Aerobic vs Anaerobic - Question for the Pros

tomED

Hello!

Ok, I have recently changed my runs to include more sprints, but I am running less (miles) overall - as in I would normall do a 30 min jog, now Im sprinting for 40 secs, jogging normally for 20 secs, break for 20 secs, then sprinting again (5 times). After that, I'm struggling to push myself for a 20 min run at a pace im used to.

My question is - From the point of view of burning calories, am I better off sticking to the 30 min run or going with the sprints?

Weird question I know... but thats just my brain for ye....

THANKS

Boru.

Hi tomED,

Sprinting is generally an anaeroibic form of exercise (without sufficent oxygen) and is mor demanding on your cardio vascular system. As a result you are probably training at about 80% - 90% of your max heart rate. At this level you burn mostly carbohydrates as oppossed to fat. Although more calories are burned in this zone, 85% of the calories burned are from carbohydrates, 15% from fat and less than 1% are from protein.

A much better plan for weight loss woul be training as you had been, keping your Heart Rate at 60-70% of your max HR. Here 85% of your calories burned in this zone are fats, 5% are proteins and 10% are carbohydrates. Training at this level can condition your fat mobilization (getting fat out of your cells) while conditioning your fat transportation (getting fat to muscles). So you are training your fat cells to increase the rate of fat release and training your muscles to burn fat.

At the moment I'm putting together a small guide to Heart Training to accompany the Heart Rate monitos we sell in Star Fitness. I can send one a copy to you if you want. Pm me with your details and I'll email it when its done.

Hope this helps.

Boru.

logic1

Boru. wrote:

Hi tomED,
A much better plan for weight loss woul be training as you had been, keping your Heart Rate at 60-70% of your max HR. Here 85% of your calories burned in this zone are fats, 5% are proteins and 10% are carbohydrates. Training at this level can condition your fat mobilization (getting fat out of your cells) while conditioning your fat transportation (getting fat to muscles). So you are training your fat cells to increase the rate of fat release and training your muscles to burn fat.

Boru.

This does raise the argument of HIIT over longer medium intensity training for the purpose of fat loss.

It's fine quoting the percentage breakdowns of fat during medium intensity exercise but the fact remains that fat burning has very little to do with overall fat/weight loss.

Fat burning is the preferred method of fueling the body during low to medium intensity activity so even while sitting at the PC typing your body is burning fat - this however will never lead to significant weight loss1.

There has to be an overall energy deficit of cals in to cals out to see a noticeable difference in fat/weight loss.

Low to medium intensity exercise for 45mins to 1 hour a day will show a significant increase in energy expenditure over that period of time but it will have very little to no effect on your RMR (resting metabolic rate) for the rest of the day. Once your medium intensity session is over your body returns to normal basal metabolic rate very quickly.

If we take a real world example using the percentage figures quoted above for edium intensity training considering a MHR of 180 (for arguments sake) and taking the median of working at 65% of MHR gives us a working heart rate of about 117BPM.

Working at a heart rate of 117BPM will burn avg. 8 to 9 (we'll say 8.5) cals per minute. As it's medium intensity 85% of these will be from fats so that's 7.225 cals from fats per minute at medium intensity.

This isn't dreadful, it's a good amount of fat but after exercise ceases your metabolic rate drops right back to it's post-exercise level.

Now we can bring in the concept of HIIT and EPOC training. EPOC (Excess post-exercise oxygen consumption) is a mechanism which describes the calorie consumption needs of your body for the period after training and until your next training session.

Losing fat by an hours medium intensity cardio is all well and good but a much more efficient model is to do a blitz HIIT cardio session and raise your bodys metabolic profile so post exercise your bodys calorific needs are at a heightened level for several hours thus increases all over calorie consumption through an elevated resting metabolic rate.

Studies have shown that when exercise intensities reach levels of around 85% VO2Max the incurring EPOC effect can last 2 to 3 days2.

Using HIIT principles your workout can be shortened to around 15 to 20 minutes of intervals but the overall fat loss effect is shown to be much greater than that of persons following a longer medium intensity exercise regime3.

