Warning: This article includes references and studies. Bet you
never thought you'd see that from me!
"Fat loss is an all-out war. Give it 28 days —
only 28 days. Attack it with all you have. It's not a lifestyle
choice; it's a battle. Lose fat and then get back into moderation.
There's another one for you: moderation. Revelation says it best:
'You are lukewarm and I shall spit you out.' Moderation is for
sissies."
— Dan John, legend
I've been training people for a long time. I own a gym that has
several trainers training several people. Despite all the athletes
we've worked with over the years, by far the single biggest client
request has been fat loss.
I've made more money from the fat loss market than any other
single client group. Over the years my methods have evolved and
been refined by what I see in the gym. Simply put, if I can get 20
pounds of fat off a client faster than my competition, I have a
higher demand for my services.
I've written several articles on fat loss and answered
countless questions on the topic. One of the questions I get a lot
is:
"I'm <insert something here> and I'm trying to lose fat. How
can I do that without <insert losing strength/speed/muscle here.>"
Basically, powerlifters want to keep powerlifting, mixed
martial artists want to keep fighting, and recreational
bodybuilders want to maintain their muscle mass, all while losing
fat. Their massive fear of negatively impacting their athletic
performance by not focusing on it for a short time is largely
unfounded.
I think whenever we try to pursue two goals at once we tend to
compromise results. This is usually because we have a limited
resource: time. If our goal is to generate fat loss, then using a
periodized training approach with a specific fat loss phase (e.g.
four weeks, eight weeks, etc.) where we focus exclusively on fat
loss will always yield better results in the long term than trying
to juggle two goals at once.
For example, a powerlifter trying to drop a weight class or
lean out will be better served by not powerlifting for a
period of time. By focusing on getting lean and then going back to
powerlifting training, he won't fall into the downward spiral of
trying to maintain his lifts and get lean at the same time. A 16
week program that includes 8 weeks of hardcore fat loss training,
followed by 8 weeks of powerlifting work, will likely yield better
results than 16 weeks of trying to do both simultaneously.
With our regular clients or with ourselves, we're usually
extremely limited with time. Most of us can only train three to
four times per week. With that in mind — with time being our
limiting factor — how do we maximize fat loss? Is there a
hierarchy of fat loss techniques? I think so.
Before I get into it, I want to share with you something Mike
Boyle said when he did a staff training at my facility a couple of
months ago:
"The information presented is my opinion based on over 25 years
of coaching experience, communication with several professionals
in my field, and an incessant desire to better myself and improve
the rate and magnitude of my clients' results. I'm not here to
argue my opinion versus your opinion. Please ask questions. I'll
explain my views but am unlikely to change them."
I don't have 25 years of experience (only 17), but I feel
pretty much the same. Here are my thoughts.
There's pretty much nothing that can be done to out-train a
crappy diet. You quite simply have to create a caloric deficit
while eating enough protein and essential fats. There's no way
around this.
Yep. It really is that important. Several trainers have
espoused that the only difference between training for muscle gain
and training for fat loss is your diet. I think that's a massive
oversimplification, but it does reinforce how important and
effective correct nutrition is toward your ultimate goal.
I think it's fairly obvious that the bulk of calories burned
are determined by our resting metabolic rate or RMR. The amount of
calories burned outside of our resting metabolism (through
exercise, thermic effect of feeding, etc.) is a smaller
contributor to overall calories burned per day.
We can also accept that RMR is largely a function of how much
muscle you have on your body — and how hard it works. Therefore,
adding activities that promote or maintain muscle mass will make
that muscle mass work harder and elevate the metabolic rate. This
will become our number one training priority when developing fat
loss programs.
The next level of fat loss programming would be a similar
activity. We're still looking at activities that eat up calories
and increase EPOC.
EPOC (Exercise Post Oxygen Consumption) is defined
scientifically as the "recovery of metabolic rate back to
pre-exercise levels" and "can require several minutes for light
exercise and several hours for hard intervals."
Essentially, we're looking for activities that keep us burning
more calories after the exercise session.
This is the "icing on the cake" — adding in activities that'll
burn up additional calories but don't necessarily contribute to
increasing metabolism. This is the least effective tool in your
arsenal as it doesn't burn much outside of the primary exercise
session.
Let's put this fat loss continuum together in terms of our
progressive training hierarchy.
Basically we're using resistance training as the cornerstone of
our fat loss programming. Our goal is to work every muscle group
hard, frequently, and with an intensity that creates a massive
"metabolic disturbance" or "afterburn" that leaves the metabolism
elevated for several hours post-workout.
