour into an aerobic session? Do you perhaps have some reading materials I could look into on that? That's counter to what I understand about exercise physiology.

[SenseiMattKlein]

It's nearly impossible to be lean in any significant sense of the word without much muscle mass. Even with a little bit of fat, if you also have a little bit of muscle then your body fat percentage will be relatively high. I have to burst this bubble to skinny fat guys all the time who are at 20% or higher BF even though they're a small 160 or less.

Also, anaerobic workouts make you leaner than aerobic workouts. Sprinters are on average significantly leaner than endurance athletes across the board. When you use fat as your primary fuel (aerobic exercise) you train your body to STORE FAT as it's primary fuel.

When you use glycogen as your primary fuel (anaerobic exercise like JaxMMA mentioned) you train your body to STORE GLYCOGEN as it's primary fuel. Since glycogen is primarily stored in our muscles, you end up with a lean physique and full muscles, assuming the diet is good.

What makes you think muscle mass isn't a big deal as you get older? A study at Tufts university found that muscle mass and strength are the two biggest predictors of longevity.

Read that again.

More than your cholesterol, blood pressure, triglyceride levels, bmi, bodyfat percentage, or anything else you might think was the biggest predictor of how long a human would live, it turns out the strongest, most muscular people are statistically the longest to live, all other things being equal.

So I would say, good sir, that you absolutely need muscle mass. You just don't realize it ;)



I appreciate you taking the time to respond, but I didn't see any of the "physical, statistical, anecdotal and performance based proof" you mentioned. So far everything is just anecdotal.

And while I don't know anything about your trainer and can only speak in generalities, 99% of fitness professionals don't know anything about how to train people effectively. The odds aren't in your favor that you're paying someone who knows what they're doing.

If I remember correctly you alluded that you warm-up for your workouts with cardio. Is that correct? Did your trainer also tell you the elliptical would be a good start because you have bad knees? If so, that tells me unequivocally that you have a terrible trainer, and therefore I can't help but discount her statements as to what amazing shape you're in. You may still be a total badass in the gym, but I can't determine that from what a poor trainer has to say about you.

Simply put, bad trainers don't know what amazing shape is, and they don't know how to get anyone into it.

Since I'm asking you for evidence, it's only fair I post at least one of the studies I've been alluding to.

Kramer, Volek et al.

Influence of exercise training on physiological and performance changes with weight loss in men.

Med. Sci. Sports Exerc., Vol. 31, No. 9, pp. 1320-1329, 1999.

This study used three groups of people. One group was on a diet, another was on the same diet and did aerobics 3 times a week starting at half an hour and working up to just under an hour. The third group was on a diet, did aerobics, and also incorporated resistance training.

The group that only ate better lost 14.6 pounds of fat in 12 weeks.
The group that ate better and did over 36 cardio sessions lost one more pound of fat (15.6 lbs average).
The group that ate better, did cardio, and lifted weights lost a bit over 21 lbs of fat.

One extra pound for THREE MONTHS OF CARDIO. Hey, a pound is a pound. But that's 8 hours that could be better spent on an infinite number of things.
Not sure you read my comment correctly. I never stated I had no desire to maintain my muscle mass. I did state that I was not interested in building it up. As an ex-football (not soccer, gridiron) and wrestler, I have enough muscle mass. I have managed to keep it by doing body-weight exercises over the years, like pushups, pull-ups, lunges, etc, and now yoga. I can still do over 25 pull-ups at 51, so it definitely has worked for me. You do not need to be big to be healthy, leaner is better.

[Socrastein]

I didn't get the impression you wanted to lose muscle Matt. I simply got the impression you didn't see any reason to build any. I think increased life span is a great reason to try to build muscle.

You do not need to be big to be healthy, leaner is better.

I agree you don't need to be big to be healthy. I don't see being big and being lean as mutually exclusive though. By lean I mean having a low body fat percentage. Perhaps you mean something else by it?

If two people are both 10% body fat, both are lean. If one has 20 more pounds of muscle than the other, that guy is healthier and is statistically more likely to outlive the slightly smaller guy. That's all. Do with that what you wish.

[harukoraharu]

Somehow I think this has become a bit personal and I don't think it was intended...

I would tend to agree that weight loss is generally faster by eating less and the right foods than exercise, though obviously the two together are best for improved fitness and health. I guess as the title of this thread 'So, I hate running...' others can equally hate rowers, or elipticals, or spinning/cycles. My standard weight is around 64kg. I probably should be a couple below this. About 6 years or so I got down to 52kg, the lightest I've weighed since secondary school. I only managed this by fairly intense cardio sessions 3 times a week and a diet that was below my daily calorie allowance. I probably train just as hard or harder now but am nowhere near this 52kg. I do some form of exercise 5 days a week. Apart from age I can only guess it must be that I just eat a bit more. The BBC reported this contentious opinion fairly recently in relation to the ongoing debate on quality food in schools and the lack of sports and playing fields. Alas my searching skills have let me down :google: The main goal is to get kids off the easy access to quick/junk food, difficult given our busy lifestyles, access to fresh ingredients vs quick/junk food in some areas, advertising, etc

[SenseiMattKlein]

Matt, where did you hear that you don't burn fat until half an hour into an aerobic session? Do you perhaps have some reading materials I could look into on that? That's counter to what I understand about exercise physiology.

Most of the materials I've read over the years state 20-30 minutes into the workout, but it definitely depends on the intensity. It is proven that the interval type workout is more effective at burning fat, because it also burns more fat after the workout. That's why I include it.:hat:

[Socrastein]

Most of the materials I've read over the years state 20-30 minutes into the workout, but it definitely depends on the intensity.

If you have any articles you could link me to I would appreciate it. As I understand it, the lower the intensity of exercise the larger the percentage of fat used as fuel.

I'm burning almost 100% fat for energy now sitting on my couch surfing the internet. If I start working out aerobically at a low intensity, I will burn slightly less fat and a bit more glycogen, but I'm still burning almost completely fat for fuel.

It's only as I start to get into my anaerobic energy systems that the amount of fat utilized drops to less than the amount of glycogen utilized.

So I'm confused as to why one would need to work out aerobically for 30 minutes to start burning fat. By definition, if you're working out aerobically, then your body is using oxygen to primarily burn fat for energy.

But like I said, I'd be interested in seeing any information that refutes that.

[SenseiMattKlein]

If you have any articles you could link me to I would appreciate it. As I understand it, the lower the intensity of exercise the larger the percentage of fat used as fuel.

I'm burning almost 100% fat for energy now sitting on my couch surfing the internet. If I start working out aerobically at a low intensity, I will burn slightly less fat and a bit more glycogen, but I'm still burning almost completely fat for fuel.

It's only as I start to get into my anaerobic energy systems that the amount of fat utilized drops to less than the amount of glycogen utilized.

So I'm confused as to why one would need to work out aerobically for 30 minutes to start burning fat. By definition, if you're working out aerobically, then your body is using oxygen to primarily burn fat for energy.

But like I said, I'd be interested in seeing any information that refutes that.
This article emphasizes the need for both aerobic and anaerobic types. The longer you exercise, the more calories you burn, simple as that. http://health.msn.com/fitness/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100138677

[Socrastein]

Thanks for the read Matt. I didn't see anything in there about having to go for 30 minutes before you start burning fat however.

