Beginner Fitness: 5 Cardio Myths and Misconceptions that Need to Stop Being Spewed. |
- 5 Cardio Myths and Misconceptions that Need to Stop Being Spewed.
- Gym Story Saturday
- Request for picking DB only routine: Frankoman's vs Fierce 5 vs DB Stopgap vs DB Stopgap PPL
- Taking way to long to recover
| 5 Cardio Myths and Misconceptions that Need to Stop Being Spewed. Posted: 09 Jul 2021 10:14 AM PDT Reading the cardio thread that was recently posted, I noticed a bunch of myths and misconceptions related to cardio being continually regurgitated and upvoted. It was a painful read. So I decided to make this thread to dispel them. And yes, I checked the Wiki and didn't see any of these myths or misconceptions mentioned. And if they were, they must have been buried somewhere and read by no one given how frequently they were spewed and upvoted in the linked thread above. It's a long read, so here's a table of contents of the 5 myths and misconceptions (all of which were parroted and upvoted multiple times in the linked thread) that I will be addressing for those who don't want to read through the whole thing: 1) HIIT burns more calories than steady state. 2) But muh efficiency!!!! 3) X cardio is better than Y cardio for fat loss!!! 4) Lifting weights burn more calories than cardio because it raises your metabolism! 5) You can't outrun a bad diet. 1) HIIT burns more calories than steady state. No, HIIT does not burn more calories than steady state cardio when done for the same amount of time, in fact, it's the opposite, for the simple reason that in any given time you can cover a greater distance properly pacing yourself (ie. running at a steady state) than doing it HIIT style. "But I read a study"... You can easily make your own study with a sample size of 1: Go to the gym, hop on a treadmill or a stationary bike, and go at a decent steady state pace for 30 minutes (and by decent pace, I mean actually try). How much distance did you cover? How many calories did the machine say you burned? Now, on another day, hop on the same piece of equipment and do the same 30 mins but HIIT style... How much distance did you cover? If you didn't go at a bitch pace during your SS session, answer will be: much less. How many calories did the machine say you burned... Once again, the answer will be: much less. I'm not saying that the calorie counters on machines are completely accurate (they're not), but if the machine says you burned 300 calories more on one day than another, then you probably burned more calories on that day than the other, perhaps not 300 more, but you probably burned more calories regardless. As mentioned, steady state cardio is more effective than HIIT for burning calories for the simple reason that you can cover MUCH more distance doing an exercise at a steady state than you can doing that same exercise HIIT style. If the opposite were the case, you would see all those 10+km runners at the Olympics sprinting/walking, sprinting/walking etc... They don't do it, because that would be stupid. And no, it doesn't matter that you "felt more tired" after doing 1.5K of interval sprints in 30 minutes than you did after a 5K jog in 30 minutes. At the end of the day, you covered more distance during the 5K jog in the same amount of time, and thus, you did more work and burned more calories. This is basic thermodynamics, and whatever study you find that says otherwise is flawed. And no... EPOC (ie. the AFTERBURN!!111) from HIIT is negligible. You are not burning double the calories lying in bed browsing Reddit after your HIIT workout. Let's not go there. 2) BUT MUH EFFICIENCY!!!! Probably the most aggravating of the cardio myths and misconceptions, it's not that it's completely untrue, but the conclusions that people derive from it are not only wrong, but detrimental in the sense that it discourages people from doing cardio in fear of becoming "too efficient at it." Do you really think that you can burn more calories than Lance Armstrong on a 2 hour bike ride because he's "adapted to it" and you're "inefficient"? Even though he can cover 20x the distance? But muh inefficiency!!!! There is a lot of debate about how efficient you can get depending on the exercise, but at the end of the day, it doesn't matter. It just means that you can cover the same distance with fewer calories and a lower RPE. So what can you do to get around this? You can simply increase your RPE back to where it was before. So your RPE and calories burned stay the same, but you cover more distance. HOORAY... You're getting BETTER! But even if you can get more efficient at an exercise, the vast majority of your progress is still going to come from physiological adaptation. What does this mean? It means