A couple of studies to support this:
Schuenke MD, Mikat
RP, McBride JM.
Effect of an acute
period of resistance exercise on excess post-exercise oxygen
consumption: implications for body mass management.
Eur J Appl Physiol. 2002 Mar;86(5):411-7. Epub 2002 Jan 29.
This study used a circuit training
protocol of 12 sets in 31 minutes. EPOC was elevated significantly
for 38 hours post-workout.
Thirty-eight hours is a pretty
significant timeframe for metabolism to be elevated. If you
trained at 9AM until 10AM on Monday morning, you're still burning
more calories (without training) at midnight on Tuesday.
Can we compound this with additional
training within that 38 hours? No research has been done, but I
have enough case studies to believe that you can.
Another:
Kramer, Volek et al.
Influence of exercise
training on physiological and performance changes with weight loss
in men.
Med. Sci. Sports
Exerc., Vol. 31, No. 9, pp. 1320-1329, 1999.
Overweight subjects were assigned to
three groups: diet-only, diet plus aerobics, diet plus aerobics
plus weights. The diet group lost 14.6 pounds of fat in 12 weeks.
The aerobic group lost only one more pound (15.6 pounds)
than the diet group (training was three times a week starting at
30 minutes and progressing to 50 minutes over the 12 weeks).
The weight training group lost 21.1
pounds of fat (44% and 35% more than diet and aerobic only groups
respectively). Basically, the addition of aerobic training didn't
result in any real world significant fat loss over dieting alone.
Thirty-six sessions of up to 50
minutes is a lot of work for one additional pound of fat loss.
However, the addition of resistance training greatly accelerated
fat loss results.
One more:
Bryner RW, Ullrich IH,
Sauers J, Donley D, Hornsby G, Kolar M, Yeater R.
Effects of resistance
vs. aerobic training combined with an 800 calorie liquid diet on
lean body mass and resting metabolic rate.
J Am Coll Nutr. 1999 Apr;18(2):115-21.
The aerobic group performed four hours
of aerobics per week. The resistance training group performed 2-4
sets of 8-15 reps, 10 exercises, three times per week.
V02 max increased equally in both
groups. Both groups lost weight. The resistance training group
lost significantly more fat and didn't lose any LBM, even at only
800 calories per day. (The reason the calories were so low was to
really take any dietary variables completely out of the equation
and compare the effects of the exercise regime on LBM and
metabolism.)
The resistance training group actually
increased metabolism compared to the aerobic group, which
decreased metabolism. It seems that resistance training is a more
significant stress to the body than a starvation diet.
In my experience, full body training in a superset, tri-set, or
circuit format (with non-competing exercises) in a rep range that
generates lactic acid (and pushes the lactic acid threshold or
LAT) seems to create the biggest metabolic demand. It makes sense:
training legs, back, and chest will burn more calories and elevate
metabolism more than an isolated approach training one of them.
The rep range that seems to work best is the 8-12 hypertrophy
range, although going higher will work just as well with a less
trained population.
For a powerlifter or an advanced bodybuilder, doing one max
effort exercise or heavy, low-rep lift is more than enough to
maintain your current strength levels. Examples:
Exercise One: Max Effort Squat — work up to a
3RM. Transitioning into metabolic work.
Exercise Sequence:
1A: Bench press, 2-3 sets of 4-6 reps
1B: Row, 2-3 sets of 4-6 reps
The second key "ingredient" in fat loss programming is high
intensity interval training (HIIT). I think readers of T-Nation
will be well aware of the benefits of interval work. It burns more
calories than steady state and elevates metabolism significantly
more than other forms of cardio. The downside is that it flat-out
sucks to do it!
The landmark study in interval training was from Tremblay:
Tremblay A, Simoneau
JA, Bouchard C.
Impact of exercise
intensity on body fatness and skeletal muscle metabolism.
Metabolism. 1994 Jul;43(7):814-8
This study pitted 20 weeks of
endurance training against 15 weeks of interval training:
Energy cost of endurance
training = 28661 calories.
Energy cost of interval training = 13614 calories (less than half)
The interval training group showed a
nine times greater loss in subcutaneous fat than the endurance
group (when corrected for energy cost).
Read that again. Calorie for calorie, the interval training
group lost nine times more fat overall. Why? Maybe it's EPOC, an
upregulation of fat burning enzyme activity, or straight up
G-Flux. I don't care. I'm a real world guy. If the interval
training group had lost the same fat as the endurance
group, we'd get the same results in less time. That means interval
training is a better tool in your fat loss arsenal.
