High Intensity Exercise - Start Doing Some Here's Why - And How - Part 1by Ryan Andrews

How's That Metabolism?It's bound to happen to your friends. It's likely to happen to your family. In fact, if you take a look around, about 95 out of every 100 people will experience the dreaded age-associated metabolic decline.Research now shows that, on average, folks experience a 2-4% decline in their resting metabolic rate with each passing decade after the age of 25.

Add to this metabolic decline a 5lb loss of muscle mass with every decade and getting older is a depressing proposition.Indeed, for most people these declines are all but definite. However, you're not most people. You've got access to us.

We're going to teach you how to off-set what some erroneously believe is inevitable. Will Work For OxygenWhen it comes to metabolism and muscle preserving strategies, intense exercise is the king. With it, you get to keep that muscle mass and fuel that metabolism. Without it, you get to politely smile while you wave bye-bye to your youth, muscle strength, lean mass, and metabolic rate.

Now, the big question is this; what qualifies as "intense exercise."

Well, certainly resistance training (strength training) is one of the biggies. However, there are a host of other types. Here are a few, taken from the menu of activities that we've prescribed to our clients:

Interval Running, Climbing, Cycling, and Rowing
Resistance Circuits
Body Weight Circuits
Rope Jumping (Skipping)
Running Hills
Burpees, Jumping Jacks, and Other Plyometrics
Medicine Ball Tosses and Rotations
Kettlebell Exercises
Tire Flipping, Fireman Carries, Farmers Walking and Other Strongman Activities

Basically, any physically demanding task that a) incorporates many muscle groups and b) is done near your maximum heart rate qualifies. So feel free to invent your own form of intense exercise. Now, when you do an intense bout of exercise, you overload your muscles. This overload helps stimulate protein turnover, protein building, and gains in lean mass (or at least lean mass preservation).

But what about the cardiovascular system? Well, with all those muscles doing so much work, the cardiovascular system MUST respond by pumping blood faster and delivering a lot of oxygen to your working muscles. So you definitely get a cardiovascular benefit from doing intense exercise.In addition, your metabolic rate also benefits from the increased oxygen consumption. You see, the more muscle you have and the more exercise you do, the more oxygen your body will need. As oxygen generates 5kcal per liter consumed, a high oxygen demand means that your body is burning a ton of calories. After The StormNow, it should be clear that DURING exercise, your oxygen demands are high. That's why you're breathing so heavy. You're getting rid of the carbon dioxide your cells are producing at a high rate and you're taking in additional liters of oxygen.

However, the real key to intense exercise is what happens AFTER your exercise session.If your exercise is intense enough, your oxygen demand remains elevated for well after the exercise session. With low intensity cardio, you only benefit from a few minutes of additional oxygen demand (and metabolic activity). However, with high intensity activity, the oxygen demand can remain high for anywhere from 6 hours to 48 hours, depending on the intensity and duration of the exercise session. And remember, a bigger oxygen demand means more calories burned. So it's only your high intensity activity that boosts your metabolism 24-7.Now, the right question to ask would be this - why is oxygen consumption (and calorie burn) elevated after exercise? Well, after an intense workout, it's necessary for the body to metabolize additional fuel, replenish energy stores, and reload the depleted oxygen stores in the muscle and blood. Further, oxygen consumption (and metabolism) is boosted due to:

Higher body temperature
Increased activity of the heart and respiratory muscles
Elevated levels of hormones that increase metabolic activity
Energy absorbing pathways and the conversion of things like lactate into glucose or amino acids
Recovery of muscle damage

So, with intense exercise, more oxygen is being consumed (and energy being used) during the exercise, after the exercise, and pretty much all day long. Interestingly, you burn a lot of fat too, during this post-exercise period. During high intensity exercise, the rate of fat breakdown is high. However, fatty acid entry into the bloodstream is blocked.

The good news - upon termination of exercise, this block on fatty acid release subsides and the fats overflow into circulation for eventual oxidation during the recovery period. How cool - we're burning tons of fat even after we leave the gym! Beyond fat burning, when you do high intensity activity regularly, additional muscle will be developed. This creates an even further metabolic demand for the body and more energy is utilized for normal daily activities, even at rest.

Heck, only when you train with high intensity on a regular basis do you benefit from an increased thermic effect of feeding. So, make no mistake, if you want to avoid becoming another metabolic slowdown or obesity statistic, the bulk of your exercise should be of the high intensity kind.

But Easy Isn’t All That BadWith all the talk about high intensity training and conditioning – one may be led to believe that lower intensity exercise and normal activities of daily living are worthless. Not so fast. With low intensity exercise, or any easy physical activity, more oxygen is consumed (and energy is being used) during the exercise itself. However you don't get that post-exercise, all-day metabolic boost. Nor do you build much muscle. So, from the "metabolic therapy" aspect of things, low intensity activity doesn't deliver the most bang for your buck. Another drawback of low intensity exercise as your primary exercise mode is that there's an increased energy demand without any real muscle overload. Therefore muscle can become just another fuel source that is gobbled up to sustain your low intensity exercise energy needs. The best visual example of this scenario is the comparison between different types of athletes. Athletes involved with long, low intensity activities tend to be very thin and have minimal amounts of muscle mass. Athletes doing high intensity (thus shorter) activities tend to be bigger with more muscle mass.

However, again, don't take this to mean that low intensity exercise should be avoided. When combined with a high intensity exercise protocol, each of the drawbacks above is eliminated. The high intensity bouts boost muscle mass. And they also create 24-hour metabolism magic. However, the low intensity exercise does offer some additional calorie burning as well as improvements in the muscle gain to fat loss ratio when added to an intense exercise plan. Indeed, muscular sensitivity to insulin is increased for about 48 hours after a single bout of prolonged low intensity exercise. This probably explains some of the benefits associated with regular “non-exercise physical activity” during the day (e.g., stairs, walking to the bus, playing with kids, etc.) Another bonus for long bouts of low intensity exercise is that the synthesis of new fat is temporarily inhibited, probably due to the low insulin levels and increased counter regulatory hormones. Exercise + NutritionUnfortunately, many people think that eating an unhealthy diet can be reversed with more treadmill or, in general, gym-time. As you probably understand by now, sticking with the "I'll burn the Big Mac off on the treadmill" mentality could actually be doubly disastrous. More unhealthy food and more low intensity exercise can deteriorate overall health while promoting disease and deplete muscle mass in the long run! But even with high intensity exercise, you still need to watch your food intake.

Indeed, in a recent study we did, we were shocked to find that research participants training with an Olympic weight lifting coach and a group exercise instructor for over 5 hours a week saw little benefit from this training... So realize this diet is an intergral part of the equation