When it comes to maximizing your caloric consumption, studies show that more calories are burned by interval training rather than maintaining a steady pace. This is a continuation of our outdoor exercise theme for the month, and while running is a great way to exercise and burn calories, it’s possible to turn it into an even BETTER exercise by alternating your pace. When you mix it up, you get a lot more out of it. If you’ve ever used a cardio machine in a gym, like say a treadmill or an elliptical, the directions about where to keep your heart rate are mildly confusing at best! I hear so often from people that they don’t want to get their heart rate “up to high”, because they want to stay in their fat burning zone.
Well this is the bottom line: Your body’s first choice for calories to burn will always be carbohydrates, and second is fat. The higher your heart rate, the more energy you are expending, the more calories you’re burning. That’s it. And if you don’t burn the calories you take in, the excess will be stored as body fat. Therefore if you run or jog even a short distance, you are burning more calories than if you walked that same distance, agreed? And it’s even better if you sprint. Now most people cannot maintain a sprint for very long (unless you’re Lance Armstrong), so you use a jog or even a walk to recover till you can do your next sprint interval. Get it? With this method of run-jog-run-jog-maybe walk…you are still burning more calories because your energy expenditure is higher than if you just walked. Hopefully that makes sense to everyone. The main reason most cardio machines will show a fat burning zone at a lower heart rate is because as I mentioned before, since fat is your body’s SECOND choice of fuel, fat calorie consumption usually occurs after 30 minutes. For many people it would be way too difficult to maintain a sprinting heart rate for that entire time, so it simplifies things to say choose a heart rate that you can maintain 40 or 45 minutes. And that IS possible for most people if they use the interval training with recovery during the slow intervals. That’s it.
Melissa Allen, BS, CPT, CES. Please visit my website at http://www.optimumcondition.org/fitness-center.html
