Thursday, August 25, 2011

exercise to burn body fat.....

Aerobic exercise bests resistance training at burning belly fat


Not sure what I think of this.....

13 comments:

Bill said...

Is this somehow surprising? Lift weights and then do some other things. Like walking, for instance.

sls said...

Based simply off the article, it seems the workouts were imbalanced.

The aerobic group ran 12 miles/week, with the resistance group did 3 sets x 8-12 reps, 3 x a week.

If they only did one exercises, three sets a week. Then its no wonder the aerobic group did better. Seems like a pretty poor design to me.

John said...

Do we really need a study for this? Basically everyone with a good physique does high intensity exercise.

J. Stanton said...

This is called "How to get the results you want".

As sls said, the resistance group did 3 sets of 8-12 reps of 8 exercises, 3 times per week. That's less than 20 minutes of actual lifting per session, or less than 1 hour/week of actual effort.

Contrast the aerobic group, which did 12 miles of running per week at 75% peak VO2max. 75% VO2Max is far harder than any "jogger" is jogging, and I guarantee that they weren't running 12 miles in an hour, either.

So they compared a small amount of resistance exercise to a much larger amount of aerobic exercise at a much greater intensity than commonly practiced, and concluded the second was superior.

Link to original paper:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21846904

JS

FredT said...

Considering the design, there is no doubt that the study did exactly what it set out to prove. We need both resistance once / per week and a bit of anaerobic twice a week.

Sue said...

cardio definitely burns off body fat but how much muscle loss was there?

Steven Low said...

"For subjects randomized to RT, the ramp period began with one set during Weeks 1-2, two sets during Weeks 3-4, building up to the prescribed three sets on Week 5. RT subjects were
prescribed three sessions per week (on non-consecutive days) of three sets of 8-12 repetitions on eight Cybex weight lifting machines designed to target all major muscle groups. Throughout the
training intervention, the amount of weight lifted was increased by five pounds each time the participant performed 12 repetitions with proper form on all three sets on two consecutive workout sessions to insure a progressive resistance training stimulus."

Yeah.....

For what it's worth they had a resistance + aerobic group which showed greater but not statistically greater results than the just aerobic group.

But if you have a crappy resistance program it is what it is....

Also, they didn't control calorie intake which is 80-85% of the equation in significant fat loss down to the point of being able to see abs (as they are made in the kitchen) so....... yeah.

Steven Low said...

Would've been more interesting if they used slight caloric restriction in combination with a legit program like Starting Strength.

Moose said...

I recall a popular study last year that showed combination training improved A1C in type 2 diabetics better than did resistance training or aerobic alone. Although I can't recall if the same study showed similar improvements in WHR or a more direct measurement of abdominal fat.

I can understand the different results between aerobic and resistance training (as explained above by differential intensity), but curious as to why the combination didn't lead to further improvements...

Anonymous said...

Just read something very similar and what was missing was that EPOC was taken into consideration and that is where resistance training really shines as opposed to aerobics. All I know is when I was a cardio qween doing hundreds of ab crunches,I had a nice round belly and now with resistance training and NO isolated ab exercise....FLAT TUMMY Yaaa!

Anonymous said...

So, for illustration purposes.

The resistance training group performed:

8 exercises
10 repetitions
3 sets
3 times per week
4 seconds per repetition (not supplied, just my quantifier)

8 x 10 x 3 x 3 x 4 = 2880 seconds =

48 minutes of exertion time

The aerobics training group performed:

the equivalent of 12 miles per week
at a pace of 10 minutes per mile (not supplied, my guess for overweight, sedentary which could be off)
10 x 12 =

120 minutes of exertion time

Anonymous said...

The resistance training program was performed at machines which means the participants were likely SEATED and their bodies braced for the duration of the workout.

Couldn't be any more underachieving than that!

Anonymous said...

I find both the Paleo and/or no chronic cardio communities have become ridiculously childish.

Anything that disagrees with their dogma is immediately attacked. Reminds me of children sticking their fingers in their ears and shouting, "I can't hear you, I can't hear you".

Glen