Hee! They drew hair on his legs!!It was bound to happen. The gym can be like a family – both in good ways and bad – so when a personal trainer went on Attack today, I can’t say I was overly surprised. Well, that and he told me he was going to Attack Gym Buddy Allison and I. We even had the time and place set, West Side Story style. Meet me in the basketball courts. 10:30 and don’t be late! I know where you are!
Personal Trainer A wanted to practice teaching Body Attack before his grand debut on Memorial Day and needed gerbils to practice his party tricks on. And you know how Allison and I love to be gerbils! We even roped Gym Buddy Megan into the fun. Side note: you totally want to click thru the above link, if only to see the wacky photoshopping they did. The poor woman’s arms – she’s a freak of nature!
The Class
First things first – despite having the awesomest name ever for an aerobics class (I was having visions of Krav Maga crossed with Buffy the Vampire Slayer), much to my dismay there is no actual attacking in Body Attack. What it is instead is a boot-camp style interval class that, after I put my Mortal Kombat dreams on the back shelf, turned out to be a decent burn. We alternated tracks of lunging kicks straight out of Fiddler on the Roof (Tevye plyos!) with running in ever tighter circles until my head spun and then we changed directions.
But my favorite part by far was the folk dancing track. Oh, of course it isn’t really called that, and the music was Usher on speed rather than polka, but the moves were totally 6th-grade May Day. We held our hands up and ran towards each other in a big happy circle and then back out again, slapping arms and shoulders all the way. You can’t buy this kind of entertainment, I tell you. We even ended up doing a group do-si-do during which Megan accused me of trying to hold her hand. Which of course I was. Hard to do a decent Reel without holding hands! Plus she tried to spank me.
Personal Trainer A was not terribly amused with our antics but he took it pretty well, even giving us permission to take potty breaks if “we really had to go.” And when you’ve had as many kids as I have, trust me, you really have to go. By the end, silliness notwithstanding, we were all sweaty and beginning to feel the soreness creep in (five minutes of push-ups!!).
My vote: great calorie burn, good interval workout but a class you definitely want to take with people you like (remember that kid in school who always smelled like poo and tried to kiss you behind the lunch room? Yeah.) Any of you guys tried this? What’s your vote?
Mini-Experiment
Mark Sisson and Co. have got me thinking a lot about cortisol recently. Basically it is a hormone that your body makes when you are stressed out and it is bad for you. It lowers your immune system, destroys muscle and actually instructs your body to store fat (cue scary music). The general consensus over at the Daily Apple is that any intense workout over 45 minutes puts you into cortisol production mode. They are particularly against very long sessions of high-intensity cardio.
So today, Gym Buddy Allison and I did an hour-long, brutal Spin class and then Body Attacked each other (see? awesome!!) for another hour. I burned nearly 1400 calories. While it was crazy fun – gotta love those endorphins! – I felt completely destroyed when we were done and had a major crash this afternoon. I have also had nearly uncontrollable sugar cravings all day long. Mmm… cookie dough for dinner.
Which is exactly what Mark & Co. predicted would happen. They also predicted that contrary to popular belief, that kind of crazy excessive cardio we did today would actually prevent fat burning and inhibit muscle growth by causing your body to be in a sustained state of stress. I know, I know, I’m a if-some-is-good-more-must-be-better girl myself but I’m also a numbers girl. Want to know what happened today? After all that major burnage, I gained two pounds.
So I pulled out my trusty book of compulsiveness, er, exercise data and looked back over the last 6 months at how my weight correlated to calories expended. I’ve talked about this before but, call me a slow learner, I guess the lesson didn’t sink in. The more calories I burned per week in cardio, the more weight I gained. The weeks where I focused more on strength training & intervals *cough*crossfit*cough* and less on traditional cardio, my weight went down.
I think it is starting to make sense to me although I’m still bummed that something I love soooo much isn’t good for me in excess (ah, chocolate, parting is such sweet sorrow!). And in case you are wondering what Mark advises for people caught in a fat-loss plateau: up your protein and lower your cardio.
Hit me up with your cardio epiphanies!
the people on the BodyAttack site are all crazy-scary air brushed. lookin freaky. would try it, but no classes in my state 🙁
ps.tag you’re it!last post has details 😉
yep yep yep!
researching this for something else and that cortisol is a bee-atch* huh?
🙂
(yes. as the kids USED to say. Im dating myself.)
I have tried BodyAttack, and it wasn’t what I expected either. Still fun and sweaty workout, but not a favorite class.
I say, if you don’t want a cardio, don’t have one 🙂
I suggest that some people respond better to a cardio centered exercise program than others. Mark, bless his soul, broke down from cardio, and that has influenced his point of view.
Dr. J
There is no way I am giving up cardio. Unless I break a leg, that is, but you’d better believe I’ll be right back running on the road as soon as I’ve recovered!
