Intensity Trumps Duration, R Cosgrove

What? Yeah, you heard me right. This is exactly how I felt after training for and completing in my first Ironman.

My body was soft, with no definition, and had definitely changed due to spending the majority of my training in the steady-state aerobic zone – the same "fat burning zone" many books and magazine still talk about.

I was in great shape as far as my endurance and cardiovascular system were concerned, but I had less noticeable muscle tone and didn't have the definition I was used to having in my abs and arms.

http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/most_recent/the_final_nail_in_the_cardio_coffin

T Nation and its authors apparently do not understand CrossFit. It is staffed largely by those who would find CrossFit to be a faddish competitor, dishing out unsound training practices to those who are tricked by the trendiness associated with CrossFit. So, when I read even a good article there, I don't expect to find it will be all kosher.

What I like about this article is it reinforces my own experience, and that of many other experienced trainers - working out will not make you lean. Eating crappy stuff makes you accumulate fat, and you can't out train that - for long.

I also like the author's point about the deleterious effects of over-training in aerobic movments. I like to say intensity trumps duration, and it does so for nearly every desirable adaptation you might want from a workout. Strength, speed, power, or work capacity - intensity trumps duration.

What is not so useful is the writer's focus on exercise and fat loss, or exercise and calorie burning. Because if you eat like crap, you'll be hungry no matter what your workouts are, and if you are hungry, in the long term you will easily out-eat your workouts. On the other hand, you can lose fat just fine by eating good food, the food that's right for you. Workouts are not a requirement for fat loss for most folks. Eating the right food is essential, even more so for sustaining your body composition gains.

Lastly, working out to lose fat and build muscle is not as compelling as working out to gain physical capacities you value.  A friend said of CrossFit, "We bring 'em in the door chasing appearance, but we keep them by getting them to chase performance."  Most folks will not give up time to pursue appearance via exercise for long, and for good reason - it does not work well for that purpose.  Exercise to build new work capacity - lift more, lift faster, work harder, do more in less time, be a more awesome version of you - is sustaining because the results keep coming.  You get stronger, you notice the positive impact in your life.  You conquer things in the gym that used to scare you - hell, you face frightening workouts every day - and you notice that also translates to positive impact in your life.  You get so used to facing fear, nothing scares you any longer.  

So, lots of exercise, and a diet, is better than nothing. But long term success in health comes from learning how to stop liking, and therefore stop eating, crappy food. Even more important, you can workout and do hours of cardio and perhaps be lean - and still be sick. Exercise does not nullify crappy food, although it may blunt the damage to an extent.

You may be reading this and think "How can a fitness professional be dissing exercise?" Well, I'm not. I'm just telling you that I think the exercise you do should be intended to give you the physical capacities you need to have a vibrant life, and to feel your best. You were made to move, made to work, and made to strive. Exercise is awesome for each of those pursuits. I don't think very many of us can max out the human experience without exercise.  Any exercise is better than no exercise, but for me, high intensity functional movements delivered via short, intense workouts beats all the other training modalities I've tried - and I've tried many.

If you want a better emotional and physical experience of life, you need to be working hard at something - something with high intensity, relatively short duration, and which demands and develops strength, power, and work capacity.

"But Paul, what about all of the studies she cited showing fat loss or weight loss from interval training?" That's great. I hope it happens that way for you. But did you notice the duration of those studies? To know anything, you'd also want to know the age of those who participated (cause as you know, when you are young you can lose weight in a flash, and as you age, it's a different story). Bottom line - you will not meet many folks who can eat sugar, wheat, polyunsaturated oils, and still be healthy and lean, no matter how much they exercise. You'll also see this in any CrossFit gym - lots of folks who are working hard, and making performance gains, and ... not getting lean. That's not the end of the world but it is a clue - if that's you, you are eating crappy “food" (and/or doing too much "cardio").

