When people think of burning fat, aerobic exercise is usually the first thing that comes to mind. While most people think of endless, boring hours working in the aerobic heart rate zone, what people usually do to lose fat is running. But the good news is that a combination of aerobic and anaerobic exercise is best for burning fat.
But before I tell you why a combination of aerobic and anaerobic types of exercise is better than aerobic exercise alone, let’s talk about what “aerobic” and “anaerobic” mean.
Aerobic means in the presence of oxygen. Any activity performed at a low to moderate intensity for more than 90 seconds, allowing energy to be released through metabolism of oxygen, is called aerobic activity.
The benefits of aerobic activity are…
Increase in cardiovascular function Decrease in body fat
But there are downsides to prolonged aerobic exercise…
Decreased muscle mass Decreased strength Decreased strength Decreased speed Decreased anaerobic capacity
You should start to realize why a combination of aerobic activity and anaerobic activity is a better option.
Anaerobic means in the absence of oxygen. Any activity performed at a moderate to high intensity for less than 2 minutes, where energy is obtained without oxygen, is generally referred to as anaerobic activity.
The benefits of anaerobic type of activities are …
Increase in cardiovascular function Decrease in body fat Increase in muscle mass Improve strength Improve power Increase in speed Increase in aerobic capacity
And the negatives of anaerobic style activity are…
Anaerobic activity requires an aerobic foundation.
As you can clearly see, anaerobic exercises are the better option. And you may be asking, “Why do you say that a combination of aerobic and anaerobic exercise is best? Why not just do anaerobic training?”
A combination of aerobic and anaerobic training is necessary because it is impossible to exercise at high intensity levels of anaerobic exercise for a complete workout. Even if you try to work out at such a high intensity, you eventually get tired and fall back into the aerobic zone. Therefore, while it is possible to exercise in the aerobic zone for an overall workout, it is impossible to exercise exclusively at an anaerobic pace.
This is why a combination of aerobic and anaerobic style exercise is essential for an optimal fat loss workout!
Here’s the bad news. Most people who want to lose fat and build a muscular body are doing a combination of aerobic and anaerobic types of workouts. They’re just connecting them all wrong!
The sad fact is that most workouts that claim to burn fat by combining aerobic and anaerobic exercise are doing aerobic activity followed by “bodybuilding” style weight training. And unless you plan to spend hours in the gym (like bodybuilders do), you won’t get the results they do.
Think of it this way. There should be two “types” of exercise you do… resistance training and energy system training. And when you’re combining aerobic activity and anaerobic training, it’s not just the energy system training part. You should judiciously combine aerobic and anaerobic activity throughout your workout.
So, a combination of aerobic exercise and anaerobic training is key to your fat loss success. But how you combine the two is even more important, if you have been combining these two styles of training with bodybuilding weight training followed by aerobic exercise and have failed to achieve the desired fat loss results. .. then you are not alone.
A combination of anaerobic and aerobic exercise is not enough… you need to combine both to get maximum fat loss results.
Source by Eddie Lomax
