I've seen many harp on the 45 minute morning cardio session at 65-75% max heart rate. I'm curious as to what is the more important factor. Is it the 45 minutes or the 65-75%?

The reason I ask is that I tend to do a 45 minute cardio regularly, but it tends to be at more of a 75-85% max heart rate. Though the proportion of fat calories may be less, it burns more calories overall and the raw number of fat calories should be higher, no? Am I doing anything wrong with this approach that I'm not aware of?

Thanks :tu:

yeah, I end up topping out at about 85% of (theoretical) max too on a 45-min session, though it's usually the last 20-25 minutes where it gets up that high. I don't do cardio in the morning either.

maybe I'm doing it all wrong? dunno, but I'm losing, slowly. wouldn't mind speeding it up a little more.

Well at least I'm not alone. You bring up an interesting point in that it tops out at that level after 45 minutes. I haven't really tracked how it progresses. But the question is still whether or not a higher heart rate is detrimental to our overall progress.

Sorry to clog the thread, just wanted to add that I too do 45-50 mins at around 80-90% MHR usually. I have read do stay below 75%, but opt for the more intense cardio as it's not only more pleasurable, but would seem to be more effective.

I read something about this - and I *think* it was Jeremy's post (or article) please correct me if I'm wrong.
when you stay in the fabled "Fat burning zone", you are burning a higher PRERCENTAGE of fat - HOWEVER you are burning MORE cals overall when you go higher. It just happens that a higher % of them are from glycogen, et al.
if you were to graph amount of fat (in cals) burned (y axis) vs. time (x axis), you'd see that for short periods, you burn more fat doing it the slow and easy way. But as you go longer and longer, you burn more cals overall, thus more fat overall...

thanks, efk, that made me remember something in Tom Venuto's book that basically says the same thing (there's so much info in that thing it's hard to remember it all).

rfrias, I can make it go higher with more effort but then I start getting those runner's cramps in my side. dunno why but it takes a lot of work to get my HR up to the 85% point (~150bpm), at least 10 minutes and usually more like 15 staying at the same effort level that I finish up at.

I read something about this - and I *think* it was Jeremy's post (or article) please correct me if I'm wrong.

I remember that post too. Which is why I wanted to hear another point of view. It just seems to make so much sense that burning more calories would be better, but hey, I'm not an expert. ;) Anyway, I'd be really interested to hear if there is some alternative reason for the lower heart rate.

Also you have to remember the point of 65-75% is to burn primarily fat. Yes, you will burn more calories at a higher intensity, and thus even though the fat % goes down, the overall total of fat burned is higher. But so is the overall total of glycogen/muscle. And this is the important point that most people miss out on. Now, you've really tapped into your energy reserves and you'll probably needs more carbs in the day to recover from it, and when you take in those carbs, you kill your fat burning for the day. So its all a matter of trying to be moderate, and controlling what gets burned and what doesn't. If you stay in the moderate zone you can burn more fat %, and have more glycogen left for later workouts (like weight training in the afternoon), or the next run the next morning.

THink of this as well. If you are carb-depleted from all this intense HIIT type exercise and you can't seem to have the energy to run the next morning, well there goes the morning of fat burning. If you go moderate, you can run (preferably walk on incline) almost every single morning, which means each week you've burned more fat overall for the week than you would have if you had to take a couple days off from carb depletion. Especially when you combine this with low carb days on your running days, to keep fat burning high. You don't have much to work with here if you are combining low carb days! So you have to go moderate intensity to keep from bottoming out.

Llike Swole has said before in the other forum: If you do HIIT, you'll have a hard time doing it in the morning on an empty stomach and maybe you take in a pre-HIIT small meal. Then, afterward, you need to replenish your carbs from the intense workout (HIIT). Which leads to the question: Why not just lift weights (workout) ?.

I tend to agree with this. As soon as you take in that PWO meal with carbs in it you've dramatically slowed any fat burning for the day now, after that workout.

Calories in / calories out is true, but the whole point of moderate is to keep as much muscle as possible while burning as much fat as possible. If you just look at calories in / calories out, it's easy to lose weight that is both lots of muscle and lots of fat. If you look at macro ratios, (in both exercise and diet) you can make sure more of the weight loss is from fat than it is from muscle. (Not to mention you won't see the scale move as much since fat /per density does not weigh as much. For example, you could lose 2 inches on your gut but only maybe lose a couple of lbs, because you have kept muscle. If you lost 2 inches off your legs in muscle that would probably be a lot of weight !)


-niko

Very interesting point of view. Lemme see if I'm getting this. Are you're saying that we should avoid carbs on running days? If we run 5 days a week and avoid carbs, won't that hurt our lifting progression? The way I saw it, we should run/walk/cardio in the morning on an empty stomach, then go about our normal meals until later in the day when we do our lifting routine. I don't think I'll disagree with you, but I think I'm missing something.


thanks

No, you can have carbs at about the fifth meal of the day, I usually have most of my carbs at 3pm, but it's not going to be sugar (soda or etc) and also don't combine the carbs with fat. Mix the carbs with more protein.

If you are going to lift weights, your carbs should come in your PWO shake and your Post PWO meal (the meal after the PWO shake, about 30 - 60 min later). This will replenish your carbs from the weightlifting. You don't need to carb up before the lifting, if you didn't do HIIT in the morning (Unless you have a very strenous job). On that one however, each person will have to find what they need for energy for the workout. But try to minimize carb intake for as long as you can after running in the morning, that's the basic rule.

Also, each week you need a cheat day , on this day you can carb up. This isn't Atkins. You still carb up a least once a week (if not twice), mainly so you have energy for the rest of the week.

-niko

OK, for grins my last two cardio sessions I kept at 70% (~130bpm for me). strangely both felt almost as strenuous as they'd be at 85%. I always do cardio in the evening after work; my last meal before that is generally at least two hours prior and is protein and carbs (e.g. today it was chicken breast, brown rice, and broc). maybe I'm not progressing as fast as it'd go if I did it first thing in the morning, but it'd be logistically impossible to do it in the morning.

Thanks Niko, that pretty much sums up what I'd suggest trying out, yes. Thanks for getting to this, I didn't see it!

~SC~