OnFitness Magazine - September/October 2021 - 44

WWW.ONFITNESSMAG.COM | VOL 22 NO 2 | 2021 44
Smart Training
Mountain
climbers
In a push-up position, with
your arms straight and your
legs extended, braced your
core, shoulders, hips, and
feet in a straight line
throughout, lifting one knee
toward your chest, then
return it and lift your other
leg. Continue alternating
legs throughout.
effective than steady-state cardio when it comes to improving
cardiovascular fitness and dropping body fat, but what kind of
high-intensity interval training cardio is best?
To answer this question we need to quickly review training
adaptations. The reason we see results when we train is that our
bodies are built to adapt to whatever stimuli we repeatedly
encounter. The body's goal is to perform the activity, whether it be
lifting a weight or running a specific distance, using as little
energy as possible. So your thirty-minute run that used to burn
three hundred calories now only " costs " your body two hundred
calories. That's why steady-state cardio doesn't work for long-term
fat loss.
The key to continual results is forcing your body to be as
inefficient as possible. You accomplish this by creating the greatest
training stimulus that you can with each workout. This includes
how many muscle fibers are recruited, the degree of muscle tissue
breakdown, how much-stored glycogen is used, the level of
disruption of the nervous system (sounds bad, but it's a good
thing) and overall caloric burn, among other things.
This works because the greater the training stimulus, the
longer it takes your body to rebuild and adapt post-workout.
During this rebuilding process, metabolisms are elevated and
bodily processes such as repairing muscle tissue and refilling
glycogen stores are prioritized. So you can see how it is in your
best interest to be in this rebuilding state as much as possible, as
long as you are allowing enough time to fully recover between
training sessions.
Now, given the option between machine-based high-intensity
interval training cardio such as running, or body-weight exercise
intervals, which format is going to give you the best bang for our
proverbial metabolic buck?
A study in the Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research
compared the post-exercise physiological strain of a twentyminute
bout of body-weight exercise interval training consisting of
push-ups, pull-ups, and body-weight squats, with a twenty-minute
bout of treadmill running at a matched intensity level. Results
showed that there was both a greater disruption of the autonomic
nervous system (which is a good marker of overall training
stimulus) and a longer post-exercise recovery period with the
body-weight exercises versus the treadmill running. This was a
small study with only ten subjects (all trained, healthy males), so
more research is needed; this preliminary information, however,
supports the idea that body-weight-type training is more effective
than traditional machine-based cardio.
Ready to step away from the treadmill and accelerate your
results? Here are two great routines for you to try.
Since this type of training is extremely intense, it's especially
important to warm up before you start, using a foam roller on
your entire body to work out any sore spots and then performing
a series of dynamic warm-up exercises or doing a light warm-up
on a piece of cardio equipment for at least five minutes.
Your first routine
With a timer set to buzz every minute, perform the required
repetitions of each exercise (the first number is for beginners and
the higher number is for more advanced trainees) as quickly as
you can with correct form, then rest for the remainder of the
minute. When the timer buzzes, move to the next exercise and
repeat. Repeat the entire circuit of five exercises three times for a
fifteen-minute workout and four times for twenty minutes. If you
can do longer than that, then you aren't pushing hard enough.
Finish with a five-minute cool-down and then stretch.
Frogs (15-20): Start in a crouched position, with your hands
on the ground between your feet. Push off with your heels
jumping your feet back until you're in a high plank position. Jump
your feet forward and to either side of your hands. This counts as
one repetition.
Squat push-ups (15-20): Start in a standing position, with
your feet slightly wider than hip-width apart. Squat, and then tip
forward, keeping your core tight and catching yourself on your
hands. Bending your arms, slowly lower the top of your head
toward the ground. Explosively push off the ground to push
yourself back into the squat position before standing up and
repeating.
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OnFitness Magazine - September/October 2021

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