WE HAVE THE SOLUTION: MORE INTERVAL TRAINING + EATING LESS
All we need is a bigger megaphone. Maybe Oprah can help us spread the word?
By Michael Boyle
www.coreperformance.com
The Core Performance site has been a way for me to reach out to fitness enthusiasts and to share my thoughts and opinions. However, I have coming to a frightening realization. I am shoveling against the tide. We know how to save millions of lives and millions of dollars but, we can't get the message out.
Oprah Winfrey, where are you when I need you? I need to get on the Oprah show, slap a heart-rate monitor on her, get her on an AirDyne bike and blast out some intervals. Please, Oprah, we need your help.
Do you think I have lost my mind? Not by a long shot.
Oprah Winfrey is the most influential woman in fitness. No one is more credible and has struggled more publicly with the diet and exercise issue than Oprah. Every day, she wields immense power to change the national psyche. I happen to love Oprah. Not in a romantic sense but, in a respectful way. I just wish I could reach her.
Who is the best known personal trainer in the world? If we went by name recognition it would be Bob Greene. Why, you ask?
Because he trains Oprah. Being Oprah's trainer has probably been worth millions to Bob Greene. I'm not looking for his job, or his money. I just have a small goal. I want to change the world of fitness.
How can Oprah help? By doing just what I said in paragraph two. If Oprah interval trains, everybody would interval train. If everybody interval trained (after respecting their own medical limitations) we would get much healthier as a nation.
We have to tell people to stop walking, to stop gardening. We need to tell them the truth. That crap doesn't work. It might in week one and two but long term we need to either work harder or longer. The solution is simple: work harder and eat less.
We need to tell them to get a heart-rate monitor and learn how to interval train. I write about it here. I talk about it in my seminars.
However, I am not Oprah. I am taking grains of sand off the beach. Oprah would be like a massive storm that washed all the sand away.
So what will it be, Oprah? Can I get on the show? Can you help me change the world?
You running a marathon is, dare I use the word, stupid. Distance training is a vehicle to get hurt and to make money for doctors or physical therapists. It is not a way for the nation to get fit. The truth is most Americans have neither the desire nor the time for distance training.
We need more bang for the buck.
The Gibala study I spoke about in "Death to Long Slow Distance" shows that four thirty-second intervals can give us the same benefit as a sixty-minute session.
Please, Oprah. All I am saying is give me a chance.
Michael Boyle's new book Designing Strength Training Programs and Facilities can be downloaded as an ebook at www.michaelboyle.biz. You can purchase the book at the same site.
METABOLISMS ARE A LOT LIKE FURNACES
You need to stoke them and tend to them in order to
keep things fired up
By Amanda Carlson
www.coreperformance.com
This past weekend I had the pleasure of traveling to Richmond, VA to attend a fencing tournament because AP will be helping US Fencing with their nutrition. The sport of fencing is graceful, noble, athletic, and very smart. Unaware of the nature or background of the sport before making the trip, I was pleasantly surprised by the complex nature of the sport!
Now, I know you are wondering where this is going; I am getting there. I am from Indiana, so I still think I understand what it means to be cold. I packed a cute top and a velvet jacket convinced that I would be just toasty.
Wrong.
I guess 10 years out of the bitter cold and in the basking AZ/FL sunshine, I have lost touch with the reality of cold. So, as I was freezing outside of the Tobacco Company (a great restaurant recommended by a friend in the Shockoe Slip/Shockoe Bottom area of Richmond) I started to think of ways to warm up, which led me to thinking up this story: How to crank up your own metabolic furnace.
With our homes and apartments, as cooling down turns into downright freezing, we are concerned about the efficiency of the furnace. We want to be economical and efficient with how we use our energy. Some people are more methodical than others are, programming different temperatures for different times during the day. Then there are those, like me, who adjust the thermostat dial up and down whenever they feel a little too warm or a little too cold.
Metabolisms are so much like furnaces. We want our bodies to use energy efficiently and to maintain our muscle while keeping our fat in a healthy range. The furnaces of today pull energy when they need it, to keep it running at the temperature you have set. Back in the old days of wood-burning stoves, people had to actually manually chop the wood and then feed it into the fire to create the heat. We don't have an automatic tap that sucks energy in to keep our metabolisms blazing, so what can we do to rev up the metabolism to keep it burning strong? We can utilize a number of simple strategies to rev up the engine on our own furnace and kick our metabolisms into the high efficiency zone.
#1 - Don't even think about waiting to have breakfast! When you wake up in the morning from that wonderful beauty sleep, rested or not, your metabolism is running at the lowest gear of the entire day. Your body is running on fumes! When I test client's metabolic rates here at AP, I do it fasted and in the morning before they eat or drink anything because that will be their lowest metabolic rate of the day. The second you eat something, your body cranks into gear and metabolically starts working at a higher rate. That shower with the Irish Spring may wake your mind and your senses up, but that breakfast wakes up your metabolism.
#2 - Do not skip meals! You should be eating every 3 hours. When the body has to digest food, it has to work to get it broken down into a usable form. The fancy term for this is "the thermic effect." What does this mean to you? It means that every time you eat, your body has to rev up the furnace to break that food down. Now, I am not recommending that you eat huge meals every three hours or swing by to get a quarter-pounder a few times a day. I am recommending that you eat a combo of high-fiber carbs, lean protein, and healthy fats every three hours, in portions that are correct for your size and activity level. When it comes to the number of meals, less is not more. In fact, more meals, means more metabolic revving, so eat wisely, but eat up.
#3 - Include a lean protein source with every meal. Mirror, mirror on the wall, what has the highest thermic effect of them all? Protein! When you eat protein, it is like throwing lighter fluid onto the fire in that wood burning stove; therefore, include a lean protein source with every meal to get a little extra burst of metabolic power. When choosing your protein, remember our saying: "The less legs the better." Fish have no legs and are a lean and healthy source of protein. Turkey and chicken have two legs - take off the skin and don't fry it and you have a fabulous source of protein. With anything that is or comes from an animal with four legs, be selective. Lean cuts of red meat and low-fat or non-fat dairy are the only way to go.
#4 - Exercise is a must! When we exercise, we have this great post-exercise period called "EPOC." Exercise Post Oxygen Consumption = more calories burned. The magnitude of the EPOC can change with different types of training. Weight training and circuit training where you have 40-70 seconds under tension per set will rev up the metabolism (So, count to 4 on each rep in the set). Interval training can also bump up the metabolic marvel! Bottom line: all training will create EPOC, but these exercises will give you the most bang for your buck. Try to do them four days per week and save the long easy sessions for your recovery days.
#5 - Drink your green tea! Remember when Alice drank the tea on her way to Wonderland? Well, that tea made her shrink, just like green tea can help to shrink the body fat on your body! Green tea has a natural component that helps to speed up the metabolism. Now, I am not talking about Lipton sweetened green, I am talking about brew-it-yourself with boiling water and a tea-bag-type tea. Green tea contains substances called catechins that stimulate the body to burn calories (rev up the metabolic furnace). Researchers have proven this and studies showing that four cups of green tea per day can help reduce body fat have been published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Added bonus? Catechins have been shown to have anti-inflammatory effects, anti-cancer properties, and may help control cholesterol levels.
So. No earth-shattering breakthroughs here. Just some simple strategies to get your metabolic fire blazing. However, I think that simple strategies are the secret to a healthy lifestyle. If you can find a few simple things that you can consistently do savagely well, you will be well on your way to a healthy lean lifestyle and not back and forth to the bookstores for the newest diet fad. Stick to these strategies and send your metabolism blazing into the New Year.