One of my nutrition coach's major suggested changes for me was cutting down on the amount of exercise I was doing in order to make it easier to meet my goals of fat loss while maintaining/increasing strength for powerlifting. I cut out all my running (1 3+ mile run each week and treadmill sprints 1-2x/week) and about half of my metabolic conditioning work that ends my lifting each day.
This article from The Metabolic Effect website does a nice job explaining why too much exercise or exercise that lasts for too long can be detrimental to losing weight and/or re-comping your body (i.e. losing body fat while maintaining muscle mass.)
I also really like this piece from Rachel Cosgrove on how her body responded to training for an Ironman. She does a nice job going into the whole "fat-burning zone" myth perpetuated by women's magazines and elliptical machines with heart rate monitors the world over.
I think it's important to keep your goals and what you want out of exercise in mind when you're trying to figure out what to do. If you love to run every day, and can do so comfortably, then you should run every day! But if you're forcing yourself to work out every day or to do long sessions of steady-state cardio because it seems like if some exercise is good then more-more-more must be better, I think it is helpful to keep this stuff in mind. And then of course it all comes back to the fact that you can't out-train a bad diet, meaning that if you want to lose weight/fat, the major changes have to come in what you eat, not in how you work out. Sadness all around on that one, as if it were possible to eat cheesecake every night and work it all off the next day at the gym I. Would. Totally. Do. That.
_______________
Training:
Warmup: Kettlebells - one arm swings and rack squats
Deloaded Dead: 8 sets working up to 177#x3, felt clean and easy. Supersetted with core work.
Accessory: Smith machine single-leg squats. These deserve a post of their own at some point.
Finisher: 1 1/10 mile uphill treadmill sprint. My L knee still feels wonky and felt pretty unsteady with the sprinting so decided to cut it (potentially sandbagging here, but also erring on the side of caution vis a vis my knee.)
No comments:
Post a Comment