Lose belly fat
Lose belly fat - Not too many people have heard of interval training and
that's really a shame because it is more effective at burning fat than
traditional steady state endurance cardiovascular exercise. I think the
biggest problem surrounding why endurance cardio has become so popular
is from the explosion in marathon running. Way too many people wrongly
believe that just because you can run ten plus miles doesn't
automatically mean you're going to be burning fat the most effectively.
In fact, even the fat burning zone isn't going to be a very effective
method at burning fat.
If you're not sure what exactly the fat burning zone is it is when
you're VO2 max is at around 60% and research says this is where you'll
burn the most fat as a percentage. After hearing these everybody
immediately starting doing slow cardio because they thought it was the
most effective method to burn fat. But the truth is that you do burn
more fat as a percentage but you'll burn way more overall calories by
increasing the intensity to 80% your VO2 max. And the most effective
method of increasing your heart rate to this level is going to be
through interval training.
Interval training is basically when you perform a sprinting movement for
a period of time and then follow that up with a recovery period before
repeating it all over again. A research study found those who used high
intensity interval training actually lost nine times as much fat as the
group who only did the slow cardio and they did it in less time. The
catch with interval training is the much higher degree of difficulty it
requires and people are going to have to go outside their comfort zones
to properly do it.
A big reason why interval training is so effective for fat loss is
because of the excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC) which
basically the process your body goes through to replace the lost oxygen
that occurred during the workout. It's also more commonly known as the
afterburn effect which research has shown to cause your body to keep
burning calories up to 38 hours following a high intensity interval
training workout. More recent research studies have also found interval
training to be much more effective at improving cardiovascular health
and they even recommend using it with senior citizens. Overall interval
training is leaps and bounds more effective at losing belly fat than the
typical endurance cardio workouts and it's recommended you slowly
progress up to this style of training because of the increased
difficulty.