The next tool we'll pull out is essentially a lower intensity
interval method where we use aerobic intervals.
Talanian, Galloway et
al
Two weeks of
High-Intensity Aerobic Interval Training increases the capacity
for fat oxidation during exercise in women.
J Appl Physiol (December 14, 2006).
doi:10.1152/japplphysiol.01098.2006
This study looked at high-intensity
aerobic interval training and its influence on fat oxidation. In
summary, seven sessions of HIIT over two weeks induced marked
increases in whole body and skeletal muscle capacity for fatty
acid oxidation during exercise in moderately active women. In
layman's terms, the interval work appeared to "upregulate" fat
burning enzymes.
Basically this means we can burn more fat in other activities
as a result of this inclusion. In other words, we get some more
bang for our buck.
A quick disclaimer though: my colleague Alan Aragon once said,
"Caring about how much fat is burned during exercise is equivalent
to worrying about how much muscle is built during exercise." In
other words, substrate utilization during exercise isn't really an
important variable in the big picture of fat loss — total calories
burned overall is.
Tool number four is just hard cardio work. This time we're
burning calories — we aren't working hard enough to increase EPOC
significantly or to do anything beyond the session itself. But
calories do count. Burning another 300 or so calories per
day will add up.
This is just activity, going for a walk in the park, etc. It
won't burn a lot of calories; it won't increase muscle or EPOC.
There isn't very much research showing that low intensity
aerobic training actually results in very much additional fat
loss, but you're going to have to really work to convince me that
moving more is going to hurt you when you're in fat attack mode.
You'll notice that this is perhaps the opposite recommendations
from what you typically read in the mainstream media. Usually fat
loss recommendations start with low intensity aerobics, progress
to high intensity aerobics, then intervals. Finally, when you're
"in shape" they recommend resistance training.
My approach to massive fat loss is attacking from the complete
opposite of the norm. If you're a professional bodybuilder, then
you typically have extra time to add in cardio and do extra work
to get lean. A "real world" client with a job and a family can
rarely afford additional time; therefore, we need to look at our
training in a more efficient manner and focus on our time
available first, then design our programming based on that.
This can be three, one-hour training sessions, or four
45-minute training sessions. It doesn't seem to matter.
However, once you're getting three hours per week of total body
resistance training, in my experience I haven't seen an additional
effect in terms of fat loss by doing more. My guess is that, at
that point, recovery starts to become a concern and intensity is
impaired.
This type of training involves barbell complexes, supersets,
tri-sets, circuits, EDT work, kettlebell combos, etc.
At this point, any additional work is usually in the form of
high intensity interval training. I'm looking to burn up more
calories and continue to elevate EPOC.
Interval training is like putting your savings into a high
return investment account. Low intensity aerobics is like hiding
it under your mattress. Both will work, but the return you get is
radically different.
Aerobic intervals wins out at this point because it's still
higher intensity overall than steady state work so it burns more
calories. There appears to be a fat oxidation benefit and will
still be easier to recover from than additional anaerobic work.
If you're not losing a lot of fat with six hours of training
already, then I'd be taking a very close look at your diet. If
everything is in place, but we just need to ramp up fat loss some
more (e.g. for a special event: a photo shoot, high school
reunion, etc.) then we'll add in some hard cardio — a long run or
bike ride with heart rate at 75% of max or higher.
Why not do as much of this as possible then? Well, the goal is
to burn as many calories as we can without negatively impacting
the intensity of our higher priority activities.
I think I'm getting into fairytale land at this point. I don't
think most of us have more than eight hours of training time
available per week. But if we do, this is when any additional
activity will help to burn up calories, which is never a bad
thing.
A lot of fighters have used this activity to help make weight.
This works because it burns up calories but doesn't leave you
tired for your strength training, sparring, or technical work.
That's the key with the addition of this activity: just to
move, get your body moving, and burn up some additional calories —
but not to work so hard that it inhibits recovery and negatively
affects our other training.
The research and the real world don't really show massive
changes from the inclusion of this type of activity; however, I
think everything has its place. Remember, this is a hierarchy of
training, and this is fifth on the list for a reason.
Smart guys call this NEAT — Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis.
I call it moving a wee bit more than normal.
Keep in mind that all I've said here is that harder training
works better than easier training. It really is that simple.
To conclude, I agree with coach Dan John. Attack body fat with
a passion and a single minded goal. The best way to do this is
with an all-out assault implementing the hierarchy I described
above.
Summer is almost here. Shirts are coming off whether you're
ready or not. Attack your body fat with a massive action plan for
the next eight weeks!
The Hierarchy of Fat Loss