that you can go faster, for longer, BURN MORE CALORIES and do all this with a lower RPE. It means that your 30mins/300 calorie run where you were dying at the end turns into a 30mins/500 calorie run where you barely broke a sweat. It means that waking up sore the next day turns into waking up and not feeling a thing even though you covered more distance in less time. Tour de France bike riders must be pretty damn efficient at bike riding considering they're the elite of the elite... They're so efficient that they must burn like 100 calories during a single ride amirite? Regardless of how efficient they are, they still consume 8,000 calories a day on average. Do you really think that they'd burn more calories on the stair stepper because they're less efficient at it? Does that even make sense? Now for a more scientific answer... Specializing in a specific type of cardio will increase the amount of myoglobin and mitochondria in the muscles used in that exercise. The jist of it is myoglobin stores oxygen in the muscles and sends it to the mitochondria in those same muscles which use that oxygen to produce energy (ie burn calories). The more of both you have in your muscles (and the bigger your mitochondria) , the more energy those muscles can produce and the more calories they can burn. Changing over to another cardio exercise that you're less efficient at will mean that you will be using new muscles that are untrained, which will have fewer myoglobin and mitochondria, and thus will not be able to produce as much energy (ie. burn as many calories) as those muscles you use in the exercise that you're "efficient" at. The end result isn't that you'd be burning more calories.... Unless it's a sprint, you'd be burning FEWER calories while getting MORE tired in the process. This is not to say that cardio exercises don't transfer over from one to the other... They do. Cardio increases your heart's ability to pump blood regardless of the exercise. So a trained cyclist will be better at running than someone who is untrained thanks to the higher cardiac output they've attained from cycling. They just won't be as good at running as they are at cycling due to the aerobic capacity of the muscles not being as trained for that specific exercise. But no, this doesn't mean they will burn more calories from running because they're "not efficient at it." In fact, it means the opposite. 3) X cardio is better than Y cardio for fat loss. Calories in, calories out. It doesn't matter which one burns more fat, it matters which one burns more CALORIES!!! To demonstrate this lets take an overly simplistic example... Exercise A burns 100% glycogen, 0% fat. Exercise B burns 0% glycogen, 100% fat. You eat after exercise A at maintenance.... Your glycogen stores are depleted. All the carbs you eat go towards replenishing your glycogen stores with none of it being stored as fat. You eat after exercise B at maintenance.... Your glycogen stores are full (since no glycogen was used during your workout). None of the carbs you eat go towards replenishing your glycogen stores since they're already full. So what will your body do with those carbs? It will turn them all into fat. So after you've eaten the net effect between exercise A and exercise B when it comes to fat loss... Is zero. So whether a workout burns more glycogen or more fat, if your goal is fat loss, it doesn't matter. If you want to lose fat, you need a calorie deficit, and to that end, the more effective cardio workout will be the one that burns more CALORIES. "But I'll just do a bunch of cardio and not eat carbs... Problem solved"!!!! <--- Don't do that, your body needs glycogen. You will feel like shit and your cardio gains will suffer, and cardio gains = burn more calories. 4) Lifting weights burn more calories than cardio because it raises your metabolism. While lifting weights does raise your metabolism... One pound of muscle burns 6 to 7 calories a day. Sure, those calories can add up if you put on some serious muscle. But the amount of calories burned from muscle is still overstated. If you want to find a counter source that says this isn't true, and that a pound of muscle burns 100 calories a minute... I don't care, since I'm about to put the cardio vs. weight lifting for calorie burning debate to rest either way... Again... There's a reason why Tour de France cyclists consume 8000 calories a day on average yet are built like twigs. That's over 2500 calories more per day (the TDEE of an entire human) than what Ronnie fucking Coleman ate in his prime. I'm sorry, but nobody can claim that lifting weights burns more calories than cardio when these 140 pound Tour de France cyclists would view the bulking diets of the world's top body builders as starvation diets. Yes, you can increase your RMR and TDEE from lifting weights and your body does use calories to repair muscle tissue, but even when taking that into account, when it comes to exercising for weight loss, SS cardio is still king and it's not even close. 