Weight Loss Exercise Principles
If you have read the article called Exercise: Essential, then
you can skip down to the next section, called How to do Interval
Training. Read on if you need a reminder of the basic principles
of exercise for weight loss.
Aerobic exercise is fat burning exercise. As you do some
activity using large muscles (legs, especially) that raises your
heart rate but still allows you to breathe normally, your body
will burn fat with the oxygen you’re breathing. However, your
body will only burn blood-sugar at first, because it’s easily
available. So, to get to the fat-burning stage, you have to
exercise for at least 20 minutes, preferably 30 minutes or more.
Walking and bicycling at a gentle pace are aerobic activities.
Anaerobic exercises are high-intensity exercises that get your
muscles working hard, and you will have trouble breathing. The
word “anaerobic” means “without air”, meaning that you will be
breathing fast, but still not getting enough oxygen to properly
fuel your muscles. This leads to muscle strengthening, but it
also means that you’re burning blood-sugar only, not fat, and
you end up with lactic acid that will make your muscles feel
like they’re burning. Weight training and sprinting are
anaerobic activities.
You can keep doing aerobic exercise longer than anaerobic
exercise, and you’ll burn about equal amounts of calories
overall doing either. Aerobic exercise burns those calories from
fat during the exercise. Anaerobic exercise only burns
blood-sugar, but burns a lot of fat later (the rest of the day)
to replace the energy. Is it possible to combine the two, so
that you can burn fat while exercising, and keep burning the
rest of the day? Yes, with Interval Training.
Exercise for weight loss works best with a proper diet: consult
the Weight Loss Diet for Men.
How to do Interval Training
The “intervals” in Interval Training are alternating periods of
high-intensity exercise with low-intensity rest periods. This
allows a person to keep exercising for at least 30 minutes to
kick in the effects of aerobic activity, but it is also intense
enough to strengthen the heart and provide the long-term fat
burning of high-intensity exercise. The idea is simple, but
ingenious, and amazingly effective.
You can do interval training using a time-measure or a
distance-measure. If you prefer to run indoors in a gym’s track,
then there is probably a clock to watch while running, so time
would be more convenient to keep track. If you prefer to train
outdoors, it may be inconvenient to look at your watch every few
seconds, so going by distance will probably be easier. If you
use time, you should run as fast as you can for one full minute,
then walk for two minutes. After that, run again for one more
minute and rest by walking for two minutes. Keep repeating this
three-minute cycle until 30 minutes have elapsed overall. If you
prefer to chart distance, you will want to run about a
half-mile, then walk for one-quarter mile, and keep alternating
that.
Benefits of Interval Training
World-class athletes already know that Interval Training is the
best way to improve almost every aspect of running performance.
The fist effect is that high-intensity leg exercise, like
running, will make your legs stronger. That means more muscle
mass, and each gram of new muscle will burn that much more fat
every minute of every day. The second effect of high-intensity
training is what people call “cardio”. That’s short for
cardio-vascular training, meaning that your heart as a muscle
will grow stronger. This will prevent many forms of heart
disease, as well as improving circulation, which has benefits
for many aspects of life.
The most important benefit of Interval Training is that it is
the single best way to improve your VO2-Max. That is the volume
(V) of oxygen (O2) that you take with your deepest breath (max).
VO2-max is the best measure of fitness and endurance. Increasing
your VO2-max with interval training will give you greater
endurance for everything you do, and the higher your VO2-max,
the less you will feel that heat or pressure on your lungs when
you exercise. Believe me, after interval training for a week,
you will know without a fancy test that your VO2-max is
improving, and soon you’ll feel the improvement with every
training session. It’s a great feeling.
Improving Intervals
Using the time method is better than distance to keep yourself
honest, because as you get faster, your half-mile will turn out
to take less and less time. So, to keep improving your
performance, and keep losing weight, you should either get a
stopwatch, or else keep making your running intervals farther
and farther (to make sure they still last a whole minute).
As your VO2-max increases, you may be tempted to make your
workouts last longer overall, or to make the high-intensity
periods last longer. You should do neither of these things. Your
goal should be to keep intervals of 1-minute of running
separated by 2-minutes of walking, and keep increasing the
intensity of each running interval. If you make every interval a
sprint for one full minute, and keep that up for 40 minutes, you
are already a superhero. Longer workouts risk breakdown of
tissues and a high burden on your kidneys and other organs. And
if you make each interval longer, you may not be pushing your
speed the most you can, which is where the benefits are.
At the other end of the scale, if you’re just starting interval
training, go easy. Too many men start off too fast and burn
themselves out within 10 minutes. That will not benefit you.
Warm up with a fast walk or a gentle jog for 10 minutes or so.
Then, try your first interval. It should be for one full minute,
but just try for a pace a little faster than a jog. Then walk
for two minutes. For your next interval, just try to maintain
that fast jog pace for another full minute. Then walk again for
two minutes. Don’t sit down or stop if you can avoid it, keep
walking to recover. On your third interval, try just a little
faster. If you can’t make it for the full minute, you have just
found out where your zone is. The key isn’t to try to sprint
right away and only be able to go for 20 seconds. You have to do
the full minute at a constant pace, as fast as you can sustain
for one whole minute. I guarantee that it will be pretty slow
your first time. But try it again the next day, and you will be
better. By the end of two weeks, you’ll be amazed how much more
fit you’ve become. I promise.
If you don’t think you’re up for Interval Training yet, read my
article on Exercise: Essential.
Exercise is an important part of your weight-loss equation. But
the most important part you can’t find in a gym, it’s the Best Diet Plan for Men
