Featured Article THB Undercover
Should You Listen to Your Fitness Trainer?
Most of us have been motivated to get into fitness at some point in our lives. You know the kind I mean — running or aerobics exercises in which you push yourself continuously for 45 minutes to an hour in order to sustain an elevated heart rate. We’ve been told by fitness experts for years that these exercises will help us lose the fat, develop a lean physique, and strengthen our heart muscle to prevent a heart attack in the future.
I’ve done many of these exercises myself, but usually got bored with them after a while because of the monotony and the time involved. Then I’d feel guilty about not sticking with it. But recently I learned from THB’s own Dr. Al Sears that giving up “cardio” might be one of the smartest moves I’ve ever made.
Here’s why. Dr. Sears’ research has shown that cardio workouts, including long-distance running, create a continuous challenge on your heart — usually without rest. In effect, your heart feels like it’s under constant threat and attack — and that’s not a good thing. Several years ago, McLean hospital near Boston, Massachusetts released a study revealing a link between marathon running and increased risk of sudden cardiac death.1
Dr. Sears calls this the “Jim Fixx Phenomenon.” Fixx was the popular fitness guru of the 1970s. He claimed that the secret to heart health and long life was endurance running — up until he died of a heart attack — while running!
But even if you don’t “drop dead” from long-distance running or vigorous cardio, you’ll still be punishing your heart and lungs. That’s because traditional cardio workouts, including aerobics, could actually cause “shrinkage” of your muscles, heart and lungs. (Think how emaciated and scrawny marathon runners look compared to sprinters.)
What’s worse, they wipe out your heart’s reserve capacity. Your reserve capacity is what your heart and lungs use to deal with stress and physical exertion. Reserve capacity means your heart has the ability to pump more blood, faster in times of stress when abnormal exertion is placed on it. This even includes “good stress” like vigorous sex or a night out dancing. Reserve capacity for your lungs also allows them to deal with high exertion like lifting, carrying, running or going up stairs.
But what about losing weight? Maybe “cardio” is the worst possible thing you can do for your heart and lungs, but surely you need this type of continuous exercise to drop the extra pounds, right? Again, the answer is the exact opposite of what you’ve been taught.
While aerobics and running will burn the most energy from fat, it turns out that this is a bad thing. That’s because in response to the fat that was lost during exercise, your body will produce and store even more fat, to better prepare for the next time it’s called upon for energy.
That’s right! When you do cardio-type exercises, you could actually be training your body to store fat. And in doing so, it sacrifices lean tissue like muscle and internal organs. Can we really afford to shrink our muscles and internal organs?
So if you throw out everything you’ve learned about the right way to get fit, where does that leave you when you want to improve your heart and lungs and get rid of excess fat? With something Dr. Sears calls “native fitness.”
Native fitness is patterned on the lifestyles of our earliest ancestors. They did not run long distances for extended periods of time like marathoners do today. Our ancestors required short bursts of energy in order to hunt and as a means of survival. We are still perfectly adapted for a life and death struggle between predator and prey.
This is why you can forget all the misinformation you’ve been taught about any repetitive exercise like cardio and even weightlifting. Your body was never meant to perform the same basic movements over and over, thousands of times. This is what almost all “cardio” and weightlifting routines are about. When you replace these strategies with activities that mimic your challenges in a natural environment, the overall health results come much faster and easier.
So the key to fitness is short bursts of energy that strengthen your heart and lungs to generate lots of extra power very quickly and never train your body to store fat for your next exercise session. And when you make small progressive changes to your high-intensity workout, it triggers even more benefits.
Dr. Sears says he has helped thousands of his patients lose stubborn fat, develop a stronger heart and even reverse lung damage with short-duration high-intensity workout routines. The program he has developed is called PACE® and it’s about getting in top physical condition in the least amount of time.
I’m reading Dr. Sears’ PACE® book right now, and I can tell you I’m amazed to learn that what I’ve been taught for decades about how to exercise is totally wrong. But the good news is, the right way to exercise still gives you a great workout, but in far less time and with no risks of permanent injury or worse…
That’s why I’m sharing this information with you. You don’t have to choose between grueling cardio workouts or being flabby and out of shape. PACE® is your chance to get fit the way your body was designed to — with short bursts of energy and plenty of recovery time. Just the way our native ancestors did.
I encourage you to read Dr. Sears’ book too and begin a native fitness program with PACE®. It will be one of the best health decisions you ever made — whatever your age and fitness level.
