What kind of cardio is the best ?

S

stevejones

Member
Has science successfully proven what kind of cardio is the best at preserving muscle, or is it still up in the air ?

Some say HIIT is best, others say low intensity, some say both. Some HIIT advocates even say that low intensity cardio will increase your cortisol levels, use muscle as fuel and spare fat ! Seems like most pros strongly advocate low intensity cardio, but they are all on drugs which might change how cardio effects the body. It's a pretty confusing issue. I've gone back and forth between both types.
 
I've been reading lots of stuff written by Alan Aragon and Alwyn Cosgrove. They seem fairly convinced about high intensity and HIIT cardio.

Three part article here.
Article

Exerpt from Cosgrove's book here:
Afterburn exerpt

Cosgrove blog:
Blog


<div></div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">Aerobics vs Anaerobics and Fat Loss
A few loyal readers will remember a few weeks ago that I hypothesized that interval training would help fat loss, but steady state aerobic training may actually have a negative effect in a fat loss program (here) -(I think that it doesn't burn many calories and may decrease metabolism)...read on:

I've mentioned this study before - but now the results have been further analyzed and confirmed and after emailing the lead researcher yesterday I received more information.


Trapp EG and Boutcher SH
Fat loss following 15 weeks of high intensity, intermittent cycle training
Fat Loss Laboratory, Faculty of Medicine,
University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

Without going through the study line by line (that's for the guys on the internet forums) I'll summarize the findings briefly:


Two groups:

Group One: performed 40 mins of steady state aerobics at 60% VO2 max, three times per week for 15 weeks.

Group Two: performed 20 mins (i.e. half the duration) of interval training (8s on, 12s off - 60 rounds), three times per week for 15 weeks. Group two started at 5 mins total the first week.

Both groups had dietary intake monitored closely.

The steady state group GAINED 0.5kg of fat in 15 weeks.
The interval training group LOST on average 2.5kg of fat in the same time frame.

When two already very lean subjects were removed (BMI was less than 20) - the interval training groups results improved to an average of 3.9kg of fat (Steven Boutcher told me that two women in the interval group lost 8kg of fat).

Again, look at the numbers - the aerobic training group GAINED fat (a small amount). The Interval Training group lost 5-8 times as much fat as the steady state group gained despite training for half the time.

Anyway - I rest my case
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Ah, crap. I just reread your post, and see you specified preserving muscle. These links are more about burning fat ...

Well, maybe it will still be worth reading.
 
Yeah, I'm primarily interested in info concerning preserving muscle while doing cardio. Still, good reading. Had forgotten some of that info about protein.

Thanx guys
 
steve here is the science behind interval training
http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/kurilla1.htm
also i posted a thread a few months ago it was a study saying that HIIT cardio could actually increase protein synthesis for longer than weights.

doing ss-cardio is good for health reasons but after you have finished your metabolism soon goes back to normal.
so if you use up 500cls and then eat 500cls its not really done much.

if you do HIIT epoc means you will burn more fat for the next 24hrs aprox 9 times per min trained as ss-cardio.
 
Haus JM, Miller BF, Carroll CC, Weinheimer EM, Trappe TA.
Human Performance Laboratory, Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana, USA.

Relatively little is known about the dynamics of the skeletal muscle protein pool following aerobic exercise. Myofibrillar protein synthesis has recently been shown to be substantially elevated for 3 days after a strenuous 60 min bout of one-legged aerobic exercise, and this increase was surprisingly equal to or greater than what has been shown numerous times following resistance exercise over the same time course. Because net protein accretion is the sum of protein synthesis and degradation, we sought to directly measure skeletal muscle myofibrillar proteolysis in five healthy young males in response to an identical strenuous 60 min aerobic exercise bout and at the same time points (rest, 6, and 24 h post-exercise and 48 and 72 h post-exercise in a subset of subjects). We measured skeletal muscle myofibrillar proteolysis by monitoring the release of the natural tracer 3-methylhistidine (3MH) from the vastus lateralis muscle into the interstitial space via microdialysis. Skeletal muscle interstitial 3MH concentration was no different (P&gt;0.05) from rest (5.16+/-0.38 nmol/mL) after 6 (5.37+/-0.55 nmol/mL), 24 (5.40+/-0.26 nmol/mL), 48 (5.50+/-0.74 nmol/mL), or 72 h (4.73+/-0.28 nmol/mL). These results suggest that proteolysis of the myofibrillar fraction of skeletal muscle is relatively refractory to an intense aerobic exercise stimulus for up to 3 days, despite the large increase in synthesis of this muscle fraction following the same exercise stimulus. The apparent net myofibrillar protein accretion in the hours and days after exercise may occur in order to offset the large elevation in mixed muscle proteolysis that has been shown during similar bouts of intense one-legged aerobic exercise.

PMID: 16787442 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
 
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