Cardio: What type is "best"

I was asked by a client recently to critique and advise on his cardio routine, he was doing a form of HIT training. I thought part of my reply might also be a useful post for other people to read, so here is my reply below:


Ultimately cardio is done for one main reason - to create a calorie deficit. But you don't have to do cardio in order to create a calorie deficit. 

When it comes to losing bodyfat, its all about finding the easiest and most enjoyable way to achieve a calorie defecit. If your method is really hard work then it's not going to be sustainable and you will struggle to stay consistent. 

Years back I would torture myself with cardio because I didn't know any better, don't get me wrong, I got results because I can be very disciplined. However, when I focused my efforts on cardio to create a calorie deficit, it was always something I perceived as something I would do for a short period of time just to GET lean. That leaves the problem, what happens when you achieve that goal? You stop the cardio, and you relax on your diet because its just plain hard work. So I used to do this cycle, I'd get to my goal and then I'd won so I'd stop the cardio and relax my diet and I'd gain the fat back.

I never do "cardio" now, whenever I used to do cardio, I'd get a lot more hungry and so it often negates the effect of doing the cardio. Also I get tired, and eventually it catches up with me because when I train with weights I train hard and so I don't have room to add more work into my routine and still recover effectively and maintain good energy levels. Personally I find it much easier and enjoyable to reduce my intake of calories by 500kcal than do 500kcal worth of cardio work. So I don't do any typical cardio at all.

I like to walk and that is the closest I get to cardio - because it's super easy, therefore I can do it consistently and it does not effect my ability to recover from my workouts. I walk to and from the gym and generally choose to walk where I can, I end up doing 45-90 minutes walking a day. I stick a podcast on or listen to some music and its relaxing and healthy. 

If your goal is to build a lean and muscular physique you have to also take into account how much exercise you can do and still recover effectively. So you should prioritise the type of training you do, I always prioritise intense weight training. I don't let any other training negatively effect my energy for these workouts or my ability to recover from them.

If you find cardio to be part of the most enjoyable method of creating a calorie deficit, then do that. In terms of what type of cardio to do, it's more important to choose cardio that you enjoy over what is most optimal. Because its only optimal if you can do it consistently. HIT is quite good if you really feel like you need and want to do cardio, there have been studies conducted that show it is less detrimental to muscle development than steady state cardio. 

Fundamentals: Building Muscle & Progression

Following on from my initial post on fat burning and energy balance, I want talk about a critical principal of muscle building. The idea of these "fundamental" posts is to lay out the basic key principals that if incorporated into your routine, will point you in the right direction and go a long way to helping you stay on course to achieving your goals.

You've likely heard of the principle of progressive overload. This is one of the most important training factors when it comes to building muscle. Any training routine with the goal of building muscle should have progressive overload at it's core.

If you are progressively adding more weight to the bar and lifting more weight over time, you are getting stronger. If you're getting stronger your body is adapting, and there are several factors that can attribute to this strength gain including neuromuscular adaptation, muscle fiber recruitment, improved motor programming & technique, as well as increased muscle mass. It is true that you can gain a certain amount of strength without adding muscle mass, but at some point, if you continualy increase the weight you are lifting for reps over time, your body has to build new muscle fibres in order to achieve this strength progression. 

If you are not progressing, this is a sign that something with your routine is likely to be suboptimal and preventing your strength and muscle gains. Tracking your workouts will highlight any plateus with your progress. This is something you might not see if you're not tracking you workouts. If you find that you're not improving then you know that there are elements of your routine / nutrition / recovery / lifestyle that need to be improved, and so you can take action.

When we are always trying to improve and lift more weight its all to tempting to "cheat" in order to complete a rep. As exciting as it is to see strengh gains and hitting new personal bests it's important that we don't allow this focus on progression to negatively effect your form within a given lift. Training should be hard, and in order to progress we have to push our limits. When we are lifting heavy, or as we tire towards the end of a set, our body instinctively tries to find the path of least resistance. Without the correct mental focus this can mean our form gets a little skewed in those last couple of reps, meaning less focus is being put on the muscle we are really trying to stimulate, and potentially putting us at risk of injury. We have to remember here that moving the weight isn't really the ultimate goal, the goal is to maximise tension within the target muscle as we move through the range of motion against resistance. So as we are adding weight to the bar over time, we have to ensure that we do so whilst always whilst maintaining proper form throughout the momement.

