Does your car have a better mileage on the highway or in the city?
On the highway, of course, because repeated stops and starts at intersections burn a lot more fuel.
Then why do you choose high reps, an equivalent of cruising down the highway, when you are training to burn fat?
Half a century ago, Soviet scientists measured Olympic weightlifters’ energy expenditure when doing snatch singles versus multiple reps. They discovered that the first rep demanded 35% more energy than each consecutive repetition and recommended that athletes who needed to lean out should increase the share of single reps in their training.
The Soviet national weightlifting team never bought into the pop fitness “high reps for cuts” non-sense—and had a standard of 6-7% body fat for everyone but heavyweights. David Rigert, one of the GOATs, carried 4% body fat at a bodyweight of 200-220lbs without the dishonor of high reps.
Around the same time, Swedish scientists discovered that “intermittent exercise”—5-10sec sprints alternated with rest periods of similar duration—mysteriously went into the “fat burning zone” normally associated with jogging. It is well known that intense exercise like fast running burns little fat and mostly relies on glycogen or carbs. Yet keeping the bouts ultra-short somehow changed the rules…
(A knowledgeable reader will be surprised to find out that the well-trained subjects’ RQ was 0.75-0.79 after 25min of 5sec on and 5sec off running at at ~VO2max speed. To dig deep, come to the Strong Endurance™ seminar.) |
| | STRONG ENDURANCE™ with Pavel
Denver, Colorado, November 6-7
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| In the next several issues of the StrongFirst newsletter we will talk about the benefits of stop-start training for conditioning for combat sports and discuss specific applications of this knowledge to your kettlebell and bodyweight training. |
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