Cardio or weights?

Runner's high??

We all know that exercise is good for us. Doctors, health experts, fitness magazines are all screaming about the advantages of a getting to the gym and hitting the treadmill. As well as getting our heart and lungs into better health, exercise offers an aesthetic advantage of a slender, toned and athletic physique. And if all of this wasn’t enough to get our moods lifted, the endorphine rush from a session in the weight room will leave you on a natural high.

Stay in dat fat burnin' zone bro

look away now! They still have these stupid, worthless charts on

most cardio machines. What will people believe next?

People are always on the treadmills and cross trainers, staring at that little digital calorie counter and racking the numbers up. But a recent study by Fatouros and colleagues have shown that a lot more can happen after you finish your exercise. Typically, our bodies burn a higher percentage of fat when we are exercising at a low intensity. This is why a lot of trainers used to (and some stupidly still do) advocate keeping heart rate below 65% max, too keep you in the fat burning zone. However, exercising at a higher intensity will burn more fuel. Whilst the % of fat/glycogen may drop, the overall amount of fat burned will pretty much be the same I.E.

Person A trains below 65% max heart rate. They burn 400 calories in an hour at 80% of that coming from fat stores. This is 320 calories of fat, and perhaps 80 calories of other substrate (muscle/liver glycogen, blood carbohydrate).

Person B trains much harder, at 80% max heart rate. They burn 600 calories in an hour with 65% of that coming from fat stores. This is 390 calories of fat. And perhaps 210 calories of other substrate (muscle/liver glycogen, blood carbohydrate).

So you can see, even though  person A burned a higher percentage of fat, the overall amount of fat was LESS than person B. On top of this, Person B burned more overall calories. That 210 calories not burned from fat is just as advantageous to us in our fat loss goals. When glycogen gets burned, it creates a 'hole' in our muscles/liver. So the next time we eat, rather than get stored as fat, this extra energy will be stored as glycogen. This is why, ultimately, fat loss is a calorie game.

So which exercises burn more fuel?

An exercise bout can easily burn upwards of 500 calories an hour. That may not seem much, but do it 4 days a week and you have burned 2000 calories in a week. By the end of the year, your body could potentially be a whopping 25 pounds freer of fat. 

Transformations like this don't happen overnight. But little by

little, small changes really add up. 1lb a week may not seem like a lot,

but check that out after a year.

Jogging, walking, cross trainer etc all burn calories as you are doing the exercise, but the exercise is typically so low intensity that it takes hours to burn a significant amount of calories. Also, when you stop the exercise, your body quickly stops burning fat and returns to its normal state. But who wants to plod away on a treadmill for an hour every other day? Not many, for sure. Luckily, research by Greek sports scientists can give us an insight into a better way.

Fatouros et al took a group of 40 year old men and trained them with heavy weights. During the exercise, they burned an average of 266.3 calories, equivalent to working out for 20-30 minutes. Whilst most people are reading this and thinking that 266 calories is not a lot, the real magic happened after the workout had finished. Their resting energy expenditure, or metabolic rate, shot up significantly above normal levels. This elevated energy burning state peaked 12 hours after the exercise and remained higher than baseline for 72 hours. That’s 3 whole days of your body burning more calories, even whilst you are sitting down. But there’s more, the scientists also found that most of the extra burned energy came purely from fat!

Yes, you are burning more calories than normal after weights.

Even this guy is

So next time you are too tired to hit the treadmill for an hour, or you just cannot muster up the motivation to battle with the cross trainer, why not hit the weight room. You can cut your time in the gym significantly and feel your body literally burning fat for days after. Not only that, but your new slender tummy and thighs will be supported by some toned muscle. Who wouldn’t want that?  

Give me more

So which weight exercises should you do? Throw away those 3lb pink dumbells missy.

Generally, working bigger muscles in as large a movement as possible will burn the most energy. So stop doing bicep curls, tricep extensions and wrist flapping. Start doing compound, multi joint BIG MOVEMENT exercises. Things like

• Squats
• Deadlifts
• Pull ups/chin ups
• Bench presses
• Rows

are basically all you need. They use the biggest muscles and put them through the biggest range of motion. The first two being exceptionally good at this. A quick google search will show you how to do these movements.

And no girls, you won't start to look like a man

You don't have the genetics or the hormones to start putting on slabs of muscles. It takes men many many years, sometimes upwards of 20 years for a male bodybuilder, to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger. You don't just do a squat and wake up looking like Ronnie Coleman. Those guys are

• Men
• Genetically gifted
• The elite of the genetically gifted
• almost living in the gym 24/7
• taking a lot of drugs and other supplements
• eating a massive amount of food

If you are not doing all of the above, then there is no worry. Besides, if you find yourself getting 'too muscly', you can always just stop and the muscle will go away. 

Even the 'hair blowing in the wind' bit is true

Weight training actually stimulates genetic changes (increases MTOR and downregulates AMPK) which makes you create more lean body mass, and stops you becoming a fat storing machine. If running hours and hours on a treadmill were the answer, why are sprinters (who NEVER do cardio) usually around 7-10% bodyfat. And why to marathon runners usually look gaunt, aged and are more like 13-16% bodyfat (sure that is still good). 

Long distance running tells our body to drop muscle (as it is heavy and cumbersome for running far) and partition any extra energy towards fat stores (as we are using it during our running). A sprinter, on the other hand, creates more/maintains lean body mass (as it is important for providing the power to run as fast as possible) and drops fat (as it is unnecessary, a sprinter mainly burns glycogen). Make sense now? This is an evolutionary advantage and an absolutely amazing ability of the human body to adapt and become more efficient at what it is regularly doing.

It's not that you shouldn't do Cardio. It's just that, for most people's goals, cardio is probably the least efficient exercise to get there. On top of detriments to metabolic rate, lots and lots of long distance running and low calorie dieting can really mess up your hormone levels. If you enjoy it, go and do it. But don't slave away running because you want a better body/more health. It can be part of a training regime, but there are more efficient ways to reach your goals.

By the way, here are some pictures of women who squat, to show you there is very little to be scared of. I apologise if you feel this objectifies women. Actually, I'm not. You can still have a personality and squat, damn it. Plus it's good for your health, mentally and physically, to be in shape.