Training should be fun, and you should feel motivated to train. If you note down and track your progress, you can see when you gain strength. When you see yourself getting stronger and the amount of weight you're able to lift increasing, it's rewarding, its fun and you feel motivated to continue progressing. If you write down your weight, sets and reps for your lifts each workout, then the next time you go into the gym you immediately see what you have to beat next time. For example, take weighted pull ups. If you completed 5 reps with 30kg strapped to you waist last workout, then your aim should be 6 reps of 30kg next workout, or 31.25kg for 5 reps. It's all too common to see people lifting the same weight for months even years and they are not progressing, because they are not tracking their efforts. 

If you are serious about improving your physique, get a notepad & pen or a smartphone app and start tracking your progress.  

Fundamentals: Energy Balance is King

I wanted to lay out some fundamentals before delving deeper into other subjects. I saw no better subject to start with than how and why we lose or gain fat.

Burning fat, at its core is very simple. As you're probably aware, the amount of body fat you hold on your frame is ultimately the result of energy balance over time. If you consistently take in more energy than you expend, you will store fat. Thankfully, the opposite is also true. There are many different factors that effect this equation, but ultimately whenever you have lost fat, its because you have expended more energy than you have taken in.

There's a huge plethora of training and nutrition strategies aimed at achieving this energy deficit, some more popular than others and some more effective than others. Some more sustainable, some more difficult, some "fads", some even dangerous. Whatever the strategy, if it has ever worked for anyone, its because it created an energy deficit, meaning the body had to use it's stored body fat as fuel.

If you are looking for a long term solution to sculpting and maintaining a physique you are happy with, then you have to find the most enjoyable method of getting and staying there. If you take an approach that you really hate, then it's going to be extremely difficult to achieve your goals, let alone maintain them.

This is where things start to get a little more complex, and hence why there is so much literature and conflicting information on the subject. You've probably heard the phase, "you've got to find what works for you". As cliche as this sounds, there is some truth to it.

When it comes to reducing bodyfat, just understand that regardless of what route you take, this basic law of thermodynamics underpins everything.

Water Retention and Motivation

When trying to burn fat, build lean muscle, or a combination of the two, motivation is really important. You want to look in the mirror and see improvements, when you don’t see improvement, it can be a little disheartening, even worse, when you seem to be going backwards it can be a real deal breaker, that can send you off the rails with your training and nutrition.

In the past I remember training and eating well, and yet sometimes my body would not seem to be responding the way I was hoping. I sometimes would look less defined than I was the week before as if I had lost definition over night, despite all my good efforts to eat correctly and train well. I would interpret this as a sign I must not be training or dieting hard enough. So as a result I would train harder, putting in extra gruelling high intensity training (HIT) cardio sessions in the mornings before eating, and reducing my calorie intake further. Sure this meant I lost weight a little faster for a little while, but it also meant that I was over training and setting myself up for failure somewhere down the line. I chronically reduced my calorie intake which had a knock on effect on my strength, my training and mood. Eventually I ended up feeling tired most of the time, and constantly putting off cravings, but I would not increase my calorie intake because I thought that this would mean losing definition like before.

I have since learnt more about water retention, and how it can effect the way the body looks and feels. When I was looking in the mirror and seeing less definition than I was expecting, it was largely due to the effect of water retention. Basically my body was holding extra water under the skin which was making me look a whole lot less defined than would be expected for my body fat %. Instead of realising the fact that this was just water retention that would pass, I was thinking that it was body fat.

There are some useful articles explaining water retention in more detail  and how to deal with it on Martin Berkhan’s blog. Since learning the effects of water retention I respond much differently when I see it’s effects. I realise that just as it can appear quickly and all of a sudden, it can also disappear quickly and all of a sudden. So instead of thinking damn I’ve lost definition since last week, I realise what is going on, and just continue on my training and nutrition plan as before and a few days or so down the line I find that the water has dispersed and I look leaner than ever before. Obviously if you are overeating, this will result in fat storage, and so poor diet is the cause. However, if you have been training and eating well and seeing results but then all of a sudden without changing your diet or training you seem to go backwards, this may just be water retention. So the trick is to realise when its just water retention (the skin will feel quite lose and bloated) and just continue with your plan and eventually the water will go (you can follow Martin’s advice on how to get rid of water retention) and you‘ll see that in the meantime you have still been burning fat and getting leaner.


