The age old question: “I have just joined the gym, what do I do?”
Cardio burns fat, right? You think it’s about jumping on a treadmill and just running.
Motivation is high and the first few weeks you turn up at the same time and you just run.
This then turns into:
“I am bored with this and I am not losing weight. The gym bros over there look intimidating and I don't know how to use the weights”.
Motivation dwindles and all of a sudden you aren’t making it to the gym as much and you are losing motivation fast.
What if I told you that cardio and weights both burn fat but they both actually have other important jobs beyond fat loss?
Cardio
Known best as Cardiovascular Training, it originates in our Circulatory System, which consists of the heart and the blood vessels. Cardio is a type of training that increases our fitness level by training it to be more efficient with the amount of blood and oxygen being pushed around our body.
Why is this important?
Cardio training helps lower blood pressure, reduce the bad cholesterol in your body whilst increasing the good cholesterol. It trains your body to use oxygen more efficiently to recover. This in turn lowers your resting heart rate and reduces the risk of heart disease. Having a good level of cardio (or fitness) not only helps with your performance in the gym but also your performance in everyday life, known as Activities of Daily Living (ADLs). Have you ever walked up the stairs and had to talk to someone up the top but you had to pretend you weren’t puffed? We’ve all been there, and we all know it’s an indicator of a low fitness level.
Types of Cardio
LISS
Low Intensity Steady State (LISS) is a type of cardio done at a steady pace. This can include a treadmill walk (with or without incline) , a cross trainer or an exercise bike. This type of training is at a lower intensity but often is used in longer periods of time (lower intensity - greater time). This could be a treadmill walk for 20 mins, whilst still being able to hold a conversation.
It is best used in partnership with weight training as this style of training is less fatiguing on the body and has a higher recovery rate. The downside is it can be boring and most of us might not have the spare time to sit on a machine.
HIIT
High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) is a type of cardio that is done over a shorter period of time with maximal effort. Think of a bootcamp class. It may only go for 20 mins but the goal is to work at a high intensity for as much of that time as you can amongst a range of different exercises and drills (higher intensity - less time).
This can be a great style of training if you are time poor, wanting to increase your conditioning level or if you want to improve your performance in sports. The downside is a higher recovery demand, and we often see people cut corners on proper technique due to the time limit, which can result in an injury. If you are trying to squat, technique may slip in an effort to reach the exercise target. Our best advice is to perfect the technique and then try to improve your time incrementally.
Daily Activities
Daily activities are often an under utilized form of cardio. This could be walking the dog, going for a ride, kicking a ball at the park or even something simple such as parking further away and using the stairs. If you are going out of your way to move when there are so many options to avoid it, then we would argue this is cardio. There are also so many benefits to getting outside in the sun and the fresh air and spending time with friends and family. If you aren’t keen on LISS or HIIT then get outside and kick a ball. For those who hate cardio, this could be enough to get the heart rate up and distract you from the thought of cardio.
Resistance Training
We get it, lifting weights can be scary the first time. We have all been there. But I have been a personal trainer for a long time now and coached hundreds of people to achieve great outcomes and every single one of them loved lifting weights (especially the ones who thought they would hate it or were too nervous to try it.)
Resistance Training is where the body must perform an exercise under load in a few different ways. This could be using weights or using your own body weight. We could break this down even further into how the muscles contract, but for this blog it's not important.
Why is this important?
Resistance training has many benefits. It increases or maintains the amount of lean muscle we have, it enhances the strength and health of our bones, it helps prevent injury and it improves our balance, stability and flexibility especially as we age. From a mental health side it just makes us feel like a badass when we lift something that we couldn't lift last week.
In terms of fat loss, as we create more muscle tissue, and partner it with a high protein diet, we can actually get rid of more fat tissue at rest. Lean muscle increases our metabolism as it takes more effort for our body to maintain, and therefore can decrease the amount of excess fat tissues when we are resting.
Types of Resistance Training
Strength
Resistance Training can be used to increase strength. Whether you are a powerlifter, Olympic lifter, shot putter or just wanting to get the groceries inside in one go, increasing your strength is never a bad thing. For older populations, it could just be to sit at the dining table and get up without help.
It can also work to reduce your risk of injury by strengthening your muscles and bones and not letting other muscles compensate to do a job that isn’t theirs. In my experience most injuries come from a muscle trying to do the job that other muscles should be doing because it isn’t strong enough or there is a technique issue.
The best example of this would be compound exercises (think multiple joints moving at once). This could be a squat, bench press or a deadlift to name a few. Performing these exercises for 1-6 reps can increase how quickly your muscles fire (turn on) at once and work together to move the weight.
Hypertrophy
Hypertrophy refers to an increase in size of the muscle cells. The latest research says that we can achieve muscle growth through resistance training using a rep range of anywhere between 6-30 reps, as long as you are working within 4 reps of failure. There are pros and cons to the rep ranges, so having a coach work out what is best for you is really important to maximize growth and recovery. This could be using the exercises above, partnered with some isolation exercises as well: a leg extension, bicep curl or a tricep press down.
Machines such as the Leg Press are also great as they provide a lot of stability so you can take the muscle to failure or within 4 reps of failure safely without dropping the weight on you. A Squat can also be a great exercise for muscle growth, but this exercise you cannot take to complete failure without risking injury. A couple of things are important here- sufficient protein in your diet as a building block for muscle cells, a surplus of food to help grow the muscle as it is a very taxing process for the body and lastly, sufficient rest.
Just like watering the plants, we need to give them a chance to grow. Getting a sufficient amount of sleep (7-9hrs per night) will help the muscles recover, grow and come back stronger next week.
Power
The top two are our key training styles for resistance training, but I thought it was important to mention the third one being power. Power can be anything explosive- this means without added weight we could look at doing the move in a more powerful way, like a box jump, a squat to jump or an explosive step up to name a few. We could then add weight and continue to progress the move, like a weighted squat jump, a medicine ball throw or even a sled push.
These exercises can increase strength and muscle tissue if done correctly but they will also increase our conditioning and performance. For example a football player could benefit from a bench press and squat to increase their strength and muscle size but then they could benefit from a sled push that mimics the activities of their sport in a way that they can progress it. They could add more weight, increase the speed or increase the amount of laps they do to increase how powerful their tackles or runs are.
Summary
All of these styles require one key thing; Progressive Overload. Progressive overload means that each week you find a way to get better. For cardio that could be a longer time, greater distance, more rounds, more rounds in less time or less rest periods between rounds. For resistance training it could be more weight, more sets or more reps.
Now you are familiar with the benefits of all these styles of training, it is important to note that all will have a recovery demand. If we do not honor this demand, it can lead to injury, we could plateau or even go backwards in our progress. As well as recovery, we should make sure we partner each style with the correct nutrition program to get the most out of it. All of these styles of training are great for fat loss and have many other important functions for our body, our performance and our lifestyle.
So when you head to the gym, find something you enjoy, because the MOST important thing for fat loss is consistency. Find something that you can do consistently and that you enjoy. This could change month on month or year on year, but keep showing up and you will achieve the results you want.
More to it than you thought? Chat to one of the coaches at Twelve20 Coaching to take the confusion out of training and nutrition and let's help you feel strong and confident in your own body. Head to our website twelve20.com.au to learn more.
Coach Dylan
