I Don't Like To Waste My Time... Do You?

I continually hear about people overtraining and folks in the gym that spend hours and hours doing ongoing cardio(mostly steady state) as well as even still more hours of weight resistance training. 

Honestly there just is no need for countless time put in.  What do these people expect to get from all their invested time?  A better body?  Well if that is their goal they don't need to spend all their time getting it and should be spending more of their time enjoying it.

There is a time AND exercise amount that the human body reaches that it just will no longer respond positively. Instead it will regress or not progress. In my opinion if there is no progress then there is no reason to do it at all.

After 45 min. of intense exercise certain hormones- such as cortisol and estrogen- are produced in large amounts and bring the body to a catabolic state which is a muscle breakdown environment. Your testosterone will greatly begin to decrease and estrogen increase. This is not a good thing.

If you spread your workout over a longer period of time your intensity MUST be decreased due to the mere fact of survival. 
If you decrease the amount of time you train(on whatever exercise, movement or skill set) your intensity can then- and should then- be increased to the utmost to benefit.

Think about it.  Let's use sprinting for an example. 
If you sprint for 30s on the treadmill at an all out "balls to the wall" pace you will go hard. Let's increase the time to a 1 min. sprint. Think about that for a moment. Your pace- speed and intensity- will be lowered as compared to the 30s sprint in order to last the full 1 min.

The same principle can and does hold true for any sport, weight training workout, and/or cardio(hopefully you perform HIIT).

Recovery proceeds growth.  Recovery proceeds growth. 
Less is more.  If you keep the intensity high you will not have to do as much in order to experience the same results. 

Some of you may only be into fat loss, but the following research also holds true for VO2 Max as well.

The landmark study in interval training was from Tremblay et al. Thisstudy directly compared 20 weeks of endurance training against 15 weeks of interval training:

Energy cost of endurance training = 28661 calories.
Energy cost of interval training = 13614 calories (less than half)

The interval training group showed a 9 times greater loss in subcutaneous fat than the endurance group (when corrected for energy cost).

Read that again. Calorie for calorie, the interval training group lost nine times more fat overall. Why? Maybe it's EPOC*, an upregulation of fat burning enzyme activity. It doesn't really matter. I'm a real world guy and if I can work harder, but for less time and see greater results- then I'm all in!

Every body is different; however certain principles of training and exercise do blanket all humans and all human's bodies. I have trained hundreds and hundreds of individuals over the years. What I've seen is that most everyone- unless there are certain sport specific endurance requirements/goals- responds very well, and almost can say the best, to short bouts of a given workout, exercise, movement, or pattern.

*EPOC (Exercise Post Oxygen Consumption) is defined scientifically as the "recovery of metabolic rate back to pre-exercise levels" and "can require several minutes for light exercise and several hours for hard intervals."

I continually hear about people overtraining and folks in the gym that spend hours and hours doing ongoing cardio(mostly steady state) as well as even still more hours of weight resistance training. 

Honestly there just is no need for countless time put in.  What do these people expect to get from all their invested time?  A better body?  Well if that is their goal they don't need to spend all their time getting it and should be spending more of their time enjoying it.

There is a time AND exercise amount that the human body reaches that it just will no longer respond positively. Instead it will regress or not progress. In my opinion if there is no progress then there is no reason to do it at all.

After 45 min. of intense exercise certain hormones- such as cortisol and estrogen- are produced in large amounts and bring the body to a catabolic state which is a muscle breakdown environment. Your testosterone will greatly begin to decrease and estrogen increase. This is not a good thing.

If you spread your workout over a longer period of time your intensity MUST be decreased due to the mere fact of survival. 
If you decrease the amount of time you train(on whatever exercise, movement or skill set) your intensity can then- and should then- be increased to the utmost to benefit.

Think about it.  Let's use sprinting for an example. 
If you sprint for 30s on the treadmill at an all out "balls to the wall" pace you will go hard. Let's increase the time to a 1 min. sprint. Think about that for a moment. Your pace- speed and intensity- will be lowered as compared to the 30s sprint in order to last the full 1 min.

The same principle can and does hold true for any sport, weight training workout, and/or cardio(hopefully you perform HIIT).

Recovery proceeds growth.  Recovery proceeds growth. 
Less is more.  If you keep the intensity high you will not have to do as much in order to experience the same results. 

Some of you may only be into fat loss, but the following research also holds true for VO2 Max as well.

The landmark study in interval training was from Tremblay et al. Thisstudy directly compared 20 weeks of endurance training against 15 weeks of interval training:

Energy cost of endurance training = 28661 calories.
Energy cost of interval training = 13614 calories (less than half)

The interval training group showed a 9 times greater loss in subcutaneous fat than the endurance group (when corrected for energy cost).

Read that again. Calorie for calorie, the interval training group lost nine times more fat overall. Why? Maybe it's EPOC*, an upregulation of fat burning enzyme activity. It doesn't really matter. I'm a real world guy and if I can work harder, but for less time and see greater results- then I'm all in!

Every body is different; however certain principles of training and exercise do blanket all humans and all human's bodies. I have trained hundreds and hundreds of individuals over the years. What I've seen is that most everyone- unless there are certain sport specific endurance requirements/goals- responds very well, and almost can say the best, to short bouts of a given workout, exercise, movement, or pattern.

*EPOC (Exercise Post Oxygen Consumption) is defined scientifically as the "recovery of metabolic rate back to pre-exercise levels" and "can require several minutes for light exercise and several hours for hard intervals."

Comments

[FitBuff Brandon]

Hey Bob,

I couldn't agree more.

Too many people think longer is better when it comes to the gym.

HIIT is the new school, and it's actually better at burning fat than long, boring traditional cardio.

In fact, I'm experiementing with an even newer form of HIIT right now that involves increasing resistance, rather than increasing RPM or speed.

It's working great so far, and I detailed the entire technique in an article on my blog the other day.

[Bob]

I usually perform the "Guerrilla Sprints" myself.

[K.]

Thank you Bob. I thought so too but didn't know that much about it.
But what does "recovery proceeds growth" mean?