Fat oxidation, mobilization and utilization all sounds very fancy but in reality it's not the most efficient form of fat loss and there's alot of debate in the scientific community whether the above factors even matter in overall fat loss. The most common theory now is that fat loss is independant of mobilization of fat. E.g. it matters very little whether the energy comes from fat or carbohydrate during the actual exercise period once there's an overall calorific expenditure then the resultant effect will be a loss in bodyfat as the body will self regulate.

A good point is also made about high level sprinters, why are they so ripped if 90% of their work is all anaerobic training?


1. Anne L. Friedlander, Gretchen A. Casazza, Michael A. Horning, Anton Usaj, and George A. Brooks Endurance training increases fatty acid turnover, but not fat oxidation, in young men J Appl Physiol 1999 86: 2097-2105.

2. Int J. Sport nutri and exercise Metab

3. Tabata and Tremblay - Metabolism (1994) Volume 43, pp.814-818

.logic.

Mr E

Great post, Logic. Thanks for the info.

I prefer doing 20 minutes of intervals (rather than 45-60 mins of medium intensity). Keeps the boredom down, and I still get the benefits.

OFDM

TmB wrote:

I prefer doing 20 minutes of intervals (rather than 45-60 mins of medium intensity). Keeps the boredom down, and I still get the benefits.

What way are you doing them?

Mr E

I read about this in a Body For Life book that my brother got (I'm not mad on the "buy EAS products or else" philosphy) but the programs make sense. Its based on an intensity scale, from 1 (piss easy) to 10 (the hardest you can go). (More Info)

(Minute) - (Intensity)
01 - 5
02 - 5

03 - 6
04 - 7
05 - 8
06 - 9

07 - 6
08 - 7
09 - 8
10 - 9

11 - 6
12 - 7
13 - 8
14 - 9

15 - 6
16 - 7
17 - 8
18 - 9

19 - 10
20 - 5

At the moment, my intensities are

05: 8 kph
06: 9 kph
07: 11 kph
08: 13 kph
09: 14.5 kph
10: 15.5 kph

Because you're changing speeds every minute, there is no chance of you getting bored. Try nudging up your speeds bit by bit every session.

- Dave.

kazzer

read about this in a Body For Life book that my brother got (I'm not mad on the "buy EAS products or else" philosphy) but the programs make sense. Its based on an intensity scale, from 1 (piss easy) to 10 (the hardest you can go). (More Info)

The Body-4-Life aerobic workout is awesome. Have never worked so hard in my life (other than HIT weight training). Always challenging and never boring. I definitely recommend this one to anyone. Tough on all the joints of the lower body though, if you choose to use a running model.

Sangre

Really great post logic.

Although I think for most people you have to ask yourself, what will you be able to stick at easier? Which do you prefer? How much weight loss do you want?

Which type of workout would you be able to stick at and push yourself with? They will both get results if you have a calorie deficit.

Jak

A HIT cardio session of 15-20 minutes at high intensity is all well and good.

HIT weight training. Show me any world class lifter who has followed this approach to get where he got to. Not someone who subsequently backed it to sell a book.

JAK

kazzer

A HIT cardio session of 15-20 minutes at high intensity is all well and good.
HIT weight training. Show me any world class lifter who has followed this approach to get where he got to. Not someone who subsequently backed it to sell a book.

JAK

When you say lifter do you mean 'bodybuilder'? I have no interest in the weight training programs of the so called 'pros' who are nothing more than steroid fuellled genetic freaks, whos programs will only serve to overtrain an ordinary strength trainee with average recovery ability.

You speak of 'lifters' touting programs and systems??? What the hell is FLEX et al??? This is where the so called 'pros' are seen touting their programs and products.

logic1

kazzer wrote:

When you say lifter do you mean 'bodybuilder'?

I'd assume he means olympic or power lifter.

I have no interest in the weight training programs of the so called 'pros' who are nothing more than steroid fuellled genetic freaks

You seem to have little or no knowledge of the work ethic involved to make it onto the pro bodybuilding stage and to dismiss them as nothing more than steroid fulled genetic freaks shows alot of ignorance on your part.