If you want vibrant health and the appearance we associate with that, you will need to stop eating that nasty stuff you have called "food" for most of your life, and focus on meat, vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar/wheat.

PS - if you love triathlete or marathon training, please accept my genuine admiration.  Those sports are awesome, and the athletes that do those things are tougher than a bag full of hammers.  I don't disparage your pursuit in any way.  My point is - endurance training is not the best exercise for health or fitness, and the benefits for fat loss are over-rated.
Reposted to www.fireofthegodsfitness.com March 2015

Work Out, Feel Good? Of Course!

"For years, researchers have known that exercise can affect certain moods. Running, bike riding and other exercise programs have repeatedly been found to combat clinical depression. Similarly, a study from Germany published in April found that light-duty activity like walking or gardening made participants "happy," in the estimation of the scientists. Even laboratory rats and mice respond emotionally to exercise; although their precise "moods" are hard to parse, their behavior indicates that exercise makes them more relaxed and confident.
But what about anger, one of the more universal and, in its way, destructive moods? Can exercise influence how angry you become in certain situations?
A study presented at the most recent annual conference of the American College of Sports Medicine provides some provocative if ambiguous answers. For the study, hundreds of undergraduates at the University of Georgia filled out questionnaires about their moods. From that group, researchers chose 16 young men with "high trait anger" or, in less technical terms, a very short fuse. They were, their questionnaires indicated, habitually touchy.
The researchers invited the men to a lab and had them fill out a survey about their moods at that moment. During the two days of the study, the men were each fitted with high-tech hairnets containing multiple sensors that could read electrical activity in the brain. Next, researchers flashed a series of slides across viewing screens set up in front of each young man. The slides, intended to induce anger, depicted upsetting events like Ku Klux Klan rallies and children under fire from soldiers, which were interspersed with more pleasant images. Electrical activity in the men's brains indicated that they were growing angry during the display. For confirmation, they described to researchers how angry they felt, using a numerical scale from 0 to 9.

On alternate days, after viewing the slides again (though always in a different order), the men either sat quietly or rode a stationary bike for 30 minutes at a moderate pace while their brain patterns and verbal estimations of anger were recorded. Afterward, the researchers examined how angry the volunteers became during each session.
The results showed that when the volunteers hadn't exercised, their second viewing of the slides aroused significantly more anger than the first. After exercise, conversely, the men's anger reached a plateau. They still became upset during the slide show - exercise didn't inure them to what they saw - but the exercise allowed them to end the session no angrier than they began it.
What the results of the study suggest is that "exercise, even a single bout of it, can have a robust prophylactic effect" against the buildup of anger, said Nathaniel Thom, a stress physiologist who was the study's lead researcher.
"It's like taking aspirin to combat heart disease," he said. "You reduce your risk."
When the men did not exercise, they had considerable difficulty controlling their racing emotion. But after exercise, they handled what they saw with more aplomb. Their moods were under firmer control.
The question of just how, physiologically, exercise blunts anger remains open. Mr. Thom and his colleagues did not test levels of stress hormones or brain chemicals in the test subjects. But earlier work by other scientists suggests that serotonin, a neurotransmitter in the brain, probably played a role, Mr. Thom said. "Animal studies have found that low levels of serotonin are associated with aggression, which is our best analogue of anger in animals," he said. "Exercise increases serotonin levels in the rat brain." Low serotonin levels in humans are also thought to contribute to mood disorders.
Changes in the activity of certain genes within the brain may also have an impact. In a 2007 experiment at Yale University, researchers found that prolonged running altered the expression of almost three dozen genes associated with mood in the brains of laboratory mice. Mr. Thom says he hopes that future studies by himself and others will help to determine the specific underlying mechanisms that link exercise and a reduction of anger.
But for now, the lesson of his preliminary work, he said, is that "if you know that you're going to be entering into a situation that is likely to make you angry, go for a run first."
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/11/phys-ed-can-exercise-moderate-anger/