It's only true that the longer you exercise the more calories you burn if the activity is the same. But 15 minutes of high intensity anaerobic intervals in the form of barbell complexes is going to burn a megabillion times more calories than 60 minutes of aerobics. As I always tell my clients, work harder, not longer.

I didn't see anything in there that said you need both aerobic and anaerobic training. The author stated it didn't matter what you do as long as you burn a lot of calories.

When it comes to weight loss, it really doesn’t matter whether you are more or less fat burning. It doesn’t matter what your calories are made of, but it does matter how many calories you burn—and the more the better.

You will always burn more calories the longer or harder you exercise, no matter what your intensity is.

I guess it really comes down to working at a lower pace for a long time or working at a harder pace for a short time. As a martial artist, one should always opt for the anaerobic workout, simply because fighting is almost entirely anaerobic; at least that's the idea behind the law of specificity.

I can't think of any reason to do low intensity aerobics unless you can't handle anaerobic workouts, either physically (heart problems, severe obesity, etc.) or mentally (I can't stand sucking wind and burning everywhere!!)

Since you seem like a fit guy who likes to push himself, what reason is there really to include aerobics?

[SenseiMattKlein]

Thanks for the read Matt. I didn't see anything in there about having to go for 30 minutes before you start burning fat however.

It's only true that the longer you exercise the more calories you burn if the activity is the same. But 15 minutes of high intensity anaerobic intervals in the form of barbell complexes is going to burn a megabillion times more calories than 60 minutes of aerobics. As I always tell my clients, work harder, not longer.

I didn't see anything in there that said you need both aerobic and anaerobic training. The author stated it didn't matter what you do as long as you burn a lot of calories.

I guess it really comes down to working at a lower pace for a long time or working at a harder pace for a short time. As a martial artist, one should always opt for the anaerobic workout, simply because fighting is almost entirely anaerobic; at least that's the idea behind the law of specificity.

I can't think of any reason to do low intensity aerobics unless you can't handle anaerobic workouts, either physically (heart problems, severe obesity, etc.) or mentally (I can't stand sucking wind and burning everywhere!!)

Since you seem like a fit guy who likes to push himself, what reason is there really to include aerobics?


The question posed to her in this article was, "why exercise aerobically for 60 to 90 minutes?', and she gave her reasons in the article. I do both Socrastein because I like the calorie burning aspect of aerobics, mostly due to my narcissistic desire to look good and not do the "black belt wobble" when I walk into the dojo. And yes, I do like to push myself. Sparring with my black belts stand up and especially rolling on the mat I find the aerobic benefits kick in, especially when I go one round after the other, sometimes for 20 minutes straight. :eek:

[Socrastein]

You're paraphrasing the question and I think it's skewing the context of her answer. The person said "My trainer told me I'd burn muscle if I did aerobics too long" and she said that's not a good reason not to do aerobics, which I agree with. There are other reasons not to do aerobics.

I get that you want to burn calories. Anaerobic workouts burn more calories than aerobic workouts, so they should always be prioritized if you're looking for the most bang for your buck. Unless you're working out 8+ hours a week, there wouldn't be any reason to include low intensity aerobics for fat loss. Neither you nor the author of that article gave any compelling reasons.

Sparring with my black belts stand up and especially rolling on the mat I find the aerobic benefits kick in, especially when I go one round after the other, sometimes for 20 minutes straight.

Sparring is not aerobic unless you are fighting at an incredibly low intensity. It's not nonstop either, there are short intervals of low or no activity during a fight, interspersed with intense force production. This is the job of the anaerobic system. These are just facts of human physiology.

If you have evidence that aerobics burn more calories than anaerobics, or that aerobic endurance positively affects anaerobic endurance, then that would be a big reason to train aerobically.

To take this from another perspective, if your goal is to be fast and agile then you need to be training your high threshold motor units. The more you train your slow twitch fibers, the more you will train your body to produce very little force slowly. In other words, you'll become slower over time. I'll happily explain this in detail if you desire.

So even if we discard the low caloric expenditure and the lack of carry over to fighting endurance, we're still left with the fact that training aerobically makes you a slower athlete who cannot produce as much force as if you only trained anaerobically.

Hardly a desirable outcome for anyone who practices MA.

[Socrastein]

I was reading through the article that was linked inside the one you gave me where she wrote that you need 60-90 minutes of cardio to lose weight. Here's her support for that:

To lose weight or maintain weight loss, research shows that most people need to do at least 60 to 90 minutes of moderate exercise nearly every day.

However she doesn't actually cite any studies whatsoever. Not one. I can't take the word of some MSN trainer when it conflicts with the words (and science to back it up) of the fitness industry's leaders (Cosgrove, Waterbury, Poliquin, Cressey, Gentilcore, Robertson, Rippetoe, etc.)

[SenseiMattKlein]

All I can say here is "why do boxers rely so heavily on putting in their roadwork?" Because it works. They are out there for a long time, and the heart and lungs keep pumping at an increased level. You need to establish the cardio base first.

[Socrastein]

All I can say here is "why do boxers rely so heavily on putting in their roadwork?" Because it works. They are out there for a long time, and the heart and lungs keep pumping at an increased level. You need to establish the cardio base first.

I'm glad you brought this up, because "roadwork" among boxers is one of the most notorious examples of misunderstanding basic human physiology. It started long before we really understood how the body responds to exercise, and it kept going for no other reason than everyone was doing it!

You're making the same error of reasoning I hear from skinny kids in the gym trying to get huge. "Arnold (or whichever beef cake they idolize) did this so it must have been a good thing". For years bodybuilders used high reps to "cut up" the muscle. It was believed that one could spot reduce fat through high repetition sets. Everyone did it because everyone else did it. We know now for a fact that it was completely wrong. A lot of people still do it anyway, because they haven't gotten the memo.

Roadwork is the same thing. People go run for miles and miles straight to prepare for a fight that lasts 3 minutes at a time. It's an outdated practice. I've included 4 articles that tackle this myth, some in more detail than others. The last one goes into a lot of detail about the differences between our three energy systems.

If you're doing aerobics to improve your fighting, you just don't understand physiology. That's not meant to be insulting in the least. It's just to say, this isn't just my opinion or some fringe idea. These aren't secrets. What I'm saying is found in any textbook you can find on human physiology.

The Right Way to Train for Boxing! (http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/ss11.htm)
Boxing Training Myths (http://how-to-box.com/content/boxing-training-myths)
Ten Training Myths Exposed (Look at #7) (http://www.defrancostraining.com/articles/38-articles/63-ten-training-myths-exposed.html)
MMA Specific Endurance (http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/sports_body_training_performance/hammer_down_endurance)

Let me know what you think after you get a chance to look through those.

[JaxMMA]

Depends on what your goals are. You don't start burning fat until about 30 minutes into a cardio workout. The additional 30 minutes is about fat burning and it works for me. Why rush it? I actually enjoy the time on the bike.

That's only really applies to slow to moderate paced cardio.
With interval training/high intensity the emphasis is more on burning the fat after workout (which can be up to 36 hours).
I'm too lazy to look for all the sources tho :evil:

[Socrastein]

With interval training/high intensity the emphasis is more on burning the fat after workout (which can be up to 36 hours).
I'm too lazy to look for all the sources tho

Schuenke MD, Mikat RP, McBride JM.

Effect of an acute period of resistance exercise on excess post-exercise oxygen consumption: implications for body mass management.
Eur J Appl Physiol. 2002 Mar;86(5):411-7. Epub 2002 Jan 29.

