"Admit it, you too have spent countless hours at the gym doing "low intensity" cardio to burn more body fat. C'mon, it's ok, we've all wasted hours on a treadmill..."
"It is important to note that fat requires oxygen to be burned as fuel, which is where the misconception about low intensity aerobics burning more fat comes into play. The thought is that if you have more oxygen available (e.g., you're not gasping for air because your intensity is so low), you'll be able to burn more fat."
"It is true that a greater percentage of calories burned will come from fat if exercising at a low intensity. However, because you're exercising at a lower intensity, you will burn fewer total calories.
On the contrary, if you do a harder, higher intensity activity, like sprinting on a track, or a bike, you'll burn an overall greater amount of calories."
"So even though a lower percentage of these calories will come from fat, a lower percentage of a higher number is still greater than a higher percentage of a much lower number. Make sense?"
McMaster University Study
Maybe you're less concerned about fat loss, but think that sprinting will negatively affect your endurance capacity. Well, looks like this isn't true either.
A study conducted at McMaster University in Ontario and published in the highly-regarded Journal of Applied Physiology suggested that short sprint interval training increased muscle oxidative potential and doubled endurance capacity during intense aerobic cycling in recreationally active individuals.
Subjects:
Sixteen healthy individuals participated in this study. Out of the 16, 8 subjects were in the experimental (sprint) group and 8 were in the control group (no training intervention).
Method:
The sprinting sessions consisted of six sessions of sprint interval training spread over a 14-day period (not quite every other day).
The sessions each consisted of a 30-second "all out" effort on a cycle. Subjects then rested 4 minutes between sets and either completely rested or performed light cycling with little resistance.
In this short, 2-week intervention, it was demonstrated that brief repeated bouts dramatically improves endurance capacity during a fixed workload. Moreover, it was shown that intense exercise can rapidly stimulate improvements in muscle oxidative potential comparable to or greater than that of standard aerobic based training. This basically means the capacity to perform aerobic work over time.
Moral of the story:
Sprinting is more effective for fat loss sprinting vs. low intensity walking or cycling for hours on end. It also frees up a lot of time to get home and recover.
Information from Bodybuilding.com http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/mohr102.htm
So what am I doing this week? In addition to weight training, I'll be sprinting.
In four minutes, the treadmill said I burned 140 calories (35 cals per minute) but that won't be accurate. The only way to track my calories burned is through a heart rate monitor, because the treadmill just gives an average output. So, since I'm under average weight, by quite a lot, I will burn way less calories.
But it also doesn't factor in what you are burning post exercise. The same is true with weight lifting, you have the "after burn effect", which will keep you in a state of increased fat burning long after the workout is over.
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