The "Afterburn"

More research today has been spent on the "afterburn" effect of exercise. More formally this afterburn is known as excess postexercise oxygen consumption or EPOC. EPOC means that the body has to return to homeostasis after intense exercise. In order to do this your metabolism will remain elevated after you have finished exercising to replace energy stores, cool your body temperature, and reducing your heart rate. This means that not only are you burning calories while you exercise but if you are exercising hard enough you will burn even more for hours afterwords. It also appears that strength training will create a higher and longer EPOC than aerobic exercise.

The take aways from this are if you are trying to lose body fat you need to incorporate a strength training routine and intensity is much more important that duration. You will burn more calories during and after your strength workouts than with just cardio sessions. It is shown that the more intense the workout is to more EPOC there will be. This does not mean you have to kill yourself every time you workout but you must be pushing yourself. Most studies that look at EPOC involve exercises to failure. While this isn't necessary you should be getting pretty close to failure during each exercise.

Here is a short article that explains EPOC if you are interested in learning more. http://www.drlenkravitz.com/Articles/epoc.html

Mike
www.sandiegopremiertraining.com