This study consisted of half an hour of circuit training. Basal metabolic rate was elevated significantly for 38 hours!

I believe there are other studies that have shown up to a 48 hour effect. So far no study I'm aware of has tried to test the effect of accumulated EPOC, but there's a lot of reasons to believe that the effect can be compounded with a few hard anaerobic workouts a week, effectively keeping the metabolism permanently elevated.

As is often said, worrying how many calories you're burning during a workout is like worrying about how much muscle you're building during a workout. Both muscle building AND fat loss occur primarily after the workout during the recovery period, if you're training right.

[SenseiMattKlein]

Schuenke MD, Mikat RP, McBride JM.

Effect of an acute period of resistance exercise on excess post-exercise oxygen consumption: implications for body mass management.
Eur J Appl Physiol. 2002 Mar;86(5):411-7. Epub 2002 Jan 29.

This study consisted of half an hour of circuit training. Basal metabolic rate was elevated significantly for 38 hours!

I believe there are other studies that have shown up to a 48 hour effect. So far no study I'm aware of has tried to test the effect of accumulated EPOC, but there's a lot of reasons to believe that the effect can be compounded with a few hard anaerobic workouts a week, effectively keeping the metabolism permanently elevated.

As is often said, worrying how many calories you're burning during a workout is like worrying about how much muscle you're building during a workout. Both muscle building AND fat loss occur primarily after the workout during the recovery period, if you're training right.

I gotta think that being on the bike for an hour burns more calories than 30 minutes. I include both interval and moderate speeds in my workout and have remained pretty lean and mean for my age, so it works for me. When I went from just doing the interval, to adding the additional 30-35 minutes, I found it much easier to drop weight. I don't honestly know the answer to the "burning fat after 30 minutes debate", but I have read it in more than one fitness magazine or online fitness site.

[tkd GU]

Socrastein,

Those are pretty bold statements. I'm just curious.... what makes you the authority on what works and what doesn't? I find it a tad bit hard to believe that road work doesn't help athletes that have to go 10-12 rounds.

[icefield]

All I can say here is "why do boxers rely so heavily on putting in their roadwork?" Because it works. They are out there for a long time, and the heart and lungs keep pumping at an increased level. You need to establish the cardio base first.

because they understand that aerobic training is important for recovery, that the more power you can produce aerobically means the less you have to go anearobic, helps with making weight, helps the anearobic system, they understand that the three energy systems work together not independently and that any sport that lasts up to 30minutes is going to be largely aerobic in nature

[Socrastein]

I gotta think that being on the bike for an hour burns more calories than 30 minutes.

I've included quite a bit of evidence to show how shorter, more intense workouts are better for fat loss than longer low intensity workouts. While you can definitely find a lot of useful information here and there online and through fitness magazines, I don't recommend them as a reliable source of current information on exercise science and what's being used "in the trenches" by the best coaches out there. I encourage you to keep looking into EPOC and the long term fat loss effects of anaerobic workouts.

Those are pretty bold statements. I'm just curious.... what makes you the authority on what works and what doesn't? I find it a tad bit hard to believe that road work doesn't help athletes that have to go 10-12 rounds.

I never have proposed that X is true because I say it is. My arguments has taken the form of X is true because human physiology, numerous solid studies, and the world's greatest coaches all support this conclusion. I could always be wrong, but since my arguments are based primarily in human physiology, which our understanding of when it comes to basic things like energy systems work probably isn't going to change much anytime soon.

Did you read through the links I provided? I'm curious what you found invalid about them.

because they understand that aerobic training is important for recovery, that the more power you can produce aerobically means the less you have to go anearobic, helps with making weight, helps the anearobic system, they understand that the three energy systems work together not independently and that any sport that lasts up to 30minutes is going to be largely aerobic in nature

There is an upper limit to how much power one can produce with the aerobic system, and it's abysmally low. It's nothing that would win a fight, that's for sure. How long a fight lasts in total is not the determining factor of what energy system is used, because boxers don't dance around at a low intensity for 30 minutes nonstop.

Take tennis as an example. People often assume it must be largely aerobic as well because they watch Wimbledon or something and the matches go on for hours. But in a couple hours of a tennis match, there may be 15 minutes total of actual volleys and exertion. During a volley the players are SPRINTING up and down the court for a few seconds until someone scores. Then they rest while the next play is set up. Even though the total match is a long time, the game is just interspersed anaerobic intervals.

Fighting sports are very similar, though the force produced during those intervals is even greater than in tennis.

All of this is explained in a manner better than I could in the various articles I referenced.

[SenseiMattKlein]

I've included quite a bit of evidence to show how shorter, more intense workouts are better for fat loss than longer low intensity workouts. While you can definitely find a lot of useful information here and there online and through fitness magazines, I don't recommend them as a reliable source of current information on exercise science and what's being used "in the trenches" by the best coaches out there. I encourage you to keep looking into EPOC and the long term fat loss effects of anaerobic workouts.


I never have proposed that X is true because I say it is. My arguments has taken the form of X is true because human physiology, numerous solid studies, and the world's greatest coaches all support this conclusion. I could always be wrong, but since my arguments are based primarily in human physiology, which our understanding of when it comes to basic things like energy systems work probably isn't going to change much anytime soon.

Did you read through the links I provided? I'm curious what you found invalid about them.



There is an upper limit to how much power one can produce with the aerobic system, and it's abysmally low. It's nothing that would win a fight, that's for sure. How long a fight lasts in total is not the determining factor of what energy system is used, because boxers don't dance around at a low intensity for 30 minutes nonstop.

Take tennis as an example. People often assume it must be largely aerobic as well because they watch Wimbledon or something and the matches go on for hours. But in a couple hours of a tennis match, there may be 15 minutes total of actual volleys and exertion. During a volley the players are SPRINTING up and down the court for a few seconds until someone scores. Then they rest while the next play is set up. Even though the total match is a long time, the game is just interspersed anaerobic intervals.

Fighting sports are very similar, though the force produced during those intervals is even greater than in tennis.

All of this is explained in a manner better than I could in the various articles I referenced.

Are you saying that you don't need the aerobic type exercises anymore, Sacrostein? I would agree with icefield's assessment that you need both, especially if you are out there for 10-12 rounds, like tkdGu says.

[Socrastein]

That's exactly what I'm saying. That's what all of the articles I linked say, and I also was surfing through the H&F Resource Library in the archives and I recognized an old Health and Fitness FAQ (http://www.martialartsplanet.com/forums/showthread.php?t=26991) that Knight Errant and Ad McG put together years ago.

From the section What should I do for cardio?:

Cardio for martial arts is geared more towards the phosphagenic and glycolitic systems, i.e. shorter, more intense periods of activity.
Shadowboxing is a very effective way of doing cardio for martial arts. Other methods are interval training, sprinting, skipping, etc. For somebody who needs to fight 3 minute rounds, running 5 miles in the morning is a REAL waste of time. Shadowboxing is probably the best cardio you can do for MA. And bagwork. And skipping.

So these really aren't that bold of statements. The information has been around for years, in the archives as well as other places, it's just that not everyone is aware of it.