You speak of 'lifters' touting programs and systems??? What the hell is FLEX et al??? This is where the so called 'pros' are seen touting their programs and products.

JayK is not a bodybuilder. I'd doubt he ever reads Flex or Musclemag nor follows the programs touted by the writers therein, so I fail to see your point here.

As far as I can gather the point JayK was making is a HIT training style program is not usually (or perhaps ever) followed by Olympic or World level strength atheletes, olympic lifters, power lifters, strong men advocates etc.. (a large percentage of which are drug tested)

The exception would actually be bodybuilders two of note mainly Mike Mentzer and Dorian Yates.

.logic.

Jak

Actually I was having a go at the HIT weight lifting philosophy in general, whether followed by Pro's or amateurs. You have neither to be pro, nor a drug fuelled genetic freak to be very strong or very ripped. HIT weight training is the path to neither relatively speaking and personally I see it as an excuse for people to be lazy with their weight training. You can have high intensity and failure sets in a program, without cutting it to 15 mins.

Good critique can be found here by Fred Hatfield http://www.drweitz.com/scientific/hit.htm

Jak.

kazzer

Ok fair enough i dont want to go off topic, I understand that there are advocates of HIT out there and there are advocates of the traditional volume training thats fair enough.

I dont actually follow a particular HIT system. I have tried HIT and found it to be incredibly tough, thats all I was pointing out.

Jak, did you mean power/olympic lifter when you say 'lifter'? Sorry I assumed you meant bodybuilder. We really have to distinguish the two. Have you tried HIT? A lazy way of weight training? No way. I find it a far harder workout than conventional volume training - no comparison. So what if it takes 15 - 30 mins. Who cares. I'm interested in results, not the time im in the gym. If I can get good results with 20 mins in the gym, then why do 1-2 hours?

Anyway I respect your opinion, I know that you know your stuff.

Jak

Aye I meant power/olympic lifter. Though at amateur/non competitive levels I often see the line blurred in terms of people who claim they train as a bodybuilder or a powerlifter.

Personally I train for power, most of my objectives center around max lifts and I find that in doing so you keep a strong build which also looks relatively lean/muscled whatever. The bit of cardio plays its part also. However, the main thing missing would be a stringent diet regime, which if followed would mean someone training for power could likely pass for a 'bodybuilder' in amateur/non competitive gym talk.

Anyhows the critique posted above highlights a lot of the inconsistency and lack of evidence to support HIT as 'the way'. Now by no means am I saying it is useless, clearly it will deliver more results than driving home in the evening, however, I do believe it will achieve sub-par results over time.

I think the big difference here is people's perceptions of a training session and intensity.

Person A) trains with HIT at full on intensity, really pushing their body. Out in 15mins.

Person trains over the course of 90 minutes plodding between machines. Going through the motions.

Then possibly A > B

My point is that there is C. You can train at a high level of intensity over a longer period of time and to allude to Hatfields evidence, this is the better approach for development. On my last Chest day for example I have Flat OB, Incline OB, Supersetting of OBP Negatives with Decline Pushups, DB Flyes, Wide Grip Burnout, Sets of Forward Dips. Maybe 23 or 24 sets in all.

It takes a while. And by the end I am spent, but it allows balanced development of the chest area. Frankly even if I went to failure on the OBP sets at the start for 2 or 3 sets, given about 3 minutes I would have more to give for Incline easily, and on and on like that. With weight training I would struggle to properly exhaust all the muscle groups in an area in a short period of time. In addition, I would never get close to my max lifts. It takes me a while to progress up to a heavy lift attempts, and by working to and making those attempts my max develops. Burnout sets at lower weights would do nothing for my max lifts, as evidenced by when I change to endurance work on bench for a few weeks, when I come back, I have to rework my top end lifts over a fortnight or so.

This is not even for myself, a guy who trains with me now who formerly had a max of maybe 110kg and had always trained alone and done higher reps at lower weights has now hit 150kg as a clean max. In addition, he is capable of higher reps at higher weights also. We balance it up by training endurance, power and mixing things up, the bottom line is though, this would never happen in 15mins.

JAK.

kazzer

Good post Jak, I see your point. BTW, thats some chest work you do!