The Importance of SAID

I was talking to a client the other day and she brought up a point that is fundamental to the understanding of the body and how the body adapts to exercise. She came to me concerned about her level of overall fitness because while she felt that she was in good shape, when she went for a bike ride the previous day, she felt herself getting winded and her muscles becoming tired much quicker than she would have hoped. She had been putting in time not only strengthening her legs but also on the treadmill to increase her cardiovascular capacity, yet it seemed that none of this mattered when she was on the bike.

This is when I realized that many people do not fully understand just what happens as we exercise. There is a principle that is fundamental to how our body reacts to the work we do known as SAID. This stands for “Specific Adaptations to Imposed Demands” and explains why you could spend hours on the treadmill and still become winded on the bike. As the SAID principle spells out, we adapt to the specific demand that we place on the body. Biking and running are two different movements, so the body will not have carry-over from one to another. This is why Lance Armstrong, one of the greatest cyclists of all time, had over 800 people finish in front of him in the Boston Marathon. It did not matter that he had great leg strength and endurance or that his lungs are some of the most capable in the world, because this just wasn’t an activity that his body was accustomed to.

Now, that brings up another point that goes right along with this principle. Many people think of cardiovascular ability as being synonymous with lung capacity. While the lungs do have a role, it is actually your muscles ability to utilize oxygen that will result in one’s ability to sustain activity. When you move your muscles, they require more oxygen, but if you are not used to using those muscles in a certain pattern, then they will not be efficient at using the oxygen they are receiving. This can be discouraging for anyone who, after all their training, finds that they are still winded after certain activities. But this is only your body telling you that you are doing something new!

The point is, we must train in ways that are going to get us to our goals the quickest. If you are a runner, you should spend most of your endurance training time with running (intervals I might add). If you are a swimmer, do the same. If you just want to lose weight, then the most important thing is actually weight training because we utilize the most muscle units and produce the greatest demand on the body when we move weight. So remember be specific and your body will adapt to those activities! Good luck and happy training!

Colin

In Related News: 3/24/10

Study: Women need to work out an hour every day to fend off flab as they age - San Jose Mercury News

This article ran in the San Jose Mercury News today, and while I agree that consistent exercise is important, I am actually not totally in favor of what the article is saying. Basically what it says is if you do some sort of moderate activity (hiking, biking, jogging, yoga, etc.) for an hour a day you can maintain weight. That is fine if A) you are happy with your weight and B) if you have 7 hours a week to dedicate to exercise, but that is rarely a reality! Now if you have read this blog before, you will know that I am fully an advocate for healthy lifestyles and integrating movement into everyday life, but that is only a piece of the whole picture. Before exercise comes diet.

The first thing they state in this article is that 60 minutes a day is needed if women do not want to change their diet. Unfortunately, diet is the MOST important part if you want to have a healthy lifestyle. I would rather someone worked out 2 hours a week and ate right than work out 7+ hours a week and kept eating the way most Americans do. Now, ongoing moderate exercise (especially when social) has many positive mental effects which is why I am all for doing a little bit every day and building it into your life. However, if you want your body to perform at its best and you are overweight, then this is not going to cut it.

The one thing I did like about this article was actually before I even opened the link. There was an alternate link to a poll asking what people would have to give up to have time for exercise. This was a great question because it is one of the most important steps toward reaching any fitness goals (or any life goals for that matter) that you set for yourself. Many people fail to achieve their fitness goals simply because they did not have a clear idea of what it would take to succeed. They know they need to start eating right and exercising, but after the first week, they begin to realize that their life gets in the way. Before setting up a program, it is important to think first about the obstacles and then choosing how to work around them. If you do not have the time to cook your own meals, how are you going to make time? If you need to work out, what are you going to have to give up to make that happen? These are important questions to answer before you start, or at least to be aware of.

In summary, do try to be consistent but 7+ hours a week is probably going to be hard. Focus on diet first and integrating movement into your life (using the stairs, parking far away from work, take 5-10 minute work breaks to walk and stretch) and save your time at the gym for weight training that will actually produce results. Good luck and as always, happy fitness.

Colin

Is Aerobic Training a Waste of Time?

For many years, aerobic training was considered the staple of any exercise program, especially if weight loss was the goal. Aerobic training usually means running, though other activates can also be aerobic (biking or swimming). Aerobic just means that you are using oxygen to maintain your activity for a long period of time, so these types of activates are also known as endurance training.

There are many reasons people engage in aerobic activity, and if you just love running, by all means keep going. But for those of you that only do it because you have heard that it is healthy, it’s time to start thinking about alternatives. For both cardiovascular health and body composition (percent body fat), aerobic training is at best a slow way to get there. At worst, it is a total waste of time! This goes more for body fat, though when you consider how many hours people put into endurance training, even the cardiovascular benefits begin looking a little weak.

The problem is that there has never really been any data to back up the fat loss benefits of aerobic training. In a study looking at two groups of obese women, the researchers found that adding 45 minutes of aerobic training 5 days a week for 12 weeks had NO EFFECT over dieting alone. That is 4.5 hour a week of running that did nothing!

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9738131

Even in a study looking at a six month period where the participants were running for 50 minutes, 5 times per week, the results came out poorly. After over 100 hours of exercise, there was no additional effect on weight or body fat levels. I would not be happy if I put that much time into something that resulting is such little progress.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17200169

So what when wrong? Why were people so sure that this is the way fat loss occurs?

It all comes from the myth of the fat burning zone. It’s not so much a myth as it is a misguided understanding of fat loss. The fat burning zone is the zone in which your body is using fat as its main source of energy. The way the body works is to utilize fat more at lower intensities and utilize carbs more at higher intensities. So the logic runs that if you are burning a high percentage from fat, then you will be able to burn more fat calories overall! There are two flaws in this argument. First, by this logic, sitting on your couch would actually burn the most fat because you are at rest! The problem is that you are not burning very many calories total, so the percentage doesn’t matter. The second, and more important factor is that this only takes into account what happens during the workout. There is no recognition of the recovery period after exercise. If you were only look at what happens in the body during a workout you would notice similar levels of fat burned for a given amount of exercise, regardless of intensity. The missing factor in all of this is what happens in the 48 hours after you leave the gym.
Your body is always looking to restore equilibrium, and the further your push it away from your resting state, the harder it has to work to get back. So when you have a long slow training session, you may burn some calories during the workout, but your body doesn’t have to work very hard to restore itself after. The more intense the workout, the more work you body has to recover.

In a study comparing a 20-week endurance training program with a 15-week high intensity interval training program, the researchers found that the endurance group burned over 28000 calories while the interval group only burned around 13500 calories. Despite burning only half the calories, the interval training group actually showed a NINE TIMES greater reduction in subcutaneous fat (this is important because this is the fat that lies under the skin and can give the dimpled cellulite look).

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8028502

The truth is, exercise is not about what happens at the gym, but it is what your body does in response to that exercise during the recovery period. So start thinking about how you can push yourself at the gym to make sure your body will be in need of rest. I don’t recommend going to the gym and killing yourself, you need to build up. So start incorporating weight training and interval training into your routine and see the difference it makes. If time is limited, weight training is always better due to the large requirements it places on your muscles. Interval training is a good supplement to weight training but should not replace it. Good luck and start hitting those weights!

If you want to know more, check out the other “weight loss” tags where I have written further on training and dieting to help you lose weight.

Colin