I'm not saying that aerobic endurance is completely useless, though it's pretty close as far as lasting in a fight is concerned. I'm saying aerobic EXERCISE is useless, because you will improve BOTH your anaerobic and aerobic energy systems through anaerobic exercise, but the opposite is not true. Aerobic work makes you good at aerobic work, and that's it. It'll help you in a fight about as much as spending 3 hours a week learning to wittle wood would. Say that 5 times fast ;)

When you see a fighter "gas out" in a fight they haven't ran out of aerobic endurance, they've run out of anaerobic endurance.

They still are able to fight, but everything is slower and they aren't able to produce enough force to end the fight anymore. That's because they're using their aerobic system (cause their anaerobic capacity is tapped) and the aerobic system is used for long durations of very low force production.

Aside from all the science and physiology behind this, I've seen it myself in person when I work with a marathon runner for the first time on some boxing. Even though these people can sustain aerobic output for hours at a time, they end up puking after about 3 hard rounds on the heavy bag because their aerobic endurance does not help them with anaerobic work.

[icefield]

Are you saying that you don't need the aerobic type exercises anymore, Sacrostein? I would agree with icefield's assessment that you need both, especially if you are out there for 10-12 rounds, like tkdGu says.

recent studies have shown just how important the aerobic system is in even short duration events like 200 and 400m sprints
Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2001 Jan;33(1):157-62.

Energy system contribution during 200- to 1500-m running in highly trained athletes.
Spencer MR, Gastin PB.

Department of Human Movement and Sport Sciences, University of Ballarat, Victoria, Australia. mspencer@wais.org.au

Abstract
PURPOSE: The purpose of the present study was to profile the aerobic and anaerobic energy system contribution during high-speed treadmill exercise that simulated 200-, 400-, 800-, and 1500-m track running events.

METHODS: Twenty highly trained athletes (Australian National Standard) participated in the study, specializing in either the 200-m (N = 3), 400-m (N = 6), 800-m (N = 5), or 1500-m (N = 6) event (mean VO2 peak [mL x kg(-1)-min(-1)] +/- SD = 56+/-2, 59+/-1, 67+/-1, and 72+/-2, respectively). The relative aerobic and anaerobic energy system contribution was calculated using the accumulated oxygen deficit (AOD) method.

RESULTS: The relative contribution of the aerobic energy system to the 200-, 400-, 800-, and 1500-m events was 29+/-4, 43+/-1, 66+/-2, and 84+/-1%+/-SD, respectively. The size of the AOD increased with event duration during the 200-, 400-, and 800-m events (30.4+/-2.3, 41.3+/-1.0, and 48.1+/-4.5 mL x kg(-1), respectively), but no further increase was seen in the 1500-m event (47.1+/-3.8 mL x kg(-1)). The crossover to predominantly aerobic energy system supply occurred between 15 and 30 s for the 400-, 800-, and 1500-m events.

CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that the relative contribution of the aerobic energy system during track running events is considerable and greater than traditionally thought.

PMID: 11194103 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

More and more, we are understanding importance of the aerobic energy system, even in sports that we used to believe were glycolytic in nature. The 400m for by the way, turns out to be somewhere between 40-50% aerobic, depending on which research you look at these days. Even a 100m sprint is 15-20% aerobic! You are totally wrong saying such events are "without significant aerobic involvement"


http://www.athleticscoaching.ca/UserFiles/File/Sport%20Science/Theory%20&%20Methodology/Speed/General%20Concepts/Duffield%20Energy%20System%20contribution%20in%20T rack%20Running.pdf

so if events of 1 minute or yes are close to 50/50 when it comes to aerobic contribution what is an event that is close to 30 minutes in duration?

[tkd GU]

Ok intervals/shadow boxing seems like a plausable solution, but you can't deny that road work is extremely beneficial in making weight. This is a very relevant consideration. Not many athletes fighting weight and walk-around weight is the same. 5 miles sounds about right for a run to lose weight. The pace you run in 5k(3.1 mi) or less isn't actually the best for burning fat. That's what I've heard anyway...

[SenseiMattKlein]

recent studies have shown just how important the aerobic system is in even short duration events like 200 and 400m sprints


More and more, we are understanding importance of the aerobic energy system, even in sports that we used to believe were glycolytic in nature. The 400m for by the way, turns out to be somewhere between 40-50% aerobic, depending on which research you look at these days. Even a 100m sprint is 15-20% aerobic! You are totally wrong saying such events are "without significant aerobic involvement"


http://www.athleticscoaching.ca/UserFiles/File/Sport%20Science/Theory%20&%20Methodology/Speed/General%20Concepts/Duffield%20Energy%20System%20contribution%20in%20T rack%20Running.pdf

so if events of 1 minute or yes are close to 50/50 when it comes to aerobic contribution what is an event that is close to 30 minutes in duration?
This is a very interesting finding icefield, and it's funny because it jives with my experience in track and field. We had about 6 sprinters on our squad, training in mostly 100 to 220 yards (yes it was yards back then) sprints and explosiveness drills, etc. The distance squad ran from 440 yard dashes to over 3 mile runs in their training. One day we had two sprinters injured so they threw a couple of the middle distance runners in (440 and 880 yard guys) in the 220 yard dash at the track meet. Guess who won? The two middle distance guys beat the other sprinters. Why? They had much more stamina at the end of the race. A fight might last two minutes. That is like an 880 yard dash, so yes, you need an aerobic base of stamina to cope with it.

[icefield]

This is a very interesting finding icefield, and it's funny because it jives with my experience in track and field. We had about 6 sprinters on our squad, training in mostly 100 to 220 yards (yes it was yards back then) sprints and explosiveness drills, etc. The distance squad ran from 440 yard dashes to over 3 mile runs in their training. One day we had two sprinters injured so they threw a couple of the middle distance runners in (440 and 880 yard guys) in the 220 yard dash at the track meet. Guess who won? The two middle distance guys beat the other sprinters. Why? They had much more stamina at the end of the race. A fight might last two minutes. That is like an 880 yard dash, so yes, you need an aerobic base of stamina to cope with it.

yep more and more studies are showing how important the aerobic system is, heres a few other points i would like to make

firstly the aerobic system can generation a fair bit of power, marathon runners can run at a pace of 13 miles an hour and can keep this up for hour after hour, that is hardly slow or not very powerful
The current world record holder in the 1500 track event is a Moroccan named Hicham El Guerrouj with a time of 3:26. As described in the book Healthy Intelligent Training by Keith Livingstone, Guerrouj’s training is very similar to Arthur Lydiard’s training, a metric ton of ’strong aerobic running’ (essentially intensive endurance) topped off with small amounts of speed work and intervals.
Now, do the math on that, a 3:26 1500 is the equivalent of 13.7 seconds per 100m. While that certainly won’t win any sprint events, that’s not slow and donates a fairly powerful aerobic engine. And he does it 15 times in a row which is something no pure sprinter could do. The same individual has run a 1:47 800 which is 13.3 seconds per 100m done 8 times in a row. Not sprinter speed but certainly not ’slow’ in the sense that most throw the word around and it certainly donates a fairly powerful aerobic system.


