In a recent year, cardio training has gotten interesting take, especially for those who are working on fat loss. The question is should you do cardio training for fat loss.
Cardio Training and Confusion
We often hear fitness experts talk against performing cardio, especially, when you are working on fat loss. Their explanation, typically, are you may not be able to burn more calories compared with resistance training when compared with 60 minutes sessions. Another is body will adapt to cardio training and may not appreciate further fat metabolism or burning more calorie in a process.
Here is the problem that I see. Why should we separate resistance training and cardio training and not doing both? If calorie deficit is what people are looking for in weight and fat loss, isn’t it better to burn more calorie through both resistance training and cardio training? Are they separating the two because people are looking for easier answer? Number one cause of death is heart disease. Both resistance training to build muscle and cardio training to strengthen the heart.
Cardio Training
Cardio or cardiovascular training is to improve your cardiovascular function, which involves how efficiently the heart can pump blood to the entire body and blood vessel to be able to handle the pressure from the increased blood volume.
Through steady state cardio exercises such as walking, jogging, biking and so forth, can help improve cardiovascular function. Typical outcome includes lowering resting heart rate, lowering active heart rate, increase number of capillaries and number of mitochondria.
Reason for this adaptation to happen is because the heart can pump more blood in one beat so the heart does not need to pump as frequent as before and the body needs more mitochondria to be more efficient in converting fat and sugar into energy. Not only you’ll be efficient in lower intensity cardio training but also can handle physical activities that are higher in intensity.
Cardio Training, Adaptation and Fat Metabolism
Adaptation theory that people are concern about. Yes, the body will adapt to any stress including, environment, cardio, resistance training and so on. Adaptation happens, because of proper recovery protocol such as nutrition, sleep and stress management. If more improvement is required, then you may need to challenge the body by increasing load, volume, pace, environment and so on.
As your performance in cardio training improve energy(calorie) usage may lowered since body may not need as much energy to perform at the same intensity level. This may sound not good, however, good thing about adaptation in cardio training is, when properly trained, the body may be able to use fat as energy source during your cardio training. Low intensity steady state cardio training can train the body to use fat as energy source. Whether we use fat or glucose as energy source is depending on the ratio between oxygen (O) and carbon dioxide (CO2). Higher the oxygen level during cardio exercise higher the fat metabolism.
Performing cardio training immediately after the resistance training may not be great idea because the stress level may be high and can interferes with muscle recovery, which also means interferes with muscle growth. You can use walking or biking as a cool down after your training session but not for the purpose of fat loss. It is ideal to perform 3+ hours post resistance training so that the body can focus more on fat metabolism.
Cardio Training and Conditioning
Cardio training is in a category of conditioning. Conditioning has various categories and methods. You can do low impact steady state cardio for 30+ minutes to help body recover. You can work on something called Zone 2 to help teach body utilize fat as you exercise. You can work on performing exercise by utilizing lactic acid. So when, someone talks about cardio, I always ask the purpose and program that they are working on because people, including trainers, mixing so many things.
In terms of method, walking, biking, rowing, jogging, etc., are just a part of the method. You can take 4-8 strength exercise to make it into circuit training and perform zone 2 training. You can do heavy sled push for 10+ minutes and practice beathing to keep the heartrate low. This is part of conditioning program called high intensity continuous. For a record, just because you can handle the intensity that does not mean you are in zone 2. Keep the heartrate below 180-your age. If you are 30 years old you should target for 150bpm (beats per minute). If you are 50 year old, 130 bpm. Yes, this is just a guideline. There are devices and testing that can give more accurate heartrate zones but this calculation can give you a decent guide.
Just like with strength and muscle building, what you are working on is vital in both cardio training and conditioning. If it is fat loss, you are looking for, then low impact steady state cardio will be great. However, it is important to know what to look for. Is your active heartrate getting lower? Is your resting heart rate getting lower? How is your 1-minute heart rate recovery after the training looks like? If all these metrics are improving, can you make it more challenging by moving more faster and still perform in the same way?
How to Start?
Improving your heart condition and fat usage is a skill that your body needs to learn, which means you will need to do them more frequently than training for strength and muscle building. Not only that, I'm sure that you have a stress from work, your current weight and health, and so on. Initially, if you work on your cardio or conditioning for too long (30+ min) you may not recover and may cause more stress which may lead to not able to lose fat though you are burning calories.
For a starter, walk for 20 minutes a day, treadmill or outdoor, for 4-5 days per week with a pace that is challenging but you can still have a conversation. If you have heartrate monitor, check every 2 minutes to see if the heart rate is below 180-your age. After 4-6 weeks, you should be able to walk faster, farther, at the similar heartrate or lower with same duration. If you cannot walk, use the bike.
You should strive for 45-60 minutes of walk with keeping the heartrate in zone 2. If you cannot do this everyday, see if you can do this 2 times per week and 20 minutes on the other days.
How About Calories?
It is important to create some calorie deficit and I understand that people want to burn more calories and eat less to create that deficit. However, when the body does not know how to use fat and manage stress, because of sedentary lifestyle or stressful lifestyle, creating large deficit (>500 kcal) may cause lowering the metabolism, losing muscles, fatigue, and though you are burning calories but won't see changes after 3-4 weeks may happen. Worst situation is people going for extended fasting to create larger deficit.
Instead focus on training the body to use fat. Even if the calorie burn in 20 minutes is only 200 calories, what if the 80% (160) is coming from fat versus spending 60 minutes to burn 600 calories but only 10% (60) of that is coming from fat? What is your goal? What is the purpose of you exercise.
One thing you should do is to know how much calories you should be consuming and how much you are actually consuming. If you have smartwatch, you should be able to monitor how much calories you are using per day. Check your highest and lowest day in the last 7-14 days. For me, it is between 2500 to 3000 calories per day. This includes my strength and cardio training. I generally keep my calorie intake around 2500 calories. My protein intake is 160g (640 calories) per day because of my current weight and using remainder of calories towards carb and fat. This is my baseline. Is the number on the smartwatch accurate? May be not 100% but it give me idea as to where I am so I can plan accordingly.
Should You Do Cardio for Fat Loss?
Last thought. With heart disease being number one cause of death and obesity and diabetes are on the rise, cardio training should be non-negotiable. This does not mean that you should replace strength or resistance training with cardio. You should do them both. As mentioned earlier, cardio or conditioning training can be done in so many different variations. Know what you want to accomplish and work in the way that you can meet your goal. Reason why you are not meeting goal is perhaps you are approaching the problem in the wrong way.
Kota Shimada
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