You've been doing the same thing for the last three months. You go to the gym after work, and once you're changed, you head over to the “Cardio Area” of your club. Locating a free a treadmill, you start warming up. Maybe you begin with a five minute walk, and then pick up the pace until you're jogging. Closely monitoring your heart rate, you find what the machine calls your target “Fat Loss Zone.” After about a half hour on the treadmill, you head over to the elliptical for, say, twenty minutes. You may or may not stretch afterwards, and then you head out to get dinner, entirely ignoring the other half of the gym... Sound familiar?
Photo by: Peter Skadberg
If the above description of a gym experience resembles yours, and your main goal is to lose fat, I would like to let you know that there is a more efficient way to do that. Right now, you're probably thinking: “This guy has no idea what he's talking about” or “What does this guy know that I don't?” Hopefully, you're willing to read the rest of this article because I'm going to share two tips to help you burn more fat before and after your workouts.
The Science of It
Excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC) is a measurable increase in oxygen used by the body during and after exercise. This increase in oxygen is used both to perform the specific exercise and afterwards to restore your body to its resting state. During EPOC the body recruits fuel to be used, some of which is believed to be fat that has been stored (i). Your body uses the fuel for recovery from training; the more strenuous the exercise the greater EPOC levels are elevated.
Numerous studies (especially Drummond & Vehrs, et al.) demonstrate that resistance training yields higher levels of EPOC than only running. The Drummond & Vehrs study, which tested ten athletes during and after four types of workouts—Resistance Only, Run Only, Run-Resistance, and Resistance-Run—suggests that Resistance only training produced a greater EPOC than Running Only. All workouts lasted 30 minutes, during which subjects performed at 70% of maximal effort; the oxygen consumption of each subject was tested for an additional hour after the workout session. As illustrated in a chart of the study's results (see Figure 1 below), the oxygen consumption levels of those who performed the Running Only workout actually fell below the Baseline measurement during the 50th —70th minutes of testing. The study goes on to show that incorporating any resistance training into your workout is going to produce a greater EPOC level, giving you a greater chance of burning more fat.
Figure 1 (The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research: Vol. 19, No. 2)