As to the role the aerobic system plays in MMA and boxing, this is taken from Lyle McDonalds excellent 9 part article series on endurance training:

And, generally speaking, the recovery between bouts of high intensity activity (this also holds for MMA or boxing athletes during easier periods during the rounds, or between rounds) is dominated by aerobic metabolism. An MMA athlete with the cardiovascular development to recover to a greater degree in the 1 minute between rounds will be starting each round fresher than the one who can’t. This is even more pronounced if they can generate more power aerobically during the round itself. Not only don’t they dig the hole as deep during the round, they get out of it quicker between rounds.
An added situation is this: in the mixed sports, usually the athletes are already doing a tremendous amount of fairly specific training when they practice their sport. Boxers or MMA may be training/sparring at high intensities, football/soccer/hockey players are scrimmaging and that alone may be mimicking the energetics of their sport.
My question: How much more specific training can you tack onto that?
The answer is generally not much. Certainly if an athlete is in a situation where they can’t practice their sport at high intensities, doing more specific work in non-sport related conditioning (e.g. intervals on the bike or rowing machine) may be perfectly appropriate to get them ready. But if they are already getting what amounts to HIIT in their in-game practices, how much more do they need? The body can only handle so much high intensity work before things go awry and trying to take on HIIT conditioning on a bike or something on top of what amounts to HIIT work in-practice seems excessive.
But since they may need other general conditioning, I’d tend to argue that some form of extensive or possibly intensive endurance methods might have a role. Not only does it help with recovery but it can improve the aerobic engine such that recovery between high-intensity bouts is better and faster.
The following is also taken from Lyles articles and shows another reason for developing a strong aerobic system:



However, one of the primary effectors of adaptation is something called AMPk (which stands for adenosine monophosphate kinase). Now, I wrote an article about AMPk: The Master Metabolic Regulator several years ago and, since that time, research has simply continued to mount on the topic. For the details you can read the article, I’ll simply recap below.
In essence, AMPk is a cellular energy sensor, it reacts to changes in the energy state of the muscle cell and this has a number of effects. For example, when AMPk is activated, the muscle will burn more fat for fuel, it will take up glucose from the blood stream, it will become more insulin sensitive. It’s worth mentioning that AMPk activation also inhibits protein synthesis by inhibiting another molecular sensor called mTOR. This explains a whole bunch of other things (such as why doing a lot of endurance training after you lift is a bad idea) which I’m not going to get into in this article.
Relevant to this article, AMPk activation is a big part of what stimulates mitochondrial biogenesis (that is, the creation of new mitochondria). If you remember hearing about the couch potato rat that was turned into a marathon running rat, that was done by over-expressing AMPk in the skeletal muscle.
This is critically important to endurance performance (and, as it turns out, ‘anaerobic’ performance) because mitochondria are where oxygen is processed. And, as I mentioned above, mitochondria are also involved in buffering acid accumulation during higher intensity/anaerobic activities. Having a bigger aerobic engine ends up having two impacts:
You can produce more power without producing acid in the first place
When acid is produced, the body can metabolize it better
Which is why even seemingly ‘anaerobic’ sports end up doing a fair amount of basic endurance work. Even in the 400m (an event lasting 45 seconds), the aerobic contribution is about 50% or so, by the time you get to the 800m, it’s even more significant. Athletes in the 400m do a fair amount of aerobic work as part of their total training, it can comprise half or more of the total training volume for an 800m runner depending on their strengths and weaknesses. A speed based runner may do more endurance work; an endurance based runner does proportionally more speed work. But they all do a good bit of aerobic work. But I digress.
So what, you ask, turns on AMPk? Basically, AMPk is activated when the energy status of the cell is disrupted. So under normal conditions, the body is using ATP for fuel but can make as much as it needs. When you start exercising, the body can’t make ATP quickly enough and you get an increase in something called ADP (adenosine diphosphate, it’s just ATP with a phosphate stripped off of it). ADP is further metabolized to AMP (adenosine monophosphate which is ATP with both phosphates stripped off of it).
And this shift in the ATP/AMP ratio is what turns on AMPk; basically the cell ’senses’ that it’s energy levels have been disrupted so it turns on other stuff to try and combat that; AMPk activation is a big part of ‘what happens’. And when you activate AMPk along with doing a bunch of other stuff you get an adaptation. Mitochondria proliferate, aerobic enzymes increase; endurance improves.
If you think about what’s happening, this should make sense. Increasing endurance simply means that the body is better able to produce sufficient energy to keep continuing without fatigue. So the stimulus for this is related (at least partially) to an imbalance between energy production and energy requirements. The power output or endurance duration that had previously caused the energetic imbalance no longer does due to the adaptation.
This also explains why training has to progress in either intensity, duration or both depending on what’s trying to be achieved. At a fundamental level, an improvement in ‘endurance’ means that the body has improved its ability to maintain ATP levels during exercise; this means that the same training load will no longer activate AMPk in the future and no further adaptations will be stimulated.
I’d mention in that context that AMPk can be activated by a number of different types of stimuli and this has relevance for the different successful methods of endurance training that have been used over the years. Some research suggests that AMPk is only activated if a certain intensity of endurance training is surpassed; however, even at lower intensities, long enough durations of training can still stimulate AMPk and adaptations to training.
So having Having a bigger aerobic engine ends up having two impacts:
You can produce more power without producing acid in the first place
When acid is produced, the body can metabolize it better


Keep in mind that aerobic training does not just mean steady state work at low heart rates (130-150bpm for example), this is just one aspect of aerobic training (and a necessary one if you need to build a base) threshold work at or about the point where your aerobic system starts to fail and your anaerobic system takes over is important if you wish to improve the power of your aerobic system and this can be hard gruelling work. This work does not just mean road work or machine work, road work and cardio machine work of course allows you to easily monitor distance and power output which are very useful in allowing you to see progress made, but shadow boxing, shadow grappling etc can be used as can pad work, bag work, wrestling drills etc or a mix of the above as long as you stay within the prescribed heart rate zones for the set duration of the session

As for what system is being used in a fight the easy thing to do is get your threshold tested and then stick a heart rate monitor on and spar several rounds, see what your average HR is and how it correlates to your threshold and go from there. Another good test once you have your threshold is to see how much power you can generate in watts at that heart rate (most cardio machines will have a power output function), and then after some serious aerobic training re test and see what your power output has changed to at said heart rate.

[icefield]

Now in regards to steady state v intervals for fat loss again ill use Lyles articles here,
Stead State vs. Intervals: A Conclusion
Over the past month of articles, I’ve been talking about the current fascination with interval training (for either fat loss or performance) with the main focus being on what I see as a myopic ‘intervals are always superior’ mentality (usually based on poor arguments).
A secondary focus has been on what I’m seeing people do in practice as they have been convinced (wrongly) that intervals are the only way to train.
At the same time, I want to make it absolutely clear that I am not anti-interval. They are a useful tool and have their pros (and cons). It’s the uncritical belief that they are either the only or the best way to train (and the arguments used to support such) that I have a big problem with. Or the idea that they are the only type of training that can or should be done.
As a quick introduction, Steady State and Interval Training: Part 1 would be a good place to start for an analysis of what the pros and cons of steady state and interval training are.
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I am a wordy person, which is why I’ve been going on about this for a month. I also had a lot to get off my chest because the terrible advice and spurious arguments being made by the pro-interval camp hiss me off.
But since some of you may be tuning in for the first time and/or you simply didn’t or don’t want to read the endless verbiage in the blog, I thought I’d do a quick summary to each of the articles I wrote along with a link to an article that sums up my recommendations to people.
After a brief introduction to the topic, the first thing I looked at was a research review on Endurance Training and Obesity: Effect on Substrate Metabolism and Insulin Sensitivity which looked at improvements in fat oxidation and insulin sensitivity for steady state versus interval training. Short summary: the steady state cardio showed a beneficial adaptation in both fat oxidation and insulin sensitivity that the interval training program did not.
Pole Vaulting for a Hot Body had to do with the commonly stated argument that you can run a marathon and still be fat but 400m runners are always lean, ergo interval training is superior for fat loss. There are several problems with this argument not the least of which that 400m runners do most of their work at low intensities and the high intensity sprint work they do is nothing like the type of interval training that is being advocated for fat loss in the first place.
In a continuation of that idea, I pointed out that the people making this argument are essentially comparing recreational runners to high-performance sprinters, which makes no sense. In Sprinters vs. Marathoners, I pointed out that ELITE marathon runners are always lean. It’s just a ridiculous argument all around and comparing recreational joggers to elite athletes is intellectually dishonest in the first place.
Another argument that the superiority of interval training rests on is that it generates an exceptionally large post-workout calorie burn. In the research review Effects of Exercise Intensity and Duration on the Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption, I put this idea to rest. While the relative burn following high-intensity training may be larger, the total absolute contribution is still miniscule (partly because the total calorie burn of the average interval sessions is pretty small, even a larger PERCENTAGE burn doesn’t amount to much). In one study, following intervals, a whopping 35 some odd extra calories were burned. Yippee.

