Published: Thursday, August 19, 2010

Anaerobic training is key to burning calories

Zack Vann, Lifestyle Desk
Madison Weekly
Madison, Alabama's Hometown Newspaper

Have you ever found yourself frustrated with your results from your workouts? Have you ever been intimidated by the idea of beginning an exercise program from fear of not knowing best practices?

Fat loss is all about caloric expenditure. We must burn more calories than we take in, and the real key to doing this, as mentioned before, is not aerobic training, which will burn calories while you are doing it, its anaerobic training, which burns calories while you are doing it and increases the calories burned for hours afterwards.

In the case of weight training, if we build muscle and keep it, that burns calories forever more. Even when you sleep!

The key with anaerobic training is what is known as EPOC. Anaerobic exercise burns a ton of calories while you are performing it. However, the metabolism remains elevated following this type exercise.

This was, at one time, referred to as the oxygen debt, but is now referred to as the excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC).

The recovery of the metabolic rate back to pre-exercise levels can require several minutes for light exercise (aerobic training), several hours for very heavy exercise (anaerobic cardio training), and up to 12 to 24 hours or even longer for prolonged, exhaustive exercise (interval training or circuit weight training).

If the metabolism remains elevated for five hours, this would amount to an additional expenditure of 75 kcal that would not normally be included in the calculated total energy expenditure for that particular activity.

This major source of energy expenditure, which occurs during recovery, but is directly the result of the exercise bout, is frequently ignored in most calculations of the energy cost of various activities.

If the individual in this example exercised five days per week, he or she would have expended 375 kcal, or lost the equivalent of approximately 0.1 pounds of fat in one week, or 1.0 pounds in 10 weeks, just from the additional caloric expenditure during the recovery period alone. This is the key to maximizing the return on your exercise investment.

Zack Vann is a personal trainer at Bender’s Gym in Madison, AL. for more information, call 256-325-9997.