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The Cardio Debate: Steady State vs. Strength/Interval Training

By: Adam Lloyd (BKIN, CSCS, PNS)

There's 3 types of gym folk that iritate me: (1) People that don't wear deoderant, you stanky bastards, (2) People who are intolerant of others exercise choices, unless they're retarded like someone squating on a swiss ball, and (3) People who jog by choice for fat loss.

To clarify that last part, I mean people who insist that any form of long duration, sustained cardio activity is the best and only way to lose fat and change a physique.

Anyone with a decent sense of exercise physiology will tell you that the hierarchy of body composition transformation looks something like this: nutrition is by far the most important, weight training is next, and cardio is a distant third.

So if you chose to run, make sure you understand the real reasons why you're running. You're running for performance enhancement, sport specific training, stress reliever, general health, to prove something to yourself, or just because you enjoy a good hike. But if you're running to drop body fat, remove that last little layer of flab from around your midsection, or look good at the beach, you're doing it for the wrong reasons.

No physique athlete, or performance athlete for that matter, has any business spending two hours on a stationary bike, unless there's a hot chick with a great ass on the elliptical machine in front of them.

The Science Explained

Traditional cardio is for pussies, and sucks for fat loss, period. That's the end of today's lesson, my young apprentice. I wish you could just take my word for it, go out, lift like a madman, eat with the discipline of a warrior, and travel down the most efficient path to "rippedness".

The readers here better be a little more educated than the average fitness junky, that reads way too many fitness mags while jogging on the treadmill thinking the more they read the more calories they burn. So here's a little science to backup the point. To save you from being mummified, here's the cliff notes version of the science behind why a program based on anaerobic (strength training/interval cardio) vs. aerobic (traditional cardio), is better for performance gains.

  • Many who focus on just "calories" end up with destructive patterns like extreme calorie cuts and/or excessive aerobics. This sets off an alarm state in the body where the body sheds muscle tissue to lessen energy demands and hoards body fat as a survival response. Once this physiological state is reached it's next to impossible to lose any more weight no matter what you do. The result is someone who is exhausted, on starvation level calories and performing excessive exercise, yet is still flabby.
  • Muscle loss due to excessive aerobics can actually lower the resting metabolic rate and hinders optimal hormone production. When this type of person goes back to even just normal, healthy calorie and exercise levels, they gain all of the weight back and probably few extra. This generally results in a vicious cycle of huge swings in body weight and appearance. Sometimes the damage to the metabolism and hormones from cronic extreme issues can be irreversible without medical intervention.
  • The calories burned during an exercise session are relatively small compared to the amount burned the other rest of the day during the recovery process. Most fat oxidation actually occurs between training sessions. As such your exercise sessions should primarily be geared towards building muscle and boosting the metabolism, not "burning fat”. You're burning fat all day, so build muscle while you can.
  • Strength or power and interval training raises the metabolic rate (the after-burn effect) for longer periods of time than aerobic work, up to 48 hours longer. This is because all of the steps involved in the recovery process from strength training require energy.
  • Aerobic sessions elevate cortisol levels. Long sessions can lead to excessively high levels, and too frequent sessions can lead to chronically elevated levels, both are devastating to body composition enhancement. Cortisol can cause the body to eat its own muscle tissue, converting it to glucose, and use it as fuel. It also leads to increased fat accumulation, especially around the midsection.
  • Strength training also raises cortisol levels, but it also raises Testosterone and growth hormone, potent muscle building/fat burning hormones that offset cortisol. The net hormonal effect supports lean muscle gain and fat loss.
  • Strength training has more powerful, positive nutrient partitioning effects than cardio, meaning nutrients are diverted more towards muscle cells (where they can be used to build/maintain lean muscle tissue) and away from fat cells (where they can be stored as body fat).
  • There are "intermediate" muscle fibers that can take on the properties of either slow-twitch or fast-twitch muscle fibers, depending on different modes of exercise. Endurance-based training leads to the conversion of those fibers into slow twitch fibers. Strength and sprint intveral training lead to the conversion of those fibers into fast twitch fibers. The latter is the more desirable result for physique enhancement because fast twitch fibers have the greatest potential for hypertrophy. This process is what produces a jacked physique, boosts metabolic rate, and leads to increased fat burning even at rest.

Applying the Facts

Okay, I'm a little straight forward, if you're ready let's get this thing rolling:

Fat people – Men over 20% body fat, Women over 23-25%

  1. If you're over 20% body fat, you need to start being honest with yourself... you're fat, and are certainly not bulking up using the extra mass to enhance performance, unless you're a sumo wrestler.
  2. Diet has and always will be the biggest factor in the fat loss equation. You need to get your robust ass on an effective nutrition plan. Amazing fat loss results can be achieved with diet alone. I would check out one of John Berardi's fat loss plans at precisionnutrition.com.
  3. Walk 30-60 minutes a day 3-5 days a week. Remember you're fat, so this will help you burn some calories and get some of the fat burning hormones and enzymes going (hormone sensitive lipase, catecholamines). Go first thing in the morning, at lunch, after work, or after weight training, whenever you have the time. And if you can't fit it in, then (a) you're either lazy as shit or (b) you really don't give a shit. Either way, if you say you don't have time, and can't perform sprint intervals, then you've accepted being fat and probably always will be.
  4. If you're fat, you're probably putting a lot of extra weight on your joints, are out of alignment, and are suffering from some type of chronic pain. Get a movement screening done by a good physio.

Fit People – Men 10%-20% body fat; Women Under 23%

  1. Train 5 days a week. All or almost all of your training should be anaerobic in nature. If you're a cardio-junkie, that's cool too. You can do a mix of strength training and interval-based cardio. So 5 days of strength training or 4 days of strength training + 1 day of interval cardio. I'd recommend a minimum of 3 days a week of strength training. Remember the metabolic and hormonal benefits of strength training, ya don't get that shit by jogging and listening to Justin Beiber.
  2. Interval cardio essentially means alternating periods of sprinting/maximal exertion with periods of recovery. You go hard for something like 30-60 seconds, then back off for 15-30 seconds, and then repeat. This interval can vary greatly depending on your fitness abilities.
  3. If you have more fat to lose, then walk, not as a formal exercise session, but simply to increase non-exercise induced thermogenesis. This will help you burn off a few extra calories without catabolizing muscle tissue. This is an individual-thing, so add in as much walking as it takes to reach the desired body fat result.

Competitive Physique Athletes – Less than 10% body fat

  1. Don't take advice from anyone who hasn't done it themselves. What looks good on paper doesn't always work in the real world. At the same time, just because someone competes or is ripped doesn't mean they have any clue about the physique transformation process. Learn from people who have both a scientific background and practical experience.
  2. We're back to diet as the most important factor to get to low single digit body fat percentages. Check out John Berardi or Scott Abel's advice.
  3. Ditch cardio work completely, even interval work (maybe the odd session but minimal). At this point you don't have a lot of body fat left to burn, and are more susceptible to tapping into muscle tissue as a reserve fuel, which results in a loss of muscle and a soft, flat appearance.
  4. You should be strength training 4-6 days a week. Focus on building, preserving, and maintaining your muscle mass with your training. Let your diet deal with the body fat.
  5. Again, if you have more fat to lose, then walk, not as a formal exercise session, but simply to increase non-exercise induced thermogenesis.

If you're on your way to the gym tonight, do me a favor and don't go for a jog.