Try HIIT to lose 50% more body fat than people who just do cardio!

If you are having trouble losing weight or gaining muscle despite spending hours in the gym, you definitely need to read this.

By: Peter Davison | | Updated: March 4, 2014 3:32 pm

Tags: High Intensity Interval Training HIIT

Do you spend hours at the gym every day plodding away on the treadmill or cross-trainer without gaining any muscle or losing weight? Peter Davison, Physique Elite personal trainer and Advanced Nutritionalist tells you what you’re doing wrong and how to use cardio to reach your fitness goals. Also Read - This 15-minute Tabata workout is the best way to get your daily dose of cardio

‘Cardio’ has for some time now been a buzz word in the fitness industry. Almost all gym goers will do cardio of some form or another. In fact in most gyms traditional steady state cardio appears to be the most popular form of exercise, with vast areas of the gym floor being taken up by cross-trainers, treadmills, rowing machines, steppers and so on. At any given time in the average gym you’ll find someone mindlessly plodding along on a treadmill at a low intensity for 30 minutes because thy want to burn more fat. However is this the most effective way to get lean? Is it really that beneficial, does it sit in line with your goals? For the majority the answer is no. Also Read - Do these exercises before bed to burn away belly fat

So why do cardio? Well it has been shown in many studies that steady state cardio along with weight training is an effective way to lose body fat. So far so good right? But what if your training for muscle gain or you want to improve your power or strength? Is steady state cardio really still the most effective way way to lose body fat? Also Read - Exercise regularly to keep your heart heathy and live longer

First of all lets tackle cardio and muscle gain. Studies have shown that steady state cardio is detrimental to muscle gain, and that you may actually lose muscle mass and strength, and it will completely nullify any gains in power. Why is this? Well we all know muscle is adaptable, otherwise why would we waste time training? So if muscle is adaptable its going to adapt to what ever stimulus we give it. When training we we predominately train either slow twitch or fast twitch muscle fibres. For example any steady state cardio is training slow twitch fibres, any heavy weight lifting is training fast twitch fibres. Therefore if your doing both your trying to tell your body to do in 2 different directions, ultimately the body will adapt to the greatest stimulus. For example you may spend 60 minutes twice a week doing resistance training on legs, total 120 minutes. At the same time you may do spend 60 minutes 3 times a week doing low intensity cardio, totalling 180 minutes a week. Therefore spending more time developing slow twitch muscle fibres which are smaller, therefore leg size will likely decrease. Not cool! (Go HIIT the gym)

Another negative side effect of cardio is that it decreases protein synthesis, which will in turn also have a negative impact on hypertrophy and strength gains. This is due to the effect of low intensity cardio on mTOR (a regulator of protein synthesis) which in a nutshell is shut down due to ANP being released which activates AMPK, and AMPK up regulates fat burning but inhibits mTOR and therefore turning off protein synthesis. Compare this with resistance training which up regulates mTOR and turns on protein synthesis.

Probably one of the most interesting effects of low intensity cardio is that it actually slows down the metabolism. Usually people find that after an initial drop in weight that they hit a plateau. This is as the body readjusts the metabolism as a defence mechanism, by lowering basal metabolic rate in order to allow for other necessary processes to still continue. This is why some gym goers can spend hours doing cardio yet not lose any body fat.

So how can cardio be done without having a negative impact on metabolism, strength, hypertrophy, protein synthesis and ultimately fat loss? Step forward High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). HIIT is shorts bursts of maximal exercise followed by a rest period. The key being that each burst is flat out, working as hard as you can for the interval.

Why is HIIT training so effective?

HIIT actually burns less fat during a session than low intensity cardio. Its been shown that when keeping the body at a moderate heart rate, say when jogging at a steady speed for 30 minutes, that 30 minutes the body may burn up to 90% of the calories expended from fat (this is where the ‘fat burning zone’ idea comes from, more on that later!). Sounds good. Compared with HIIT which has been show to burn around 60% of the calories from fat, not impressive compared to low intensity long duration cardio. So why am I so negative about low intensity cardio? Well during that 30 minute jog you may burn around 300kcal, 90% which is fat being burnt, so 270kcal of fat burned. Compare that with 30 minutes of HIIT, where around 800kcal may be burnt, 60% of which are fats, which equates to 480kcal of fat being burned.

But forget about calories for a second. Consider that once your low intensity cardio is finished you’ve stopped burning fat. When a HIIT session is finished its possible to continue burning fat for the next 24-72 hours. Result! This is due to the metabolic effect that HIIT has. Basically HIIT training will cause more mitochondria to be formed in the cells of the body. One of mitochondria’s roles in the body is to convert calories and oxygen into energy, so if HIIT cause the body to create more of these then more calories are going to be burnt both during exercise and at rest. So right throughout the day, whether that is sitting on the sofa, driving the car, in work..your body is now burning more body fat than before!

Studies have consistently shown that HIIT is king when it comes to burning body fat, even superior to working in the ‘fat burning zone’. A study was carried out over several months where one group completed 60 minutes on the treadmill working in the fat burning zone, another group carried out a set of 6 HIIT sprints for 30 seconds with a 2 minute rest period between sets, the sprint group on average lost 50% more body fat than the group working in the ‘fat burning zone’.

Another great side effect from HIIT was that it actually showed muscle gain in the legs. Data showed that a group performing 45-60 minutes of steady state cardio 2 times a week actually lost size in their quadriceps. Compared with a 2nd group who performed intervals such as 4x 10s sprints, 10x 10s sprints and 3x 30s sprints on a bike whose quadriceps actually got thicker! What you should also notice when done correctly is that the pump is huge! Similar to performing weight lifting.

In conclusion, do HIIT for greater fat burning, up regulate protein synthesis and muscle gain!

(Read: Be the master of the mind – 5 ways to combat the irrational thoughts of a quitter)

Content Source: PhysiqueElite

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Published : October 3, 2013 10:30 am | Updated:March 4, 2014 3:32 pm