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Moderate Cardio, Light Weights—How this is keeping people fat

By Mark Mogavero

It always amazes me what people will do in their quest to have that lean, fit body. The one that I see most often, which solidifies my conclusion that most people do not understand how their bodies work, is people who spend most if not all of their workouts performing cardiovascular exercise. I began using a term a few years ago, unbeknownst to me that one of the top trainers in the industry, Phil Kaplan, had already coined the phrase, that described the condition that people who spend too much time performing cardio work: “fat-skinny.” I use this term to describe people who are relatively thin, look good when they are fully clothed, but when they are wearing their workout gear or a bathing suit they do not have a toned body. They may be thin, but carry 20-30% of their weight as fat!!! The reason for this: too much cardio.

So what has happened in these cases? It’s a valid question that most people do not understand. Pay attention here. If you take nothing else away from reading this article, you will know that too much cardio can derail all of your other efforts to achieve that lean, toned body. Excessive cardiovascular exercise (anything more than 20-30 minutes in a workout) will burn muscle tissue. Muscle is the tissue in your body that you most rely upon to burn calories and excess body fat. Each pound of muscle in your body will burn 50 calories per day while at rest. 50 calories per pound while sleeping, sitting, talking on the phone, etc. I am not going to spend much time with the scientific process of how this happens, but I will summarize. You muscles need fuel to work. When you are performing cardio exercise, it does not take long for the fuel stored in your muscles to become depleted. After about 10 minutes or so, your body starts to look for alternative fuel sources. It uses up the sugar in your blood stream, and then it starts to go after body fat as well as muscle tissue. Burning body fat is great, but losing muscle tissue will cause your metabolism to slow down, causing more of the food you eat to be stored as additional body fat. A real Catch-22, isn’t it?

Not really. Just for a moment, I want you to picture the physiques of two different types of athletes that perform cardiovascular exercise in their workouts. Picture a marathon runner: thin, small hips, small arms, shoulders, sometimes they look emaciated. Are they healthy? Their hearts, lungs, and blood vessels are incredibly fit, as they have been trained to be through hours upon hours of running at a moderate speed. Now picture the body of an Olympic sprinter. Muscular, chiseled, very lean and athletic looking. They are capable of incredible explosive power and short distance speed, but most lack the ability to run for extended periods of time. Two different types of bodies built by two different type of workout programs. I understand that there are some inherent genetic differences between the two athletes, but this has more to do with genetic potential than it does being a product of their respective workouts. Moderate paced, extended period cardio based workouts produce the body of a marathon runner. Many marathoners do very limited resistance workouts, as they do not wish to carry any more muscle than they have to during a race. It makes sense for this type of competition. On the other hand, intense, explosive, high speed but relatively short duration workouts have built the bodies of sprinters (or you can picture the body of an NFL Running Back or Linebacker). If you were to add up the total time that the average sprinter’s cardio workout takes, I doubt the total would reach 15-20 minutes. So how much cardio do you need?

That’s the million dollar question, but I have the answer to it. If this is the first time in your life, or a year or more since you last exercised, you will need more cardio early on than you will a few weeks into the program. Why is that? When you first get started, it is very important to improve your cardio fitness level. This allows your muscles better circulation when you begin the resistance training portion of the workout program. Once this is achieved, the major focus of your cardio workout will be to burn a lot of calories in a short amount of time, and to increase the efficiency of delivering oxygen throughout your body. This is achieved through intense cardio activity. 20-30 minutes per day is all that is needed for long term results.

About the Author:

Mark Mogavero is the owner of Dynamic Personal Training, located in Verona, NJ. His website is www.dynamicpersonaltraining.com