Heres the full article

Effects of Exercise Intensity and Duration on the Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption
Title and Abstract
LaForgia J et. al. Effects of exercise intensity and duration on the excess post-exercise oxygen consumption. J Sports Sci. 2006 Dec;24(12):1247-64.
Recovery from a bout of exercise is associated with an elevation in metabolism referred to as the excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC). A number of investigators in the first half of the last century reported prolonged EPOC durations and that the EPOC was a major component of the thermic effect of activity. It was therefore thought that the EPOC was a major contributor to total daily energy expenditure and hence the maintenance of body mass. Investigations conducted over the last two or three decades have improved the experimental protocols used in the pioneering studies and therefore have more accurately characterized the EPOC. Evidence has accumulated to suggest an exponential relationship between exercise intensity and the magnitude of the EPOC for specific exercise durations. Furthermore, work at exercise intensities >or=50-60% VO2max stimulate a linear increase in EPOC as exercise duration increases. The existence of these relationships with resistance exercise at this stage remains unclear because of the limited number of studies and problems with quantification of work intensity for this type of exercise. Although the more recent studies do not support the extended EPOC durations reported by some of the pioneering investigators, it is now apparent that a prolonged EPOC (3-24 h) may result from an appropriate exercise stimulus (submaximal: >or=50 min at >or=70% VO2max; supramaximal: >or=6 min at >or=105% VO2max). However, even those studies incorporating exercise stimuli resulting in prolonged EPOC durations have identified that the EPOC comprises only 6-15% of the net total oxygen cost of the exercise. But this figure may need to be increased when studies utilizing intermittent work bouts are designed to allow the determination of rest interval EPOCs, which should logically contribute to the EPOC determined following the cessation of the last work bout. Notwithstanding the aforementioned, the earlier research optimism regarding an important role for the EPOC in weight loss is generally unfounded. This is further reinforced by acknowledging that the exercise stimuli required to promote a prolonged EPOC are unlikely to be tolerated by non-athletic individuals. The role of exercise in the maintenance of body mass is therefore predominantly mediated via the cumulative effect of the energy expenditure during the actual exercise.
My Comments
In the last year or three, exercise programs for fat loss have been geared around the concept of using certain types of training (either interval style cardio or highish rep/short rest weight training) to cause fat loss through an ‘afterburn‘ effect where calories are burned after workouts to a greater degree than following standard training styles (esp. low intensity cardio). Clearly from a real-world perspective, this type of training ‘works’.
Of course so do a lot of other kinds of training including the standard bodybuilder model of doing heavy weights to maintain muscle and using diet/low intensity cardio to lose fat but that’s neither here nor there right now. But a question is whether the high intensity interval types of programs are actually working via the mechanism of EPOC (as is usually claimed).
Put differently, there’s no doubt that there is an EPOC following training. The important question is what the actual magnitude of that calorie burn is and whether or not it’s reasonable to except amazing results based on EPOC per se. This paper looks at the topic in enormous detail.
The first topic discussed is what EPOC actually represents. An outdated concept is that the post-exercise calorie burn represented an ‘oxygen debt’ representing the difference between what the body needed and what was available, this turns out to be simplistic and wrong. Lactate metabolism, phosphate resynthesis and fatty acid cycling, along with increases in catecholamine levels are likely the cause of the post-exercise calorie burn. Ultimately, the mechanisms are less important than the fact that EPOC is the result of a metabolic perturbation that has to be ‘repayed’ afterwards.
I’m not going to detail the next section of the paper as it dealt with a bunch of boring methodological issues. Sufficed to say that accurate measurement of EPOC requires that certain methodologies be adhered to. One huge confound, which is likely the cause of the ‘exercise raises metabolism for 24 hours’ thing is due to a massive methodological flaw in early studies: they didn’t take into account the thermic effect of eating. It’s easy to mistake the thermic effect of eating with an effect of exercise. Good studies take this into account. Other issues such as taking into account baseline metabolic rate and subject characteristics are also important.
The next section of the paper deals with continuous exercise and the impact of both duration and intensity on EPOC. Without going into every paper detailed in the review, the picture that has developed from the research is that EPOC goes up linearly with increasing exercise duration but exponentially with increasing intensity. That is, higher intensity exercise generates the higher EPOC. This is true if the duration is the same or if the same number of calories are burned.
That is, if two people both burned 300 calories during exercise but one exercised at a high intensity and one at low intensity, the high intensity guy would get about double the EPOC. The problem is that, even under these conditions, the EPOC is still pretty minimal in an absolute sense (e.g. total number of calories burned).
In one study, subjects who exercised for 80 minutes at 70% VO2 max (about 80% of maximum heart rate) had an EPOC lasting 7 hours. But it only amounted to about 80 calories extra burned. Not to mention that only the most well trained individuals could sustain such a workload in the first place. As well, this still represented a rather small proportion of the total calorie burn from the exercise bout itself. That is, most of the calories burned were from the 80 minutes of exercise, the small EPOC only added a bit to that. Yeah, every little bit helps but which is going to contribute more to fat loss: the 700-800 calories burned during the exercise bout itself or the 80 calories burned afterwards?
Additionally, it appears that there is an intensity threshold to generate any EPOC at all, compared to exercise at 30-50% VO2 max (50% VO2 is about 65% of max HR or the typical ‘fat burning’ zone), exercise at 75% generates a larger EPOC. However, the total calorie burn is still relatively small overall, averaging perhaps 7% of the total energy burned.
So if you burn 600 calories with high intensity continuous exercise, you might burn an additional 45 afterwards. While this certainly adds up over long periods of time, it’s still relatively insignificant compared to the total energy expenditure of the exercise bout. Again, which is more important for fat loss:the 45 extra calories you burned via EPOC or the 600 calories you burned with the exercise bout itself?
The next section of the paper dealt with supramaximal work, intervals basically. Interestingly, the data available here finds that relatively short amounts of intervals can generate EPOCs comparable to much longer bouts of continuous exercise. Several studies measured EPOCs from relatively short interval workouts on par with studies using much longer (>50 minutes) of moderate intensity work.
Still, the total magnitude (total calories burned) of the EPOC was relatively small, equal to roughly 13% of the total energy used during the exercise bout (yes, about double the 7% of steady state but still small in absolute terms). So while the relative amount of calories burned after interval training is larger, the total amount is still small.
Let’s put this into real-world perspective. In one study, subjects ran 20X1 minute intervals above VO2 max with a 2′ rest between. While the EPOC was about double that found in subjects who performed 30′ at 70% Vo2 max, the total EPOC was only about 32 calories (135 kJ). Less than half an apple burned from EPOC. You’ll be ripped in about 15 years at that rate.
The next section of the paper dealt a little more with the issue of exercise duration as studies have identified an increase in EPOC with increasing durations. However, the effect is only significant for exercise performed at intensities greater than 50-60% VO2 max (60-72% max heart rate). However, unless folks are willing to do 60-90 minutes+ of training, this still doesn’t amount to very much in absolute terms. This is especially true of lower intensity exercise where prolonged durations of 90′ or more are necessary to generate a prolonged EPOC; even there the absolute magnitude of calories burned is still small.
Finally the paper examines the impact of resistance training on EPOC. A number of studies have been performed and found fairly prolonged durations of EPOC (15-38 hours) and an increase in metabolic rate of 9-11% over that time period (so someone with a basal metabolic rate of 1600 calories per day might burn 160 calories extra). However, many of the studies used horribly unrealistic numbers of sets (60 sets of 8-12 in one study, 30 sets in another) and that certainly doesn’t represent the types of ‘metabolic’ workouts I’ve seen recommended. Interestingly, a study of women found a much shorter duration of EPOC (60-90 minutes); the reasons for this are unknown. The paper points out that the average trainee is unlikely to be able to sustain either the volumes (30-60 sets) or intensities used in these studies.
Finally, perhaps the most interesting study was the one using a relatively low volume of training (4 exercises for 4 sets of 10 each) in experienced lifters; in that study metabolic rate was significantly elevated for nearly 48 hours after lifting burning something like 700 calories extra over that time period (this was thought to represent the energy cost of protein synthesis and repairing muscle damage).
This study has never been replicated and the other studies examining the topic have not found nearly the same effect. Perhaps only experienced lifters can train hard enough to make EPOC significant. Perhaps the study was simply a fluke and the measured increase in metabolic rate didn’t actually occur. Without replication, nobody can really say.
The paper concludes that, despite the variability in studies, the intensity of exercise appears to be of the utmost importance in terms of generating an EPOC. No argument there. However, most studies indicate that the total magnitude of the EPOC is unlikely to be very large no matter what is done.
With interval type training, EPOC may approach 14% of the total energy expended but, generally speaking, interval training doesn’t burn as many calories during the bout so while the relative amount may be larger, the total EPOC is still small as noted above. For submaximal work, an EPOC of 7% is roughly the average. Even though the EPOC as a %age is smaller, the absolute magnitude of calories burned will still be larger. As well, odds are that the longer, less intensive steady state sessions burned more total calories during exercise. Steady state may still come out ahead here, I’ll come back to this in tomorrow’s follow-up blog post to put some concrete numbers to things.
As well, outside of trained individuals, most folks couldn’t sustain the durations (90′+) or intensities (80% maximum heart rate for steady state work or supra-maximal intervals) required to generate much of an EPOC in the first place. I would note that even beginners can work up to that level with a properly set up progressive program. One beef I tend to have with many exercise and fat loss studies is that the intensity or duration of the exercise is never increased as the folks become fitter. But that’s a separate topic for another day.
The paper suggests that focusing on maximizing the calorie burn of the exercise bout itself and issues of compliance should be the primary goal (e.g. beginners + high-intensity training tend to equal burnout, injuries and quitting exercise). Because even if you burn a few extra calories after the exercise bout, if you increase how many calories you burn with exercise by a couple of hundred, that couple of hundred will have a much larger impact than the 15 extra you burn because of it. Regardless of what you do.
Summing Up
There is absolutely no doubt that higher intensity activity generates a larger EPOC, as measured by the percentage contribution. But like the fact that low intensity cardio burns a greater percentage of fat than higher intensity, this is misleading. 14% of a smaller calorie burn may still be smaller than 7% of a much larger burn. At the end of the day, outside of extremely unrealistic levels of exercise, the basic fact is that the absolute magnitude of the EPOC simply doesn’t amount to very much in the first place. One interval study, which found a 14% increase in metabolic rate via EPOC measured an irrelevant 32 calorie afterburn. Yayyy.
And while some weight training studies are suggestive of higher EPOC’s, the volumes used are typically absurd; the one study which showed a big afterburn from a low volume of training has never been replicated and there are more questions than answers here.
The simple fact is that the calories burned during activity are going to contribute the most to calorie burn, not EPOC and focusing on increasing that value is going to have a much larger impact on calorie balance (all other things equal) than worrying about EPOC.

