1. Lyle McDonald is my “go to nutrition guy” (and I also love Alan Aragon, Mike Rousell and John Berardi). Everyone should get over to http://www.bodyrecomposition.com and check out his stuff. I’ve been reading his stuff for about 13 years now (all the way back to when he and I both wrote for cyberpump.com). If you want straight talk on nutrition and fat loss which is based on facts (and he doesn’t shamelessly plug worthless supplements either), you’ll be very happy.

2. I read that NY Times article the other day as well. Docs, by and large, don’t have the first clue about exercise. Here is my take on low-moderate intensity cardio in the fat burning zone:

1. The # of calories one burns per minute is not all that great unless one is a heavier trainee and/or is already quite fit. A 200 lb. fit person may be able to run at 8 mph and not go above 65-70% of heart rate max. The # of calories burned per minute at this intensity is fairly significant. However, a 150 lb. unfit person may “leave the fat burning zone” by walking at 3.5-4.0 mph, an intensity which isn’t going to burn very many calories.

2. The EPEOC/afterburn sucks

3. The conditioning benefits, IMO, are minimal unless you are just interested in general fitness and heart health (or fall into a certain situation which I’ll discuss below). If you are interested in high level performance and/or are a competitive athlete, it has minimal value and may not be applicable at all given the demands and nature of one’s sport

4. The manner in which one typically performs “fat burning zone” cardio will lead to overuse injuries due to a tremendous volume of reps being performed in the same plane (almost always sagital) and with the same muscle structures. Alwyn Cosgrove has talked a lot about this lately. A better approach to conditioning would be to spread the reps out over several different muscle structures throughout both the upper and lower body (band circuits, KB circuits, body weight circuits, complexes, medleys, etc.). On a side note, ideally, I think this type of stuff should be done on the same days one strength trains, at the end of a workout. I don’t like the idea of doing the metabolic resistance training/conditioning circuits on “off days”…I think it interferes with recovery.

5. Steady state fat burning zone cardio doesn’t do very much to preserve or build lean mass

6. I can eat 700 calories in about 10-15 minutes. I would have to “jog” (5-6 mph) on a treadmill in my so called fat burning zone for about an hour to burn this same amount of calories. Not eating those 700 calories (assuming they take me above my maintenance levels) to begin with doesn’t take me any time at all.

Now, with all of that being said, I think steady state moderate intensity work does have its place in a specific situation: If you are primarily interested in optimizing strength and muscle mass gains, don’t want to completely neglect heart health, but don’t want any non strength training activity to interfere with recover ability from your strength workouts. Oh yeah, there is one caveat to this: YOUR FRICKIN’ DIET HAS TO BE ON POINT!

Sorry, while I love HIIT, metabolic circuits (as described above), etc. you can’t tell me you wouldn’t recover better from your weight training workouts if you didn’t do this high intensity work on non lifting days. Again, I think if one’s primary goal is strength and muscle building, and diet is in line, 2-3 20 min steady state sessions/week is a good strategy to maintain general heart health. If you did this type of thing on the days you didn’t lift, and followed it up with SMR work and diligent focused stretching, you’d recover much better and get stronger…faster.

Thoughts?

Forgot my mp3 player at home today so I had to actually listen to the garbage spewing from the trainers at my gym today. They have their clients do the most absurd exercises ever. Lunging with 5-10 lb weights, then curling them, is one of their favorites. Well, one was having a women do squats. Every time she went down, her lower back would round, big time in order to get low. This became a discussion between them of her not understanding why her form was bad and him just giving her the same old, sit back, head up, cues. I waited till after she left as to not interrupt the training session and said to him, “You may want to address her lack of hip and/or ankle mobility.” He looked at me like I was speaking swahili and replied, “No. I’m pretty sure she’s just ‘over thinking it.’”

I wonder if that’s what she can tell her doctor when she ruins her lower back…I was just over thinking it.

Robert,

You totally pwned that trainer. Nice work!

I have a poodle and he IS an evil bastard; and a smelly one at that.

Hi Tony,

Regarding the myth of exercising in the fat-burning zone, you wrote -
“I can’t believe this guy is a doctor. Did anyone check to see if his diploma is written in crayon or something?”

I agree, but I would add that I can’t believe this stuff is being published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research! I’d expect to see it People magazine or something, but there?