Loading ...Posts Tagged ‘lung health’
Forget About Never-Ending Cardio Workouts That Keep You Fat and Shrink Your Heart and Lungs… There’s a More Effective Way to Add Years to Your Life
You’ve probably heard that to lose weight and achieve a strong, disease-proof body, you need to do some sort of monotonous aerobic or cardio exercise for at least an hour, four days a week.
Not true! Here’s why…
Long duration exercises like aerobics and long-distance running do more harm than good. The best way to lose fat, build muscle, strengthen your heart and lungs, and add years to your life is with short duration, high intensity exercises.
You see, typical cardio and aerobic exercises not only put you at risk for repetitive motion injuries, they also force your heart and lungs to shrink. When you don’t challenge your heart and lungs, they get used to the routine and don’t have to work as hard. That makes your heart and lungs less resistant to stress. And if your heart can’t handle stress, you are more likely to drop dead of a heart attack.
What’s more, these exercise routines don’t make you lean and strong. When you burn fat, your body gets the signal to store more fat. People that train at low to medium intensity for long periods have a much higher body fat percentage and less muscle than people who train for strength with short duration, high intensity, interval-type exercises.
A recent study showed that the muscles of marathon runners actually shrink. When the muscle biopsies of seven marathon runners were analyzed, researchers found their muscle fiber size had decreased and atrophied.1
Working out in short bursts of high intensity exercise will burn glycogen stored in muscles as fuel rather than fat. This then teaches your body to store more energy in the muscles and not as fat. This process helps you burn fat and get lean.
A study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine showed that men and women who exercised at a higher intensity had lower blood pressure, lower triglycerides, higher HDL (good cholesterol) and less body fat.2
Short bursts of high intensity exercise can also help you exceed your aerobic capacity, which increases your lung volume. Why is lung volume so important? According to the famous Framingham Heart Study, lung capacity is the best predictor of longevity and absence of disease.
