Steady state versus burst cardio; you need both!
11 April 2005If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Some interesting science on high intensity cardiovascular exercise appeared a few years back that indicated that intense aerobic exercise done repeatedly would actually increase the mitochondria density within the muscle used to power the aerobic activity. If you engaged in intense and repeated cardio activity more mitochondria would appear within the muscles used to power the activity. This is significant on several counts: mitochondria are cellular blast furnaces that produce energy for the cell through cellular respiration. When a muscle has more mitochondria we can consume more calories without adding to fat stores as energy needs are heightened. When we add more mitochondria our basal metabolic rates increases and we consume more calories while at rest.
Obese people unable to exercise have a paucity of mitochondria and this is partly why a 400-pound inactive individual can exist on 800-calories a day and add body fat eating 1500-calories. At the other extreme a 240-pound competitive bodybuilder who hits six early morning cardio sessions a week and weight trains ten or more hours each week can consume 10,000 calories a day and not gain an ounce of body fat. The obese individual has a sluggish metabolism a far fewer cellular furnaces than the bodybuilder. Over time the champion bodybuilder elevates their metabolism to a point where eating 5,000 calories a day causes them to lose body weight.
Not every cell has a mitochondria but cardiovascular exercise can actually create more mitochondria. However, as my aerobic mentor, Dr. Len Schwartz, pointed out to me years ago, only cardio exercise above a certain level of intensity is sufficient to cause the body to create additional mitochondria. Len liked to speak in terms of METS but to keep it simple, only aerobic exercise that involves muscular effort is sufficient to build mitochondria. Cruising around for long distances at an even pace causes the heart to elevate but is not necessarily enough to create more cell furnaces.
Unless the element of exertion is factored into the exercise equation, the muscles used will not reconfigure themselves. Interval work, cardio exercise in which intense exertion is generated for relatively short time spans alternated with periods of lesser intensity (yet still at elevated rates) is ideal for increasing mitochondria density. The smooth glide of an expert steady-state runner or swimmer generates an elevated heart rate but the texture of the stress will not add extra cell furnaces.
So whats the wind up to this big bunch of throat clearing? Make sure that you do not fall into the trap of using steady-state aerobic activity exclusively. Often I see slim and lean aerobic adepts shift from one exercise mode to another yet still exert the same quality of effort, i.e., the athlete still uses a steady, even pace. On a periodic basis be sure and use burst or interval style cardio in which a purposefully elevated effort is used for a short period. The burst can be 10-seconds or 10-minutes, but regardless the duration of the burst the common factor is purposefully elevated cardio effort that is set within a larger overall session timeframe.
In my world I use a heart rate monitor and I like to intersperse free-hand exercise with power-walking and steep hill climbing to create burst segments within the session. Typically I will start my outdoor power-walk with 2-4 minutes of free-hand full squats, jumping jacks and push-ups to elevate the heart up to say 85-90% of my age-related heart rate. This might be followed by ten minutes of flat terrain walking at 75-80% of ARHR max before I tackle a steep hill for five minutes that spikes the heart rate up 90-100%. After a burst I will literally stand still or stretch and allow the heart to simmer back down to 70% of ARHR max. While recovering I suck in the scenery and allow my burning muscles to clear lactic acid pools. I recover my wind and while standing still I am still receiving aerobic benefit. This brief respite is critical in that it allows me to burst again, usually blasting up yet another steep hill, spiking up to 90-100% of ARHR max once more. Again, totally gassed I stand and stretch and recover my wind and allow fatigue acids to clear muscle tissue. Back to normal I repeat to procedure. Ten minutes from ending the session (usually 30-50 minutes in duration) I drop the bursts and glide back to the jeep using steady-state walking. Once the heart is elevated it is fairly easy to keep it elevated and on this final steady-state cool down it is fairly easy to stay at 75-80% of ARHR max by simply walking fast. Please dont run out and start blasting up to 100% of ARHR max just because I do it as this could be dangerous but regardless your degree of fitness you can still alternate the burst/steady-state approach.
Be sure and use both steady-state style sessions AND interval style sessions; the human body loves it when we feed it a steady diet of sameness. Do the same thing in the same way over and over and the body eventually will neutralize the training effect. By alternating two distinct approaches to aerobic exercise we keep the body off balance and unable to figure out what is going on. This allows us to extract gains on a continual basis. I also use kettlebells and clubbells to generate burst cardio effect. Try swinging, lifting, hoisting or flinging a weighted object for 30-minutes and use a variety of different motor pathways and grooves. The heart-elevating effect is awesome and by using four limbs instead of two to generate the effort you can actually go longer and harder yet feel less fatigued. The muscular impact is spread four ways instead of two and this weighted-implement approach to cardio is more in line with cardio-genius Len Schwartzs original rationale for inventing HeavyHands. Lastly, variety is the spice of life and it certainly how we keep exercise exciting. If we have an entire menu of exercise to select from then enthusiasm is kept at a fever pitch and instead of dreading exercise sessions we look forward to them. Once exercise becomes a joy instead of unpaid manual labor than the battle is won and physical transformation becomes not a matter of if but when.
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