Ill let everyone draw what ever conclusion they want from that article

[Socrastein]

Icefield

I want to thank you for taking the time to post all that information and research. Lyle McDonald is definitely a brilliant mind in the industry, no doubt about that.

I've already been coming to respect you and your knowledge just from a handful of posts I've seen from you, but now my respect for you is tremendous.

I'm chomping at the bit to discuss this with you, but you did leave me a small book and I will not be able to respond with just a paragraph or two. I'm leaving tomorrow morning at 4am for a week long trip, so I'll have to wait to get back before I have the time to respond but I will certainly get to it.

I have a couple questions about the first study you published that will help make sure I don't respond in error.

Highly trained athletes were used for the study, but I don't believe it mentioned what sport they were from. Do you happen to know? That would certainly affect the results of the study.

Do you know if special treadmills were used that go at higher speeds than the average treadmill? Most treads top out at around 12mph or so if I'm not mistaken.

Some thoughts to mull over as a "taste" of my response: sprinting on a treadmill effectively takes the posterior chain, primarily the glutes and hamstrings, out of the equation. Perhaps exercising without using the most powerful muscles on the human body isn't the best way to see what energy systems would be used in a fight?

Also, do fighters exert energy nonstop in the same manner as during a sprint? When I used to do 400 and 800m sprints, I never got to slow down and "size up" the track while I waited to explode into another sprint. This could possibly make it difficult to compare the effects of sustained sprinting to intermittent punching, kicking, and charging.

I would concede that rolling around in a BJJ match, if you are staying relaxed like you are supposed to, is fairly close to this type of sustained energy output, at least until someone sees an opening and attacks.

I'm at my last day of work and really shouldn't even be posting this much, but I really can't wait to respond in more detail.

Thanks again, I'll catch up with you next week. Mad respect ;)

[icefield]

Icefield

I want to thank you for taking the time to post all that information and research. Lyle McDonald is definitely a brilliant mind in the industry, no doubt about that.

I've already been coming to respect you and your knowledge just from a handful of posts I've seen from you, but now my respect for you is tremendous.

I'm chomping at the bit to discuss this with you, but you did leave me a small book and I will not be able to respond with just a paragraph or two. I'm leaving tomorrow morning at 4am for a week long trip, so I'll have to wait to get back before I have the time to respond but I will certainly get to it.

I have a couple questions about the first study you published that will help make sure I don't respond in error.

Highly trained athletes were used for the study, but I don't believe it mentioned what sport they were from. Do you happen to know? That would certainly affect the results of the study.

Do you know if special treadmills were used that go at higher speeds than the average treadmill? Most treads top out at around 12mph or so if I'm not mistaken.

