This issue will feature sort of a Part-II to that idea. It will provide further depth to this topic by providing some conclusions resulting from recent research. Have no fear; I’m not going to turn this into a boring, tedious research paper. I’m going to distill the information from the recent research in this area for you so you can easily apply it to your approach to your workouts.

• “I don’t think I do enough cardio.”
• “I need to do more cardio.”

These and other similar statements are spoken by people to their trainers numerous times a day. I think I can safely speak for all trainers and say: “Please, stop! We can’t take it anymore!”

You need better cardio, not necessarily more. As with most areas of exercise, quality matters more than quantity. Enough warm-up.

“The Myth That Will Not Die” is the “fat- burning zone” for cardio. There is no fat burning zone. You’re burning some fat all the time, so if anything, you are always in your fat burning zone. This misperception is a direct result of the fact that at lower intensities of effort, you burn a higher proportion of fat for fuel.

Common sense should make it obvious that although you’re burning a greater proportion of stored fat reading this newsletter, getting up and sprinting would have a greater impact on fat reduction despite its lesser proportional use of fat to fuel the sprinting. Overall, you use more total calories in the higher intensity activity.

The critical factors to look at in determining the effects of a given exercise intensity is as follows:

• during-exercise fat burning
• recovery period fat burning
• total fat burning by the end of a 24-hour period
• fat burning from workouts over several weeks

During exercise and in the immediately-following recovery period, studies show a slightly higher fat use from the lower intensity exercise, but over a 24- hour period, this difference vanishes as the post- exercise calorie burn that is created by higher levels of effort take over. The fancy term is Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption (abbreviated as EPOC). The EPOC is measurably higher in the 24-hour period post- exercise for higher intensity groups, than it is for the lower intensity groups.

Long-term effects are also interesting. A number of recent studies compare the effects of several weeks of consistent high-intensity vs. low-intensity training. Using a constant total of calorie use (i.e., each group burned the same number of calories in their exercise sessions), negligible fat loss differences are seen. Note that a higher intensity will take LESS TIME to burn the same number of calories.

In these long-duration studies, high-intensity training is consistently superior to lower intensities for maintaining and/or increasing cardiovascular fitness and lean mass, and according to some research, far better at reducing body fat levels.

Stay with me for just a bit more science and I’ll wrap it all up for you. At lower intensities, your body makes mostly cellular changes in the lungs and bloodstream – it’s all about getting better at delivering oxygen. At higher intensities, your body is forced to do a bit more muscle work and this sets-up a cycle of breakdown and repair that is the mechanism behind the increase in metabolic boost from a higher EPOC. Additionally, there is a significant difference in the hormone response to higher and lower intensities, but that will have to wait for a further issue.

To summarize:

1. Nice personal trainers everywhere are experiencing great stress and personal anguish over the mistaken belief that lower intensity cardio is better. Please spare us this torment by not asking if you should do longer cardio sessions.
2. If you’re short on time, it should be very appealing to be able to get the same or better benefit from your workouts by adding a little more rigorous work and taking less time to get the results.
3. High-intensity training is superior to lower intensities on the whole for maintaining and/or increasing cardiovascular fitness and lean mass, and, according to some research, far better at reducing body fat.

Disclaimer: I am not at all saying that lower intensity workouts are worthless. Your goals, previous orthopedic or other health issues, and the need to allow your body and mind to take a break from the higher intensity of effort days, may very well dictate a wise choice in doing a mix of lower and higher intensity workouts. My main point of this article is to show that in a world short on time, we should all be looking for ways to make shorter workouts as effective, if not more effective, than longer workouts that seem to take us too often away from other areas of life.