What’s Your Training Directive?

When asked about training for fat loss, one of the very first questions I ask is, ‘What’s your training directive?” Often this will solicit a blank look, followed quickly with a hesitant “Uuh, to lose fat?”

Hmmm, that may be your objective, so let me rephrase. “What is it that you are going to do to maximise your fat loss?” “Ahhh,” they’ll smile, “I’ve started walking with my neighbor 3 days a week.”

Training for real results, much like anything else in life, needs to be approached with more than just enthusiasm and zeal, although that’s naturally a great start. Planning, implementation and a little bit of good old fashioned research will go a long way to saving you a lot of time and disappointment with another failed weight loss attempt. This is your training directive.

Far too often I see people who have made the decision to finally do something about those jiggling extra kilos and off they go to join a gym or similar, to sweat that excess flab away. Unfortunately 90% or more will fail because they didn’t do their research.

A classic example of this is those people who spend hours and hours each week doing long cardio sessions like; walking, running and aerobics classes when their objective is to lose body fat. I find it really odd how slowly information seeps from the sports scientists and trainers to the general public.

Any trainer who is worth their hourly rate stopped using long cardio sessions for fat loss over a decade ago, yet venture into any health club and what do you see? Rows and rows of people lined up to use the treadmills. It should be obvious to everyone that it’s the same people cranking out the km’s day in, day out, month after month and even year after year and for what? They still look much the same!

These days you’ll find all of the top notch trainers and athletes utilizing short duration but much higher intensity training methods to bring about maximum fat burning and fitness results. Note I said fat and not weight. The best way to lose weight is to jump on a treadmill for an hour each day for a month. You’ll lose weight all right, but your percentage of body fat may even increase despite your sweat and tears. The reason for this is that you’re probably not losing much fat, but you’re most certainly burning into your muscle stores. Reduced muscle mass = Fewer Calories Burned.

Short duration cardio sessions have a few distinct advantages over longer sessions including;

• Time effective- Most high intensity sessions max out at 20 minutes.
• Immediately effective- You can burn almost double your daily calories in a fraction of the time.
• Long term effectiveness- While an hour on a treadmill can and will burn muscle, short high intensity sessions will actually promote lean muscle growth which of course increases your metabolism. More muscle = More Calories Burned!

So my advice is this, if fat loss is your objective, take a look at high intensity interval training. I guarantee that, done properly, you will lose fat much more effectively and gain the lean muscle necessary to make sure it stays lost!

duncan

To learn more about functional, high intensity training check out our class time table