5) "You can't outrun a bad diet." I hate this saying because of how people interpret it... You can't outrun a bad diet... So don't run at all because it's pointless. First of all, if you read above you would know by now that there are people who CERTAINLY CAN outrun a bad diet and then some, but that's because they put in the work. You can't... because you haven't. But you can still get better. The more cardio you do, the better you get at it, the more calories you will burn from it, the more you can mitigate the detrimental impacts of a bad diet, the more calories you can consume on a good diet and the lower the impact cheat days will have. So if you do have a bad diet... You'd be putting yourself in a much better position at least TRYING to outrun it. And who knows, after you put enough work into it... Maybe you'll be able to! (Disclaimer... I do promote having a bad diet... Put the fork down fatty! But do cardio too). In summary SS cardio is great... Should you do it? Absolutely! But if you don't want to, that's fine too. But DON'T use these myths and misconceptions as self-justification for not doing it and certainly DON'T spread these myths and misconceptions to others. All that does is discourage others from bettering themselves and putting in the work that you're not willing to do. Thanks for reading! [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 09 Jul 2021 10:25 PM PDT Hi! Welcome to your weekly thread where you can share your gym tales! [link] [comments] |
| Request for picking DB only routine: Frankoman's vs Fierce 5 vs DB Stopgap vs DB Stopgap PPL Posted: 09 Jul 2021 04:19 PM PDT Does anyone know much about these recommended DB-only programs and can give a quick overview of potential pitfalls between each one? Goals: fat loss. Also, how to assess if you're a beginner? I'm unsure if I should be looking at beginner only routines. Thanks in advance! Concerns: - Is 3 day total body workouts enough albeit seems recommended for true beginners? I can't tell if I'm a beginner since I have lifting experience and I run daily (lol). I haven't been on a regular lifting regimen in over a year but I do circuit style lifting and some interval runs with sprints mixed In. - Programs not adjusted for fat loss. I want to build muscle, but I need to lose fat first or else I'll be having muscle underneath the layer of fat. - Too much rest time in between working the same muscle group. Ie, some PPL programs work the legs/glutes with 4 days of rest days in between, which seems to be a waste since 48 hours is deemed as optimal. - There is much more emphasis on upper body than lower Fierce 5 Dumbbell Program - 3 day rotating split ( A / B / A ---> B / A / B ) This program is what I'm most likely going to do. However, he said that this program isn't ideal for fat loss. I'm confused as to why and how to modify it? DB Stopgap PPL - 6 day ( P/P/L/P/P/L/R ) or 3 day ( P/P/L/R ) PPL version is a potential 2nd choice due to the different exercises. However, I'm not too sure about PPL split and back-to-back Push + Pull seems hard on the upper body. It does seem to be upper body heavy and not enough glute... and legs are worked out with 3 days of rest in between rather than 48 hours. DB Stopgap - 3 day rotating split ( A / B / A ---> B / A / B ) Frankoman's DB - 3 day split I read somewhere that this has a lot more push than pull movements, so would need to supplement. Also, why are legs paired with shoulders? Seems odd [link] [comments] |
| Posted: 09 Jul 2021 10:19 AM PDT Hello, New to the sub. So, I apologize if this was brought up on here often. I exercise at a boutique fitness place that is quite intense. I usually burn around 800-1100 calories per hour class. I've been doing this for 4 months now and it's starting to get me down. I take 3 classes a week but I'm not recovering. I thought I was just I was just over doing it and decided to take a week off to recover. But when I returned I was just as fatigued as before. I have trouble getting out of bed. Walking up a flight of stairs is unbearable. I'm taking the correct vitamins and protein. I get 8-9 hours of sleep. I well hydrated. I even drink Pedialyte occasionally to make sure I have all my electrolytes. Does anyone know what's wrong with me? Is this common? Edit: I'm 280 lbs 6"4. Haven't lost any weight since starting. But I believe I gained muscle mass [link] [comments] |
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