cardio

Excess Post Exercise Oxygen Consumption – Kuzora Personal Training Raleigh

October 12, 2009 By John Kuzora

Excess Post Exercise Oxygen Consumption

by John Kuzora of Kuzora Personal Training Raleigh Wake Forest NC

There are two ways that physical activity can help you lose body fat. First, you burn calories while you are actually doing the activity and create a calorie deficit. This one is pretty self explanatory. If you walk for 30 minutes and burn 300 calories you have created a calorie deficit. Theoretically if you eat the same and create this 300 calorie per day deficit you would lose approximately 2.5 pounds per month. Of course things rarely work out that way for a number of reasons. Your body adapts the stress of the exercise, you subconsciously eat more to compensate for the calories you are burning, or the intensity of the exercise simply isn’t high enough to force your body out of homeostasis.

But there is a second, more powerful way that exercise can help you lose body fat. You continue to burn calories for a period of time after exercise. This known as excess post exercise oxygen consumption, or EPOC, and maximizing this metabolic boost can be a powerful tool in body composition.

EPOC is the calories expended above resting values after exercise. After activity, the body needs to perform several metabolic functions to return to a rested state. These include replenishment of oxygen stores, resynthesis of phosphagen, removal of lactic acid, among other things. Studies show that it can take anywhere from 15 minutes to 48 hours for the body to fully recover. Most studies show that the intensity of exercise has more effect on EPOC than duration. In other words, working really hard for shorter amounts of time seems to increase your metabolism longer than slowly pounding away on a treadmill at 2.5 mph.

(For a more detailed discussion of EPOC please visit http://www.drlenkravitz.com/Articles/epoc.html)

The following workout fits the bill perfectly for maximizing EPOC and boosting your metabolism to new heights:

The 60 yard shuttle

The 60 yard shuttle is a simple yet brutally effective anaerobic conditioning workout. It will improve your VO2 max, agility, and speed while burning calories and speeding up your metabolism.

To perform the workout, set up three cones 5 yards apart. The participant starts from one end, runs 5 yards and back to the start, 10 yards and back, then 15 yards and finishes at the start line. A total of 60 yards is completed. The person is required to touch the line with their hand at each turn, for a total of five touches.

Make sure you warm-up before starting this workout. Some general cardio (jogging or jumping rope for five minutes) and some dynamic flexibility exercises (leg swings and marching inch worms) will do. Start with anywhere from 6 to 12 repetitions. For example, someone new to interval training may start with 6 reps completed in 30 seconds followed by 90 seconds rest. At 30 seconds, you will be running, not sprinting, but this may be appropriate if your body is not used to 100% efforts. In this example progress first by decreasing you rest, the increase your speed, and finally add reps.

On the other end of the spectrum, if you are already in great shape and are looking for an intense challenge try completing 12 reps in 12 minutes each under 12 seconds. The intensity of this 12 minutes workout will amaze you.

Functional Training Exercises – Kuzora Personal Training Raleigh

September 1, 2009 By John Kuzora

Functional Training Exercises – Kuzora Personal Training Raleigh

Most trainers out there don’t understand functional training. They believe that if a movement is done on a BOSU or with a resistance band it somehow magically becomes “functional” and is better than the same movement performed in a more traditional manner. Sometimes I think they might be confusing the word “functional” with “inflatable.” Or maybe they just need to find a use for all their pool toys during the winter months.

Strictly speaking, something is “functional” if it serves a purpose, role, or function. In terms of sports performance, I label an exercise as functional if it improves an athletes ability to function in there chosen activity. This can be very sport specific. For example, if you play tennis a chin-up is a highly functional exercise. Within a few weeks of beginning a chin-up program you will add significant speed to your serve and significantly improve your ability to “function” on the courts. For long distance road cyclists the same program of chin-ups would likely be very counter productive as the upper body hypertrophy could decrease performance.

If you train for general fitness and your sport is life, than evaluate things that are challenging for you and determine what exercises can help improve your function in those particular activities. If you are eighty years old and have trouble getting up from a seated position a heavy dose of bench squats would be highly functional. If you travel for work and carry a heavy suitcase all over the country, farmer’s walk and suitcase deadlifts would be more functional choices.

That being said, certain tools are extremely versatile and can be used to improve function for many types of athletes and regular people alike. The following are some of my favorites in no particular order:

Kettlebells

The five minute kettlebell snatch test (along with hill sprints and Tabata protocol rower intervals) is one of the most demanding and time efficient anaerobic workouts one can perform. And life is an anaerobic sport. Think about it: running up the stairs, sprinting with you luggage in an airport to try and make it to the gate on time, moving furniture in your new house, even carrying your laundry basket from your laundry room to the bedroom are all anaerobic activities.

Swings, cleans, & snatches also increase glute strength and psoas flexibility, both common problems in our country. Correcting these common weaknesses can improve running speed, jumping ability, and lower back health.

Kettlebells can also be used to provide variety on almost any basic movement such as front squats and military presses.

Hex Bar

A Hex bar is an indispensable tool that will allow almost anyone to deadlift with proper technique. The deadlift is one of the most functional movements around. Everyone needs to pick something up off the ground at some point, and learning how to do this with proper technique and in good position to protect your back is crucial.

The unique shape of the bar helps keep the load centered through body’s midline, reducing stress on the lower back. And the two-handle option helps to accommodate taller people and people with poor calf, hamstring, and hip flexibility.

As either a tool to teach proper deadlifting technique or as a source of variety for a more advanced athlete, the Hex Bar can’t be beat.

Dragging Sled

The dragging sled is a particularly useful tool for increasing work capacity and rehabbing injuries. Because exercises performed using the sled involve only concentric muscle contractions there is virtually no soreness associated with sled workouts.

People with knee pain on squats and lunges can easily perform a backwards sled drag pain free. Most of the work is handled by the vastus medialis, the chronically underdeveloped head of the quadriceps muscle.

Some other more specialized tools we utilize at Kuzora Personal Training – Raleigh are sand bags, strongman logs, an atlas stone, thick handled barbells, and my personal favorite, the half filled keg. Watch this video and you can easily see how lifting that over you head will build significantly more functional strength and core stability than the contra-lateral single arm DB overhead press standing on one leg on the BOSU!