Posted on May 04, 2012 by Jenny Cromack

Train for almost 1/20^th of the time and burn fat better

So summer is fast approaching and you want to drop some body fat quickly! Now Steve down the street or Doris over the road will always tell you that you need to slave away on the cardio kit for hours to burn some fat. Although this will work you will definitely reduce your lean mass and adversely affect your body composition in terms of musculature, so that fats gone and a weak frame is revealed.

The problem with long cardio sessions is that it places your body in a catabolic mode which yes is great for burning fat it also metabolizes muscle tissue, which isn’t so good. This seems very pointless especially when there is a way of burning fat without placing the body in a catabolic state.

A recent study in the journal of medicine and science in sport and exercise compared two groups of statistically similar individuals, one group was tasked with completing 30s sprint intervals for 4 repetitions with 4 minute rests  against a traditional running program which required individuals to run at 65% of their max HR for 30-60mintes.

After 6 weeks the results were very interesting;

Factor measured	Sprint group	Endurance group
Body fat	Decrease 12.4%	Decrease 5.8%
Fat Mass lost	Decrease on average by 2-3kg	Decrease of 0.5kg
Actual time spent running	45mins	13hours.30mins
Time required for training	6hours.45mins	13hours.30mins
2000m time trial performance	Improved 4.6%	Improved 5.9%

 

As you can see the sprint group actually trained for 1/18^th of the time and lost almost 4 times the body fat!!! Why anyone would want to spend 14 hours over 6 weeks running to lose body fat is beyond me, unless your enjoy long slow runs.

The sprint intervals were likely superior due to the fact that they increased post exercise oxygen consumption more effectively, thus raising metabolism and burning calories for longer periods of time oppose to creating a calorie deficit during a slow run, which is only a short term benefit.

It is worth noting this is purely orientated towards FAT LOSS and not endurance performance, sorry if you want to run 10k+ races you still have to put the miles in!