Author: Jonathan Wong, Singapore Personal Trainer And Fitness Expert
Cardio And Aerobics For Fat Loss - It's not just 20 min 3 times a week
Cardio refers to the body's cardiovascular system. Yup that's heart, lungs and oxygen transport mechanisms. Aerobics refers to one of the "methods" the body uses to generate energy.Sometimes known as the aerobic "pathway". It's responsible for producing energy during long endurance activity. It uses stored glycogen (in our muscles) and fat (well... in our fat) as its energy source.
Ok, that's enough dictionary boy! How is this related to my fat loss?
Well you would have noticed that many people deem cardio/aerobics to be the king of fat loss (which is what we are after NOT weight loss).
In theory that may appear to be correct.
-
The cardiovascular system will work hard (or at least harder than sitting in front of a TV) for a long time
-
The energy needed for this work will come through the aerobic pathway which uses our fat stores to supply the energy
Sounds like a wonderful situation! But not so fast there...
Let's take a step back and check out what's really happening...
How come that cardiovascular system is working hard? It works hard because it has to. What makes it work hard? Muscles do. The demand from the muscular system makes it work hard.
In practice this means that all kinds of muscular work can be considered cardiovascular training. So its not restricted to jogging or other long distance activity. Lifting weights, running sprints, any activity that involves muscles are included as well.
What about that aerobic pathway that uses up all my ugly fat when I'm jogging and doing endurance activity? True it uses up fat while you train but the body is pretty smart. It responds by storing fat.
GASP! Storing fat?!!
While this is a bit counter-intuitive, its somewhat expected. When we get a cut, we lose blood... what does our body do? It works really fast to make sure we don't lose more. When we lose water or don't drink enough what does our body do? It slows down the kidneys etc and we store water. Same thing here. We use a lot of fat during the training so our body wants to store it. Ugh...using aerobics for fat loss is fighting against the body's natural protection mechanism.
Aerobics and long slow training do have decent health benefits (its A LOT better than TV watching) however aerobic pathway training is out as a smart method of fat loss because it works AGAINST the body's fat storage mechanism.
Written For www.CoachJon.com Singapore Personal Trainer & Fitness Expert
Return From "Cardio And Aerobics" to the article page