TP

About The Author

Hi, I’m Tim Peck, I’m a fitness enthusiast and since graduating in BA (Hons) Product Design I work as a freelance designer specialising in web, graphic, and 3D Design (www.timpeck.co.uk). The nickname “Timmy Pectorals” is a title I picked up during my first summer working at the summer camp “Timber Lake Camp“. In typical British style I built a reputation for making the most of the summer sun, and would rarely be seen at camp wearing my staff shirt, and so I guess because of that reputation coupled with my surname, the summer camp community soon gave me the nickname of Timmy Pectorals.

In my first article getting lean with open mind I mentioned how I would often inadvertently cycle through stages of being very lean, and stages of not being quite so lean as I would have liked. My diet before intermittent fasting was fairly strict, and I due to good discipline I was able to achieve fairly lean results (see image below), but I was never far from a set back, so keeping this lean for longer than a few months at a time was very difficult.

Above is a picture taken in summer 2009, I got pretty lean, but was only able to sustain this for a couple of months, and my diet felt really strict and so it wasn't a lot of fun.

Here in comparison I have lost quite a lot of definition. I would often cycle from this kind of shape and the greater level of definition seen in the first image. I wouldn't say I was in particularly bad shape in this photo, but this would be as far as I would allow myself to go before I would put my foot down and start aggressively getting in better shape. I was too impatient, and would try and get too lean too quickly. So I never spent much time where I was really enjoying food as much as I would like, I felt like a was having to cut back a lot, and so it wasn't a great long term solution. Plus the fact I would diet through calorie restriction alone and eating 6 small meals meant I was constantly fuelling my body, and so fighting against insulin all the time, making getting lean more difficult (I will talk about this in more detail in another article).

In my opinion the key to staying lean, is to find a method which isn’t difficult to sustain. You must be happy with your diet not just in terms of results but also in terms of how it is effecting your life. If you’re going through each day struggling to put off cravings, its just a matter of time before you crack. With this in mind, I believe patience is very important. If you can be patient with your results, and be happy to progress very slowly, the less extreme your diet needs to be and so the easier it will be to sustain. I would often try and quickly “lean up” after a set back, and so my diet would again be very strict, probably too strict and setting me up for another set back later on down the line. My recent success and ability to sustain a level of definition I’m happy with is due to finding a method which works for me long term, I’m able to enjoy food, and enjoy results, it’s a much more balanced lifestyle. I don’t spend every day putting off cravings, and if I do go very low calorie I only do it for one day at a time, I never put very low calorie days back to back. Below are pictures of my more recent condition:

December 2010

February 2011

 

May 2011

I have been in this condition for the past 7 months, and its been incredibly easy to sustain, in fact I’ve spent the past 7 months, very slowly burning fat, whilst making satisfying gains in strength.

Following on from my point about the importance of patience, I believe that as you see results come through, the more motivation you have to continue, and so the easier any diet becomes to sustain. I believe that failures may be due to the fact that people lose heart when they don’t see results as quickly as they hoped and so their motivation drops, and eventually they quit. The trick is to stay patient and stick with it, eventually results come. Once those results come, the easier it becomes to continue. Another factor that can effect motivation is water retention, but that’s something I will write about in another article. Anyway I’m starting to waffle so I will stop there.

Whenever I have anything fitness related on my mind that I want to write about I will post it here.



TP

Getting Lean With An Open Mind

Introduction

I’m starting a blog about nutrition and training, basically about getting and staying lean and anything else related, or any random stuff I want to write about to be honest. It was kind of difficult to know what to start with, so I’m starting with the first thing that came into my head which is this article about my current opinion about the importance of an open mind. It’s up to you to make up your own mind about what I write, just keep an open mind. Please excuse the appearance of this blog and the quality of grammar in this article, for now I’m just starting writing for a bit of fun really.

With everything you read about nutrition and dieting I think it’s important that you approach it with an open mind. I’ve noticed more than a few examples of keen gym goes who are stuck in their ways, know what they know and are very reluctant to challenge what they think they know already, and I’m not just talking about the older more experienced guys in the gym.

Whilst I think the most important factor of any diet is that you find a method that works for you and your lifestyle. Although, just because something might be working and you feel it’s a good approach for you, your lifestyle, and your preferences, it doesn’t mean it couldn’t be better.