Some thoughts to mull over as a "taste" of my response: sprinting on a treadmill effectively takes the posterior chain, primarily the glutes and hamstrings, out of the equation. Perhaps exercising without using the most powerful muscles on the human body isn't the best way to see what energy systems would be used in a fight?

Also, do fighters exert energy nonstop in the same manner as during a sprint? When I used to do 400 and 800m sprints, I never got to slow down and "size up" the track while I waited to explode into another sprint. This could possibly make it difficult to compare the effects of sustained sprinting to intermittent punching, kicking, and charging.

I would concede that rolling around in a BJJ match, if you are staying relaxed like you are supposed to, is fairly close to this type of sustained energy output, at least until someone sees an opening and attacks.

I'm at my last day of work and really shouldn't even be posting this much, but I really can't wait to respond in more detail.

Thanks again, I'll catch up with you next week. Mad respect ;)

Thanks I’m not sure if I am knowledgeable but I can copy and paste smarter guys lol and I look forward to your responses, strength and conditioning work has always fascinated me. Lyles work, Joel Jamison’s website and book, and Mark McLaughlin’s stuff over at elite fitness have really changed how I view S and C work.

I’m not sure on what machines the tests were done or the sports the athletes were from ( I believe like the scond study I listed they were track athletes but not 100% sure, the following research was done by tabata on I believe ego bikes and comes to a similar conclusion:


Anaerobic energy release is of great importance for shortlasting exercise but has been difficult to quantify. In order to determine the amount of anaerobic energy release during shortlasting exercise we let 17 healthy young males exercise on the ergometer bike to exhaustion. The power during exercise was kept constant and selected to cause exhaustion in approximately 30 s, 1 min, or 2-3 min. The O2 uptake was measured continuously during the exercise, and the anaerobic energy release was quantified by the accumulated O2 deficit. The work done as well as the total energy release rose linearly with the exercise duration and was therefore a sum of a component proportional to time plus a constant addition. The accumulated O2 deficit increased from 1.86 +/- 0.07 (SE) mmol/kg for 30 s exercise to 2.25 +/- 0.06 mmol/kg for 1 min exercise and further to 2.42 +/- 0.08 mmol/kg for exercise lasting 2 min or more (P less than 0.01). The accumulated O2 uptake increased linearly with the duration, and as a consequence of this the relative importance of aerobic processes increased from 40% at 30 s duration to 50% at 1 min duration and further to 65% for exercise lasting 2 min. These results show that both aerobic and anaerobic processes contribute significantly during intense exercise lasting from 30 s to 3 min.

I agree the profile for MMA would be different, but I just find it interesting that sports previously thought to be almost wholly anaerobic are now showing to have a big aerobic component, and I imagine a sport that is not as all out and goes on for a much longer period would have an every bigger aerobic component. Especially where it comes to recovery between rounds and between alactic bursts,

I tend to see MMA as alactic – aerobic in nature, brief bursts of extreme energy expenditure followed by longer durations at a (slightly) lower heart rate (Joel Jamison in his book on MMA conditioning has a profile of a 5 minute round of one of his fighters where he tracks there HR in reference to the fighter anaerobic threshold and it stays pretty much in the aerobic zone close to the threshold with brief flurries into the anaerobic zone and then back).

I think part of the problem is people see aerobic training as just LSD running at what Lyle calls p*ssing around pace, this is only one aspect of aerobic training, and one that is important if you have a high resting HR and are used to only doing lots of anaerobic work (which is the position I found myself in a while back). But you can do aerobic intervals, you can be circuits that test the aerobic system to the max, its not just easy work. (I honestly think part of the problem is that some people who think they are doing anaerobic work are actually doing aerobic threshold work: circuits that last 10 minutes for example)

Even coaches that seem to be against aerobic work have there athletes do it (either knowingly or unknowingly) Joe Defranco on speed days has his guys do an extended warm up that lasts about 30 minutes and includes dynamic stretches, skips, build up sprints, low frequency jumps, hurdle mobility drills etc, stick a heart rate monitor on these guys and you will see that’s in the aerobic zone for the most part.

I have spoken to Martin Rooney a few times to get a better understanding of his methods (he is a great coach and always very helpful) and whilst he doesn’t believe in building an aerobic base for his fighters, he agrees that the 30+ minute warm up and the ladder drills/sledge hammer work his guys do are largely aerobic in nature, and the intensity of the hurricane work he has his fighters do was dialled back when he started tracking their Heart rates during sparring to more closely match these rates rather than just trying to get their HRs as high as possible for as long as possible. Actually the best advice I ever got was from him, he said to wear a heart rate monitor for all training even weights, when I did this I started to realise how anaerobic heavy lifting was and how much it can effect conditioning (Not new to most guys I bet but I’m slow like that lol)

[Socrastein]

Sorry for the extremely delayed response, I hope I'm not resurrecting a thread that's too old at this point or anything. My wife was laid off after I returned from my trip and I haven't had any free time on my own to do my usual posting and reading. She's got a job again now, so I can sit down and catch up on some online stuff that has fallen to the wayside. Anyway, enough about me.

I did not mean to state that anaerobic activities have no aerobic component. I acknowledge that the aerobic energy system is always active, from zero activity to 100% maximum effort.

While the aerobic system does contribute to any and all activity on some level, it's anaerobic efforts that end fights, and therefore I believe anaerobic endurance is critical if you want to be able to not only keep pace in a fight, but be able to still knock someone out 10 minutes into a match.

Even if we grant for the sake of argument that the aerobic system contributes as much as 65% of the energy demands in a fight, that still means that when a fighter's anaerobic systems are gassed out he's hitting with only a fraction of the force he's capable of producing.

That's what a "gassed" fighter looks like to me, a guy who can keep plugging away with his aerobic contributions round after round, but can't end the fight to save his life.

I contend that fighting is anaerobic in the same way lifting weights is anaerobic. A full body weight circuit is going to light up the aerobic system, but when I pick up 300lbs off the floor that is anaerobic, and lifting weights isn't about breathing hard in between sets, it's about the execution of the reps themselves. Similarly, fighting isn't about pacing around and recovering between flurries - the fight IS the flurries, it's the explosive attempts to bust someone's face open.

If your anaerobic energy system is gassed, you're not fighting, you're dancing with gloves on.

As for intervals and fat loss, I think you're focusing a bit too much on caloric burn and not on the nutrient partitioning effects of explosive anaerobic workouts. Primarily the effects they have on insulin sensitivity, which of course can positively affect one's body composition without changing total caloric intake or expenditure. Also, unless I am mistaken there isn't much research on the cumulative effect of hard anaerobic workouts a few times a week, week after week.

While the effect of a single workout may not be striking, isn't that a lot like quoting research that shows one hard squat workout doesn't add significant leg mass so therefore squats are effective for building leg size?

The fact is, coaches are using intervals to get people shredded all the time. There is scant research on the subject and it rarely if ever actually replicates what's being done in the real world. So if the research doesn't support the results, do we stick to our interpretation of the incomplete research, or assume that science has not yet explained what practical experience shows to be true time and time again?

Regardless of all this, I think the bottom line here is that to best prepare for your sport, you want to emphasize a lot of sport specific drills to have the best carry over, and avoid the "pissing around pace".

It's really the pissing around pace that so many think will magically give them explosive power endurance that I have been arguing against, whether that was clear or not.

I've been "out of the loop" with this convo for weeks, so if my thoughts have strayed out of focus let me know ;)