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Two common terms we hear in gyms are tempo and time under tension (TUT). The reason why I think a full blog post on this topic is important is because both tempo and TUT are misinterpreted and therefore often misapplied. Firstly, tempo and TUT are NOT the same thing and we will define each just below. Secondly, they are not a ‘type’ of training i.e you don’t do a TUT program! Every time you train you are spending TUT. Tempo is a training variable that we manipulate within training..

The most common way that these two concepts are misunderstood is when someone believes that significantly slowing down their repetition speed (tempo), increases the TUT they achieve in an exercise and is consequently superior for growth. I’m sure you’ve seen the bro’s (I’ve been one of them) doing 5 second eccentrics on every set of every exercise because it ‘increases their TUT’. This blog will explore why this is not necessarily the case and specifically:

• How the duration of tension in training is important but not necessarily increased by slowing down reps.

• What we believe is a better application of tempo in training and how it actually can be beneficial in increasing exercise stimulation on the muscle.

TUT

First things first, muscle hypertrophy is achieved through applying tension of an appropriate magnitude and duration to the target muscle. The magnitude will dictate the adaptation that occurs i.e higher magnitudes (loads) will elicit more strength and lower magnitudes will bias hypertrophy. The duration refers to the dose or how much of that tension or stimulus is being applied. From a resistance training perspective, the more we can do and importantly recover from, the better our progress is likely going to be.

So yes, duration of tension and therefore TUT is important within training but is this achieved by significantly slowing down your reps? Let’s compare 2 different sets of bicep curls.

1. Subject 1 completes their bicep curls at a regular cadence. They focus on squeezing the muscle hard at the end concentric and then lower the weight at a speed that is conducive of them being in control i.e not letting it drop

2. Subject 2 starts the same but now takes 5 seconds to lower the weight.

Subject 2 will be spending a lot longer performing each rep but why does subject 2 not necessarily have a better stimulus? The main factor is because that subject 1 will likely get a lot more reps. So whilst subject 2 may have more TUT per rep, subject 1 will complete more of them and therefore by the time the set is all said and done it could be argued that the amount of TUT for both subjects is similar.

What’s important is achieving enough stimulus per set to elicit a hypertrophic response and we do this by taking each set close to failure (RIR 0-3). So if you do a set 8 curls with a 5 second eccentric vs a set of 15 curls at normal cadence then as long as they reach that point of close to failure then you’re on the right track.

So yes slowing down the speed at which you perform an exercise will probably still be effective for muscle hypertrophy but there can be a catch. It’s likely that using slow eccentric training as a means of increasing TUT can be taken to a point where it becomes detrimental to one’s progress.

Firstly let’s consider session volume. As a general rule, when hypertrophy is the goal we want to spend most of our time working in rep ranges of 6-20. If you find that because you’re significantly slowing down the speed of the movement to increase TUT but now 50% of the sets you do in your workout are in the 3-5 rep range then you are cutting your training volume significantly and likely too much to optimise hypertrophy. Generally if we are in the 3-5 rep range the loads we are using will push some gains in strength but we don’t even get that anymore as the loads we have used for slowed eccentrics are too low.

Second is recovery. It’s well documented you can cause increased muscle disruption/damage from doing heavy eccentric work in your training. Whilst this sounds appealing for growth, you can always have too much of a good thing. If you are constantly sore and under recovered because all you do in training is extremely slow eccentrics then your ability to grow will likely be hindered as you simply can’t recover. If you can’t recover from training then your training volume will drop and you’ll also be more likely to get injured when training fatigued all the time.

Tempo

Tempo refers to the actual speed we perform each part of an exercise. Exercises we perform are commonly broken down into concentric and eccentric and then also further into concentric, end concentric, eccentric, end eccentric. If you are unsure what this means then concentric is the shortening of a muscle and eccentric the lengthening of a muscle. When someone says they are doing ‘tempo’ training (which again isn’t a thing) in order to achieve a better stimulus they are essentially manipulating the speed of these phases in the movement. As we have already discussed, slowing down the tempo does not necessarily equate to increased stimulus just because you are performing the movement slower and can even be detrimental to growth if taken to the extreme.

