If you’re like me you could be coming off the holiday season with a few extra pounds and a bunch of missed workouts.  However, in your haste to remedy the weight issue you should literally slow down and consider the following few points.  Firstly, while you might be concerned about body weight, doing the correct type of base training for this time of year will more appropriately address this issue.  Secondly, this time of year should be all about base-building or developing your aerobic foundation.  Thirdly, in order to do this you must pick the correct low level of intensity.  Finally, not only will the correct low level of intensity help build your aerobic base, it will also help with the fat burning and weight control.  Consider the following physiology:

For simplicity sake, let’s assume that the body burns two types of substrates; carbohydrate and fat.  At all times the body burns some combination of these two and never exclusively one or the other.  We could further simplify the thought process by defining fat use as aerobic exercise and carbohydrate exercise as anaerobic exercise (even thought both contribute).  Now for a little more physiology:

Assume we have two basic fiber types in our skeletal muscle:  fast twitch and slow twitch.  Both have different recruitment patters that vary as a function of exercise intensity.  Fast twitch are larger than slow twitch and smaller fibers are always recruited first.  We call this the size principle.  As the intensity increases and more force is needed, more fast twitch fibers are recruited.  Now, as force output increases or speed increases, etc., you breathe more heavily as at the same time you need to produce more energy.  In other words, we start to use more anaerobic energy or carbohydrates.  So, the pattern goes like this – increase the intensity, increase the fast twitch recruitment; increase the fast twitch recruitment,  increase anaerobic metabolism; increase anaerobic metabolism, increase carbohydrate usage and decrease fat usage.  So bottom line is in order to burn fat we need to exercise slower.  Consider this – if you exercised at 85-90% of max for 30-40 minutes you would burn mostly carbohydrates.  We replenish our carbohydrates almost on a daily basis which means this approach causes very little fat weight loss.  This is why many athletes exercise hard and yet do not lose weight and may, in fact, gain weight.  More points to consider.  The substrate that is burned is pretty much a function of the oxygen that is available.  So the overall state of our cardiovascular system plays a large role in our fuel economy.  Increased aerobic fitness means increased fat burning. Therefore, we want to spend appropriate amounts of time developing our cardiovascular system at the right intensity.  Some factors need to be considered.

1.  It takes 12-16 weeks to develop and deposit new blood vessels.
2.  The stimulus for deposition of blood vessels is consistent aerobic stimulus lasting 40+ minutes 4-5 times a week.
3.  The intensity must be such that it taxes predominantly the aerobic system and not the anaerobic system.
4.  The process takes time and patience.

In other words aerobic base building and weight control requires long (boring) periods of low level, steady state exercise and the off-season is perfect for it.

A final point I’d like to introduce is the concept of duration of exercise and a concept called oxygen deficit.  Anytime we change our metabolic intensity, e.g., starting to exercise or changing the intensity during exercise, you’ll notice a short period of discomfort or heavier breathing.  The reason for this is that we have briefly moved from a dependence on aerobic metabolism to a dependence on anaerobic metabolism.  After a few minutes the respiratory and cardiovascular systems will catch up (reach steady state) and this brief shortage of oxygen will be corrected.  This period of oxygen shortage is called the oxygen deficit and it occurs at the beginning of exercise and with any changes in intensity.  So what does all this mean?  Well, when you start exercise you experience an 02 deficit which increases our dependence on anaerobic metabolism and carbohydrates.  After 10-15 minutes, things will settle down and if the intensity is low enough our dependence will revert back to fat.  However, even with this adjustment, it takes us about 30 minutes until we are actually using more fat than carbohydrates.  This is why we must exercise at least 30-40 minutes steadily for weight control.  So as you can see, we can kill two birds with one stone by methodically designing our off-season program to focus on base building and being patient. Bon Voyage!

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