Don't Lose Out, Work Out!

by Rujuta Diwekar

Training at lactate threshold requires runners or cyclists or anyone doing ‘cardio’ (a term usually used interchangeably with training in the aerobic zone) to move muscles or contract them at a faster speed.

Training at AT/LT, in simple terms running or walking fast periodically in your steady walk / run— will help increase both speed and stamina by pushing the lactate threshold farther and in effect increase your VO2 max or your aerobic fitness.

there has to be an overload, meaning that the muscles should encounter forces more than what they are accustomed to, if they are to hypertrophy and with them both the musculo-skeletal and the involuntary system (heart, lungs) hypertrophies.

Because of the forces (gravity) and velocity involved, you will land with 2 to 3 times as much weight on your landing leg as compared to walking.

Marathon or running long distance involves the Type 1 or the oxidative muscle tissue. The sporty ones are the ones with dominant Type 2 muscle tissue, so they never really ‘feel’ like a long run. But the way the running gangs are growing, people who have played hockey, kho-kho, basketball, football, etc. in school are feeling, ‘are we really sporty enough if we don’t run the marathon?’ To them I want to say yes, yes, you are, my sweety. With age, the Type 2 muscle tissue wears out at a faster rate, so go back to the field, but back to your game, not just to long-distance running.

mean, be kind to your TBLJ, train them, strengthen them, care about your VO2 and know that timing should get less and less every year, not more and more. Also, that getting injured shouldn’t be ‘normal’.

. So, in short, you do anything that is not a challenge to your system and it gets too boring to continue or sustain that activity. You do anything that’s way higher than your fitness levels and it gets challenging to sustain activities, again because of the risk of injuries.

But what else can you do to increase fat burning during cardio exercises? Eat more fat. Yes, you read that right. And here is why. Eat fat to burn fat Our body typically stores fat as triglycerides in both the fat cells (or the adipose tissue) and in the skeletal muscle cell. When the body employs the aerobic pathway then it breaks down triglycerides from the adipose tissue (also called as adipocytes) into free fatty acids and transports it via the blood to the working muscle tissue. Now consumption of dietary fat (natural, unprocessed — ghee, makhan, coconut, the tadkas in your sabzis, etc.) also leads to an increase in the free fatty acids (FFA) in the blood stream. Also because of certain mechanisms, FFA in the blood due to dietary fat seems to encourage both the breakdown of stored triglyceride in the fat cells into FFA and its utilization by the working muscle tissue.

The sparing of glycogen and better utilization of fat leads to better exercise performance and less fatigue in the working muscle tissue. Yes, yes, obviously more fat burning and therefore reduction of body weight and volume due to loss of fat mass also.

muscle triglyceride stores and their utilization plus uptake of FFA from the blood stream to provide energy / stamina is greater when ‘divine’ fats like ghee and coconut

But when to consume the fat? Just before an exercise session? No, the night before, if you work out in the morning. And if you work out in the evening, then the lunch should be wholesome and ghee on your rotis is a must.

But the body learns to preferentially use fat only after you are consistent with training, and even then carbs are the fuel to kick-start the exercise.

But when you are beginning or have not yet reached a particular fitness level, the demands on your glycogen stores are much higher.

Also, let’s not forget that the brain almost exclusively operates on glucose, so with hypoglycaemia, even the brain starts to work against your will to exercise,

In short, you never reach the stage in your exercise where your body is now burning fat.

A wholesome meal the night before your training, specially when you train for high-endurance activities like long-distance running, cycling or are a beginner to exercise or if your prime motivation for cardio lies in fat burning, is crucial.

This happens because of increased free fatty acids in the blood stream and serves two main purposes: it leads to a slow steady rise in blood sugar so you sleep well through the night (you know how lack of sleep converts to snooze and how that converts to absenteeism from workouts) and allows you to top off liver and glycogen stores.

And what to eat during exercise? Nothing my dear,

Energy drinks can get very dense in glucose, and since limited glucose is emptied from the stomach in a short period of time, this (a high concentration of glucose) will retard gastric emptying, leading to less absorption of glucose in the blood, and therefore quicker fatigue.

Technically, it’s called a hypotonic solution, where you can barely taste the ‘flavour’. About 2g or less of glucose per 100ml is a good place to start. OR make nimbu pani and dilute it to 3 times, get it?

So rehydrate, replenish, repair and recover, and in that order. Don’t skip the water and banana and jump straight to protein. In the absence of glycogen, the body converts or breaks down protein to replenish glycogen instead of sparing it for protein purposes, which is repair, maintenance and growth. So don’t spend your expensive protein shake on a job that the humble banana can carry out with ease and efficiency. It’s not rocket science, it’s chemistry

Inability to fuel the body correctly invariably comes in the way of exercise performance. Not just in how many calories you will burn but also in terms of whether you will be able to take exercise to the next level, and whether you will keep up with your planned frequency or just make a donation to the gym / exercise class / shoe store without even gaining the 80cc benefit.

Cardio on an empty stomach may lead to fat-burning in a super trained athlete whose body knows how to burn fat, but in your and my body it only means low-calorie output, more fatigue and sacrifice of that precious fat-burning muscle tissue.

Very simply, the less the intensity of your workout in the anaerobic zone, the less the fat-burning benefit or after-burn post exercise.

our impatience and ignorance along with our ability to buy into quick-fixes and our willingness to be fooled is a force that defeats the might and malice of both the British and the Mughul invaders.

Needless to say, deserving students were hard to come by and slowly but surely some of the techniques, practices, rituals, etc. died with the teacher; this was considered higher (better) than letting the great vidya, so meticulously practised and treasured, fall in the wrong hands and get diluted or distorted.

should be of a higher intensity than what the body is already accustomed to. This forms the mother principle of exercise — Progressive overload principle. So

Specific adaptation to imposed demands (SAID principle).

principle of variation in exercise science, for overall fitness and wellbeing.

You can ask your trainer to conduct a fitness assessment test for you or you can check out www.exrx.net and learn to do it yourself.

Now super sets, pyramid sets, drop sets are very advanced methods of training, best employed by body builders or people who are decently strong and can squat under a bar that weighs at least as much as they do. So if you are 50 kg and can squat for about 8 reps under a bar of 50 kg, then by all means go super set, drop set, do whatever you want and the body will respond. But when you have only just about begun training, keep the focus on learning the technique, be strict with your form, stay consistent with your gym schedule, plan your post-workout meals, basically stay safe, workout with efficiency and make recovery (adaptation to training) a priority.

In fact, for optimal fat burning, the sequence of big muscles before small muscles, compound before isolation, warm up specificity, etc., must be followed.

One can take the game of a racquet sport to the next level only when you train your body anaerobically. Strength train in the gym, build a good stretching program and maintain specificity of the warm up / cool down to the actual game.