Shane Giese - Cardio: Low Intensity or High Intensity?

[webmaster]

Many people don't understand the benefits of cardio or how low intensity cardio is much different than high intensity cardio. In order to understand how these are different, I will first have to explain some things to you first.

http://www.teenbodybuilding.com/fun/shane2.htm

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Not a good article, I'm afraid. It's common sense that when you work harder during the same interval, you'll burn more calories and fat. A much more useful article would compare and contrast the effects of workouts that people actually do. Nobody does high intensity for the same amount of time that they do low intensity. People do high intensity short workouts or low intensity long workouts. Comparing fat lost in these situations would have been more useful.

[ShaneG85]

[QUOTE=Unregistered]It's common sense that when you work harder during the same interval, you'll burn more calories and fat.QUOTE]

I don't think you read my article carefully enough. I tried to make the article easy enough so any teen bodybuilder could understand it. This is a direct quote from my article:

"Although mobilization of fats goes down as intensity increases, the total oxidation of total fats is greater because more calories were burned, but at a lower rate of burned fat."

Edit: I even gave an example at the end of my article to show what I was saying in my article.

Shane

[forklift]

"page not found".

I did not know that! Thanks! This changes my routine.

[monolithdigital]

Good stuff. Finally, muscle and fitness magazine can go stuff it. This 2 hours of super low intensity cardio crap should have never come around. Its an input output scheme.
I like how it is very simply put, I know theres a fine line between explaining something completly, getting all the facts out in one article, and making it digestable by beginers, which is probably more important anyway, since anyone past beginer should be able to do their own research anyway.
Keep em coming.

[rosslittle]

I agree with you that the more intense the CV over a give time period the greater the calorific expenditure will be, and subsequent fat burned, but there is a problem with this.

It was my understanding, supported by a variety of research, that the higher the intensity of CV, the greater the suppression of testosterone in the body will be. Of course, testosterone is the most important naturally occurring steroid to a bodybuilder because of its anabolic effects (ie. synthesis and deposition of protein, development of skeletal muscle) and its suppression is to be avoided.

I suppose it all comes down to what your aim is in the end. If you are in the gym and overweight, and are looking to shed some fat as your main priority, then high intensity CV is likely to be the best option. You can take the short-term hit that is the drop in testosterone because you'll be shedding fat and once you're happy with this can stop.

On the other hand, if you are a bodybuilder, cutting for a competition, low to medium intensity CV is likely to help reduce bodyfat without the possibility of decreasing testosterone and, combined with a good diet, losing muscle (as many do).

From personal experience. Up until very recently, I was a spin addict doing up to 2 and a half hours of advanced spin a day. My fitness was unbelievable but I couldn't put on a pound of muscle no matter how hard I tried. I reduced the spin to an hour a week and I'm putting on muscle really quickly - and I'm losing the last few inches of fat that I couldn't shift with hardcore CV alone!

Ross

PS. GREAT job on the video series... really good - I've picked up some tips and am looking forward to the next installment!