Elevated cortisol levels can lead to serious side effects (weight gain, depression, inflammation and other problems) but I’m not convinced that these side effects can arise strongly due to cardio heavy workouts. I do believe the bit regarding weight loss, but I can’t imagine lots of cardio having problems any more serious than the risk of injury.
If a person feels sluggish and tired all the time, they’re doing too much. But if a cardio heavy routine makes them feel better mentally and physically, keep it up!
In processing all this (my husband preaches this line of thinking), I feel very much like that previous blog on orthorexia!! What to do, what to do…
I’m not sure what to think of Mark’s theories on this either. I’m hearing more and more anecdotal accounts like yours–people find that upping their aerobics is NOT getting them the results one would expect, and in fact can be counter-productive. But I’d like to see more research.
The more I hear about the benefits of interval training, rest breaks, strength training, etc, the less I’m feeling guilty about not having a long intense daily cardio routine. I rarely go over half an hour anymore (mostly to save my crappy knees), and I mix it up with shorter interval days and rest/strength training days. Yet I seem to be in better shape than I was when I tried to run 45-60 minutes at a time 4 to 5 times a week.
Interesting topic!
BOOOO. I’m not too big on the whole weight-lifting thing, it’s just not fun. I will do push-ups, but beyond that… I do love to run and I try to run 5-6 days a week. Am I gonna get fat now?? I don’t overdo it but I have been known to hike all day with my husband and then go home and walk some more with my dog, but I feel wonderful!
Giving up Cardio would make me ridiculously grumpy. I can see where they are coming from though, as well. As a female your body will always try to store fat, significantly more than your male counterparts. It still whomps! I love my Cardio, but found I had to be all over my food log when I was working out for 2+ hours a day, because otherwise my sugar cravings would thwart the whole effort.
But… but… I LOVE my cardio! This is really interesting; I’d never heard about any of this before. If I don’t do about an hour of cardio a day I feel grumpy (there’s my slight exercise dependency kicking in…), and ideally I feel great when I get in about 1 1/2 hours of cardio. Granted, it’s usually just in the form of walking, but still. I am going to have to definitely do some research on this topic!
I think everyone is different. You need to find what you enjoy, what works for you, and do that.
Having said that, I still sometimes obsess over that “magic formula” that is going to get me fit for life!
I have mixed feelings about the info on Mark’s site. Every time people jump on the bash cardio wagon they seem to refer to people who do all cardio at the expense of strength training. What about people who maintain a full strength training regimen in addition to doing a lot of cardio? I do rather intense cardio 6 days a week but I do weights at least 3 times a week as well. I’ve had very good results so far – I can see muscle now, no one would call me scrawny.
First thing: I never said take out ALL cardio – just the super high-intensity hours-long stuff! Keep your jogging and walking ladies! Also, the high intensity cardio is good too – just keep it under 45 minutes and don’t do it every day. I repeat – keep your jogging & walking!
I think Gena summed it up pretty well – just see how you feel when you’re done. If you feel energized, you are probably staying in a good zone. If you are wiped & crashing in teh afternoon, probably a bit much:)
I’m loving all this anecodotal evidence – keep it coming! I learn so much from you guys!!
I love my current routine – and it does involve a fair amount of cardio (about 5 days a week), but I usually don’t have the time to go longer than 45 minutes or so and if I do, it’s a long slow run as either active recovery or distance training, not super intense cardio. I have also started lifting more regularly (aiming for 3 times a week, get at least 2) – and I think that it has seriously helped me energy wise, and of course tone and definition wise. What I feel I need to incorporate into the routine now is some plyo/athletic drill type training….sheesh, it seems you could be working out forever and still not feel like you have a ‘well rounded’ routine!
I do notice that I have experienced an increase in appetite since I started a little extra cardio in the spring here which coincided with starting my more serious weight routine, and I feel that I should be a bit more careful on what I eat so that I don’t over compensate the calories….and keep them as quality calories; somehow when being this active I seem to think I can eat junk and it won’t affect me…uh, wrong!! As always, thanks for giving me more to think about!!
I feel like I’m still trying to work out my balance of weights, intervals, and endurance training. When I was just running, this was a lot easier. Then I injured my knee (still rehabbing, but I can run shorter distances), went stir crazy, started lifting heavy, reading more research, and whew! I also have to factor in not doing anything stooo-pid to reinjure my crabby knee.
It all makes my brain hurt sometimes, but I figure I’ll get it with trial and error.
I know we weren’t supposed to give up ALL our cardio, but this goes back to the post you had the other day about being a little crazy about exercise. I feel like I can be nutty if I don’t get to go run! Of course I never run for an hour (45 minutes tops with about 20 minutes of walking), so I should be just fine. I still gotta add the weights though! 🙂
So why aren’t there a bunch of fat Kenyans walking around?
