For years fitness experts expounded the virtues of doing thirty minutes to sixty minutes of cardiovascular exercise at the pace of a brisk walk or a slow, steady jog. But recently, attention has turned to shorter, more intense cardiovascular exercise designed to boost the heart rate into the zone where you’re breathing hard and sweating buckets.
I’ve been making high-intensity cardio videos for decades, so you can bet that I’m excited to see this type of workout featured as one of the hottest new trends in the fitness industry. My two newest workouts, CrossFire and To the Max mix high-intensity cardio along with metabolic training to give you the ultimate fat burning and conditioning workout. But how can this type of training benefit you?
How Are Intense Cardiovascular Workouts Different?
When you work out at a moderate intensity, like walking briskly or running at a steady pace for longer periods of time, you’re primarily activating muscle fibers called type 1 or slow-twitch muscle fibers. These muscle fibers are designed for endurance exercise of longer duration.
On the other hand, when you pick up the pace and work out at an intensity where you can’t string together a full sentence you’re breathing so hard, you activate a second type of muscle fiber called fast-twitch muscle fibers. These fibers are designed for strength building and higher intensity exercise. These are the muscles sprinters use when they take off across a field.
Interestingly, long-distance runners who maintain a slower, more sustained pace for longer periods of time have a higher percentage of body fat than sprinters even though they look thinner. Sprinters look lean, but they have more developed musculature because they use more fast-twitch muscle fibers.
When you pick up the pace by doing high-intensity cardio, you not only activate more muscle fibers but more fast-twitch muscles, which give a greater calorie burn. Even though percentage-wise you’re using less fat as fuel and more carbohydrates at these higher intensities, you’re burning more total calories, which add up greater overall fat burning – just like the lean, muscular sprinter.
Another Advantage of Intense Cardio Workouts
Not only do you activate more muscle fibers when you do intense cardiovascular exercise, but you also benefit from the greater hormonal response. Intense exercise causes a greater release of epinephrine, norepinephrine and growth hormone, which helps to burn fat even after you’ve recovered from a session of high-intensity cardio – and you’ll continue to burn calories for several hours afterward. An intense cardio workout is the ultimate metabolism booster.
Metabolic Weight Training Burns More Fat
Metabolic weight training burns more calories – and keeps your metabolism elevated even after you’ve finished your workout. It’s a great way to blast away stubborn fat that’s hiding those beautiful muscles – so you’ll look more defined.
Metabolic weight training involves doing strength training compound exercises with minimal rest between sets. Because you’re rapidly moving from set-to-set, your heart rate stays up, and you get more of a hormonal response. This means fat-burning hormones such as growth hormones, norepinephrine, and adrenalin are released in greater quantities, which is the key to fat loss.
When you do metabolic weight training, you won’t max out the amount of weight you lift, so it’s not the best strategy for building bulk, but it is one of the best ways to get “cut” and blast away stubborn body fat.
Intense Cardio: The Bottom Line?
If you enjoy slow, distance running, don’t give it up, but try to do one or two sessions of intense cardio each week to “shock” your body, activate fat-burning hormones and add variety to your workout But always check with your doctor before doing high-intensity cardiovascular training especially if you have heart disease or hypertension and make sure not to overdo it!
References:
Exercise Physiology. Seventh Edition. Power and Howley. 2009.
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High-Intensity Interval Training: How Intense Does It Have to Be?
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Metabolic Weight Training Burns More Fat
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