Challenging My “Knowledge”

For a few years I followed the 6 meals a day rule, but I always liked to eat big and never felt satisfied unless I felt full. Eventually I would end up binging and eating massive meals to the point where I was in pain, much to the amusement of my university flat mates. I consider myself to have good will power, but this diet was ultimately not working for me and no matter how strong my will power I would eventually crack so I would just be in a constant cycle which was preventing my from staying ultra lean.

When I was at University I never had the time in the evenings to really do any thorough research about nutrition to the level I wanted to, I could only read the odd article here and there, and I would often read from the same source (a popular health magazine). The problem was, this single source of information tended to repeat all the same information every month, through this repetition I effectively brain washed myself, and took what I was reading and the final word.

However, since graduating I found a bit more free time in the evenings where I could read and research things more thoroughly, and importantly start reading articles from a range of different sources. It was through this research that I eventually found Leangains, a blog by Martin Berkhan. Stumbling upon his most popular article “top ten fasting myths debunked” was a turning point for me. What a was reading challenged almost everything I had ever thought I knew about nutrition, building lean muscle and burning fat. Several great articles by Martin Berkhan explain so many different scientifically based theories that I had never read of before. Reading Martin’s blog I was introduced to the world of intermittent fasting, and his Leangains approach. I’m not going into detail about intermittent fasting in this article because Martin Berkhan has done a great job of this on his blog (www.leangains.com).

I used to think the idea of skipping meals and especially skipping breakfast was ludicrous. I had been reading the same stuff month after month about how breakfast is so important to keeping weight off and losing weight, stoking your metabolism (probably stuff we have all read). Read Martin’s Blog for a different perspective with results and scientific references to back it up.

My personal experience with eating is that once I start eating that’s when I get hungry, that’s when my cravings start to kick in, and that’s when I want to continue eating. Until I start eating my will power is much stronger and the urge to eat isn’t so strong (reading Martin‘s blog, it seems this may be due to a hormone called ghrelin which helps regulate appetite). So when I stopped eating breakfast I found my urge to binge pretty much disappeared all together, which is completely contradictory to what is often written in many popular health magazines. I had thought that I would struggle stopping eating breakfast. I was always a big fan of breakfast and would go to bed genuinely excited to get up and eat breakfast the next day (I think this over enthusiastic excitement was due to the fact that my habit of eating 6 regular small meals a day was effectively teasing my system by never eating to the point of satisfaction). When I eat now, I eat huge meals, to the point that my brother is still mystified every time I bring my trough of food to the table (this is after eating for this way for several months).

I do count calories, it’s the way I’m wired, I like to be in control, so the counting works for me. So long as my calculations are correct it mathematically guarantees that I will meet my fat loss goals and I like that assurance. Having that assurance also makes it easier to adhere to the diet. Once I have met my calorie count for the day, I stop, and knowing I’m stopping because I have met my pre determined calorie allowance, which will lead to results, makes the whole process so easy. I don’t have to battle with myself to stop eating anymore, partly because seeing the results is so satisfying, but also due partly to the fact that eating my food in a shorter feeding window allows me to actually eat until I am truly full and satisfied. So it doesn’t feel like a diet, I’m enjoying it, and so it has become a lifestyle rather than a temporary “diet“. Since starting intermittent fasting I’ve found myself getting leaner, stronger, and enjoying my food and training much more. I also adopted a new training approach which I will talk about in another article.


Conclusion

Without an open minded approach I would have missed this opportunity to develop my methods and reap the rewards. Obviously not everything you read will work for you, my advice would be to give things a try for a little while, if it doesn’t work, go back to what you know, at the very least you may learn something about the other approach which you might be able to use to tweak your current methods.

One thing I noticed when I first adopted the intermittent fasting approach was that I felt a little embarrassed to contradict methods that I had been living by for the past few years. It was a lesson to me to ensure that I never get to the point where I believe that any single article or dieting method is the final word. I make a conscious effort to ensure I now challenge what I have learnt  and challenge what I continue to read, whilst approaching things with an open minded viewpoint. I think it’s important not to be ashamed to change what you believe in. As you learn more and read more I think it’s natural for your views and opinions to change, surely its how we grow up and grow in wisdom. I think fear can be a very destructive emotion, and stands in the way of a lot of personal development. So challenge yourself, challenge what you think you know and challenge what you learn in future. Approach things with an open mind, and take what you can from what ever you read and apply it to your life.

Keep learning, keep improving.


TP