I don’t know how much I buy into the cortisol thing…
That aerobics class sounds like so much fun!! 🙂
Interesting about the association between strenuous/long cardio workouts and cortisol. What if the cardio was over an hour but NOT strenuous? Would that have any affect on cortisol production?
Charlotte,
While I love your blog and enjoy reading it daily, I would respectfully ask you to be careful of your use of “PT”, as in “PT Dan.” I am a physical therapist and legally physical therapists are the only ones who can use the abbreviation PT. If this personal trainer has a PT after his name and he isn’t a physical therapist, legal action can be taken against him. Basically it boils down to not misleading people, as physical therapists have their Masters or Doctorate degree with 6-8 years of education, where personal trainers sometimes have as little as six months of education. Thank you so much for keeping this in mind for future posts.
Anonymous – I am SO sorry. I really had no idea about the distinction and I thank you for educating me. I will not make that mistake again:)
Gretchen & Susan – Yes, the research seems to say that you can do low to moderate cardio all the day long if you’d like and cortisol doesn’t ramp up. It’s only when you train at threshold for a very long time.
ha- i would comment on the post which is wonderful, but i cant get over those little baby rodents.
awwwww
ok, I have to comment on the baby rodents too, hilarious picture, are they prairie dogs?
A little overstatement on cortisol, and a little understatement on cardio, methinks…
Stress can be good for you: the right kind in reasonable amounts, the kind to which you adapt in ways that make you better for realistic challenges in life. Everyday when you wake up, the cortisol flows. If you’ve a routine wakeup time… the cortisol is flowing in anticipation and helps you to wake up. It revs the body up for action; it also increases insulin resistance (generally a bad thing). Yes, cortisol is mostly negative but it’s the body’s natural prep for action so I’m hesitant to call it a ‘bad’ unqualified.
I’m very glad to see you unlearning the brainwashing and dogma we’ve all swallowed regarding cardio. I’m one of the guiltiest parties — ex-distance runner, ultramarathoner even.
And this isn’t just “whatever floats YOUR boat.” What we call “cardio” workouts don’t even enhance your aerobic capacity as well as anaerobic intervals do! They DO increase fat storage; they do burn useful muscle; they do train you for efficiency at slow movement, which is not very useful for anything, and especially not women who should be trying to increase their strength and speed.
Let’s see… choosing between ‘anaerobic’ or ‘cardio’, if your goal is:
fat loss => anaerobic
endurance => anaerobic intervals
aerobic capacity => anaerobic intervals
strength => anaerobic
functionality => anaerobic
speed => anaerobic
time management => anaerobic
intensity => anaerobic
greater stimulation of brain through neurotropic factors => anaerobic
greater endorphins => anaerobic intervals (!?!?! true!)
Someday, people may stop wishing for free lunches, and snake oils that grow your muscles and burn fat while you sleep. Until then, they need to attend to the science and clue in the hard way. “Take what you want,” said God, “and pay for it.” Cardio is easy and comfy and warm and fluffy. Unfortunately, nature designed the body to adapt to less friendly stressors.
Funnyfunny the PT (that’s an OFFICIAL PT with serious professional edjucashun who is greatly deserving of respect) with his panties all twisted over people using his cherished acronym to refer to something else.
Polysemy can be a real bitch.
Some medical doctors, licensed and educated in other countries, have recently gotten in trouble for using “Dr.” in their title in Germany. Because in Germany, one is only a Dr. if one is Herr Doktor Professor, a post-PhD advanced graduate degree.
Instead of understanding that the legal protection afforded fraudulent use of a title is intended (in English common law, the basis for our own legal system) to protect consumers from people attempting to pose as certified or licensed practicioners, the Herr-Doktor-Professors (HDPs?) seem more motivated by status. Hard to believe a PhD could be so petty, I’m sure; who has ever heard of such a thing?
Unfortunately for our esteemed PT above, English speakers the world over will continue to understand that we use acronyms far more loosely than egos and economic protection would like. Pick 100 people off the street, show them any icon representing exercise, and ask them what PT stands for. I’ll bet the PT above 100 pull-ups (takes me ~4 minutes, it might take him a little longer) that more than 60 people will say “Physical Training” and less than 15 will say “Physical Therapist.” And very few will say “Personal Trainer,” but… possibly more than choose “Physical Therapist.”
Who do we haul into court for this linguistic depravity?
Kirez! You are a wealth of knowledge. Thanks for explaining cortisol better & for all the benefits of anaerobic intervals. I coming around slowly… And hey – thank you for the push-up info too! I wanted to reply to you but I don’t have your e-mail or website addy (blogger shows zilch for you). So if you check this, drop me an e-mail!
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