With type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and America’s waistline bulging to frightening highs, what we think we know, and what we’ve been led to believe about fat loss, is not only wrong, but completely backward.
That’s right. Your difficulty losing weight is truly not your fault. You have been misinformed for years about healthy eating (i.e., fat makes you fat; replace fat with carbs). You have been misinformed about exercise’s role in reducing body fat.
At The Exercise Coach® we make it our policy not to cave in to popular fitness trends, but rather to go wherever the science of fat loss and exercise leads us. It is our hope that you take the time to read, understand, and pass along this information to as many people as you can.
You can enjoy maximum fitness and fat loss results with just 20 to 40 minutes of exercise per week – and I will tell you how. First, continue with our secrets to help fat loss!
SECRET #3 THE HIGH-INTENSITY BREAKTHROUGH
OK. I’ll let you in on the secret. The form of strength training used in the Westcott/ Darden studies was a type of strength training known as HIT, standing for High Intensity Training. Intensity is by far the most important variable to manipulate in an exercise program.
What is intensity? It can be defined simply as the degree of momentary effort utilized in an exercise. So, we could call the maximum amount of exertion you could call upon at a given moment, 100 percent intensity.
Conversely, we could call sitting on the couch a 0 on the intensity indicator.
Now before I go on, let me emphasize,when we talk about intensity, we are talking about your momentary abilities, not an Olympic athlete.
You see, we have created programs powered by technology smart enough to adapt to the unique abilities of all kinds of exercisers. Most of our clients range from their late 30s to early 60s, and we work very successfully with younger athletes and men and women well into their 80s.
High intensity does not mean safety is compromised. In fact, the type of work we perform at The Exercise Coach® is better characterized as “Right-Intensity Training™.”
So why is intensity so important? Well, your body was designed to be very economical. That is, it will only make changes that it determines are necessary.
The synthesis of new muscle tissue is very costly metabolically. And, while we know you need it, your body needs to be convinced. That’s what exercise is – the intelligent application of a physiological stressor to give your body a reason to change, adapt, or upgrade if you will.
When you perform adequately challenging muscular work (i.e., intense), alarms go off in your physiology saying, “Wow! Is that a bear you are fighting with? Are you running from a lion?” And, since there is no bear or lion and you survive the encounter, your body takes all the resources at its disposal and uses them to better prepare you for your next battle (perceived battle, that is).
Now, the really cool part is that when you work hard enough to stimulate your body to adapt, it takes time for the changes to be made. We call that the recovery period. It’s vitally important to understand that you aren’t getting fitter during exercise, but rather during the rest period after. Most people will require a minimum of 48 to 72 hours of rest.
And we don’t want to exercise before that because it’s at best a waste of time and, worst case scenario, it stunts your body’s positive response (i.e., diminishes your results). So high-intensity exercise should be performed infrequently. About twice per week is ideal.
The other cool part is that when you exercise at adequate intensity levels, it requires that you don’t work out for very long. In fact, you can’t. On average, a high-intensity strength workout lasts about 15 to 20 minutes.
Where does the duration come from? Exercise that qualifies as high intensity challenges your muscles in a manner that couldn’t be sustained for more than about 1 to 2 minutes, even if your life depended on it.
And, once you have done a high-intensity strength training set, you have done what you can to set your adaptive machinery in motion.
Westcott and Darden both subscribe to a one-set per muscle group approach as a result of the research we showed you. The key is understanding that it’s not just using a muscle for 1 to 2 minutes. It’s a sufficiently high level of effort that is the stimulus.
That’s why a professional trainer who is committed to this type of training comes in very handy. We can help you find the load and effort levels right for you. At The Exercise Coach® we do this in a way nobody else does.
Our proprietary, computerized fitness platform gives us the ability to measure your unique muscular make up and deliver a strength training stimulus as unique to you as your fingerprint. This means fast results — guaranteed! Relative to fat loss, intensity in exercise moves us beyond worrying about the archaic measure of calories burned during exercise. That ‘s so 1980s!
Coming next month, the final two secrets. In the meantime, the choice is yours to make and at The Exercise Coach® we can help.
Make TODAY the day to start on that road to better health and fitness! Let our caring and knowledgeable Certified Coaches get you started. Call, text, or visit us online for your complimentary Initial Consultation and 2 FREE Sessions! (480) 716-6080 or visit the website exercisecoach.com/north-mesa.