What I Learned, Part Two

This is a continuation from my last post, where told I you about what I took away from the Metabolic Acceleration Training seminar over at TPS last weekend. The first part covered nutrition. This part will cover training. Here we go:

• Pretty simple. You want to burn fat? Then increase your exercise intensity. Not time, intensity. Get more work done in a shorter period of time.
• Look outside the "workout window". Forget about how many calories are being burned or how long you're working out for.
  
• Interval training is superior to steady state aerobics for fat loss. Think about about it. Interval training asks your body to hold onto muscle because of the increased demand. What does steady state aerobics do? It asks your body to hold onto fat because of it's low demand.
• Females who want to lose body fat from the hip and thigh area need to do more lower body strength work. Males who want to drop their beer bellies need to do more sprinting.
• Another reason for interval training: It creates what Cosgrove refers to as the "afterburn". Some other people call it EPOC (Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption). In a nutshell, your metabolism is going to be elevated for a longer period of time post workout.
• Most of your fat burning is not going to come to directly from your workout. It's going to come from an elevation in your metabolism. Again, why strength training and interval work are the top two forms of training for fat loss.
• If everyone is always complaining about how they have no time to workout, then why are they wasting their time on the elliptical or taking a leisurely stroll on the treadmill when they do workout?
• Use incomplete rest periods for maximal fat loss results. You don't want to be fresh to start your next set. You want higher levels of lactate in your blood stream in order to burn fat. If you're testing for a one or three rep max, that's a different story.
• Work on your "limit strength". Work on 1-5 rep max lifts during the early portion of your workout and then get into the rest of your training program.
• Circuit training doesn't mean to lift light weights. Put away the neon colored dumbbells and use a weight that's going to challenge you.
• It's not about soreness, it's about getting results. Soreness doesn't equate to more results.

Some good points were taken away from this seminar, but for me it really comes down to two things when it comes to creating the body that you want: discipline when it comes to your diet and hard work when it comes to your training. I know that seems to be to simple, but it's true.