Reference
- Sears, A, Rediscover Your Native Fitness, Wellness Research and Consulting, Wellington, FL, 2006.
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Amen, finally someone who tells it like it is. A great summation of Dr. Sears’ work. Thanks for helping all the people running east looking for a sunset.
Hmmm. It would be nice to have a link to the book you spent so much time discussing.
wish i could aford it right now. spending 40.00 right now would feal like 200.00
Dr. Sears does have another view of exercise, but it is just another view. The study he cites is just one study and there are plenty of studies with a different point of view. I am a marathon runner and I just spent a weekend in the Cardiac Care Unit of the hospital. After all the test, and blood work, echo gram, stress test, the results - a very superior and athletic heart. Each person has to know their limits because we are all different.
I thank Dr. Sears for his research and his continued passion for his work.
This article is very bias and not true Jim Fixx had a heart condition that would have kill him much sooner if he had not been a runner. From is article it look like long distance runner will are killing them self not true. The people that exercise are lean and cut with more energy. I have never seen a fat long distance runner. In any exercise program you must use common sense when starting out, start slow and build-up to more harder routines. I’ve work out for my entire life and my heart is very strong and my cholesterols are very good. We are not caveman and with Dr. Sears program is base around using supplements to reduce your fat. I’ll stay with my workout classes.
Hey guys, I love Dr. Sears’ stuff but I have to agree with Mark that we are not cavemen. Aerobic Exercise is extremely healthy. I do believe that some people go overboard with it by doing things such as marathons on asphalt. Anaerobic training has its place and benefits too. Doing a little bit of everything will keep you on your toes, your body progressing and prevent overuse injuries. My 2 cents. Dennys
Jim Fixx had an actual heart problem and knew it. He said that he would probably die running because of his ailment, but he preferred to run and accepted the consequences. How many marathon runners don’t die of heart attacks. I prefer fitness, sometimes jumping rope, sometimes running, sometimes treadmills, sometimes weights. Take one look at Jack LaLane and rethink your idea about fitness. Eat correctly, exercise well, relax your mind.
When I don’t train or run or lift I get weak and don’t function correctly. Please don’t talk about Jim Fixx. You have only told half of the story. Or are you lying on purpose?
I agree with Dr. Sears. High intensity intermittent training is more adapted to animals than long distance running. Look at nature. You don’t see anything running long distance. What you see are short, intense bursts to either catch prey or run from it. You can get more healthy from short intense bursts practiced regularly than long distance stuff (which is boring anyway). I know some friends that have triplets. All 3 long distance run. Two already have repetitive use injuries in their legs now, and they are only teenagers. I’ll stick with the intermittent training.
Longtime running or cycling is not unhealthy. Cyclists who participated in the Tour de France (which requires very long training sessions)reached an older age than their generation members. But it is recommendable to alternate long distance running or cycling with very intensive and much shorter exercises. So the heart becomes trained at every level and the lungs also. Don’t forget resistance and flexibility exercises.
As an avid mover, I often wondered how vertebrate animals moved so easily and agilely without training and without lifting weights.
I literally stumbled onto their secret. Is it the short bursts of activity? Well, yes and they also get a lot of rest too. However, it’s the thing all healthy vertebrate animals do the first thing in the morning and periodically throughout the day.
The movement sequences you see them do in the morning which look like a stretch are in fact not a stretch but what is termed a pandiculation. The process of this pandiculation allows your nervous system to reset the resting levels of your muscles and in so doing gives you the sound foundation and fundamentals for movement itself.
In other words, you self-correct all your muscles and joint positions so when you need to use them, say in exercise or movement itself, your muscles are primed and ready to go from a rested position and not one from a contracted, compensated and substituted state. So if you’re activity is doing you in, you may have to spend time in resetting yourself like all healthy vertebrate animals do.
I have been trying the sprint idea, followed by walking three times the sprinting distance distance(15 to 25 yds=45 to 75 yds), for about one year. For me this seems to work very well.
As a springboard diver, that’s not the end of any particular workout, since I require flexibility, control over legs and some upper body strength. Solution: a mild series of pilates and various types of push-ups or pull-ups. Weight has gone down.
I’m not the skinny type that thrives on long distance plodding. 2 miles of run walking is definitely much more fun. AND, I do work up a sweat! So I guess I have found an adequate compromise.