The "Fat Burning Zone" myth

Time and time again I run into people who consistently do their cardio at a easy to moderate pace and never push themselves too hard. Their reasoning for this is that they want to stay in the "fat burning zone" where their body is burning a higher percentage of fat for energy than stored glycogen(carbs) in the muscle. The funny thing is alot of these people are the same ones who continue to struggle with losing weight and never really make alot of progress with getting lean.

We trainers preach constantly that you need to change things frequently up to continue to see results. This keeps your body constantly adapting to new stimulus all the time. One way that you can actually crank u p your metabolism is to start doing some intense anaerobic cardio training utilizing intervals. This stimulates your EPOC(Elevated Post-Oxygen Consumption) or in layman's terms your afterburn. Intense cardio sessions will keep your metabolism cranking after the exercise where the low level "fat burning" exercise really doesn't.

Here are some good examples of way s to do this(always warm up 5-10 minutes on both ends of these workouts. I also like to use intervals of moderate intensity for 1-3 minutes mixed with shorter intense bursts of 30 sec-1 minutes.

Here are some examples

1.)Walk 2-3 Minutes Jog (1 Minute)
2.)Jog 2-3 Minutes Hard Run/Sprint(30 sec- 1 Minute)
3.)Mountain Biking or Spinning
4.)Boxing or Kickboxing
5.)Eliptical or stepper doing hill programs where you walk steady 2-3 minutes climb hard 30
30 seconds to 1 minute

There are other ways you can create cardio circuits mixing cardio machines and higher intense activities such as jump roping or plyometrics that are short duration quick burst type of activities. So throw out the mindset that you only burn fat in one zone. As one author states that caring how much fat is burned doing a workout is equivalent to caring how much muscle is built during exercise. Instead focus on burning more overall calories and cranking up your metabolism 24-7. This will get you of your plateau and into the true fat burning zone!