So what is the best application of tempo and how may this lead to a more stimulative exercise/session? Think about whenever you have learnt a new skill! You don’t start by trying to perform it at full speed. To fully piece it together you usually have to slow the movement down, slow parts of it down or even break movement down into segments. Well the same applies for exercises in the gym. If someone has technical issues with their squat that as a coach we want to address, it’s likely a good idea to give them a slowed tempo. In this example a 3 second eccentric with a 2 second pause would help them better think and coordinate the movement rather than have them dive bomb into the hole and come straight back up. Make them slow down the descent and give them time to think about bracing, where their knees should be tracking, feeling the bar on their back etc. Just like with any other skill, the more you practice the more automatic it comes.

If you use tempo as a means to improve technique then this is actually a time where coincidentally you will achieve a greater TUT on the TARGET muscle as opposed to a faster cadence for the same exercise. For example, let’s say for RDL’s the only thing you feel is your lower back. It turns out that when looking at your technique, the movement is not actually coming from you hinging at the hips at all and it’s simply your spine that is flexing to lower the weight. Now you’ve seen this, you slow the eccentric part of the movement down and focus on pushing your hips back the whole time with a neutral spine and bang your hamstring and glutes are smoked!! You’ve taken the same exercise with poor technique and working your spinal erectors to good technique and working your glutes and hamstrings. That’s how you would increase TUT for the target muscle using a tempo. As you become more and more proficient at that exercise you will likely remove that slower tempo and find a speed that simply allows for control of the movement with heavier loads.

Key Takeaways

• Tempo and TUT are not forms or styles of training. Tempo is a training variable.

• Slowing reps down to increase TUT does not necessarily equate to a greater stimulus as more reps can be completed at a normal rep cadence.

• Excessively slowing down your exercises to increase TUT may actually have detrimental effects on hypertrophy if volume demands are not met. It may also increase your likelihood of injury from poor recovery.

• Tempos main use should be the help improve technique.

• Improved technique using a tempo may actually increase TUT on the target muscle as you are correctly training that muscle.

If you have done even the smallest bit of exploration into the fitness industry you likely would have heard phrases such as “build lean muscle” or “build muscle and stay lean”. It’s quite an attractive prospect and one that would certainly grab anyone’s attention. After all, it is appealing to gain muscle and stay lean right? It is also appealing to have a lean muscle rather than just muscle.

The reality is that for people who don’t have the A1 genetics or are not using performance-enhancing 3 Point supplements. (PED’s), it’s likely not the best use of your time to try and gain muscle but stay lean.

Let’s dive in.

Firstly we will clarify that there are 3 types of muscle within the human body. Skeletal (which we are concerned about here), cardiac muscle and smooth muscle. Now what you don’t see on this list is ‘lean’ muscle. Further, if there was such a thing lean muscle does that means there is also ‘fat’ muscle? In both cases the answer is no. Muscle is muscle, it’s not lean nor is it fat. People will certainly develop different muscle shapes and sizes largely dependent on genetics, training experience and things like insertion points but what people don’t have is ‘lean’ muscle. We all just have regular old muscle.

What people are actually referring to is just having muscle and very little fat covering that muscle, giving you a lean appearance. If a lean person who looked ripped and defined began to gain fat, they are not going from ‘lean’ muscle to ‘fat’ muscle. They are simply just gaining fat on top of the same muscle they already had. Being lean is a look. Your muscles aren’t lean, you are lean. You have muscle and you have a low body fat percentage over the muscle.

Building muscle and staying lean or getting leaner occurs best in 3 different scenarios:

· You’re brand new to the gym

· You take PED’s

· You’re returning to the gym after an extended break i.e 6 months

We all know that your first 6-12 months of resistance training produced unbelieve results. You would have likely noticed changes in your body almost weekly and just looking at a barbell seemed to add muscle to your frame. Whilst I’m not doubting you put in the hard work, the payoff you get from simply eating well and training hard during this point of your lifting career is far great than what was to come. Now you’re a few years into training and results have slowed dramatically. How do you keep adding muscle whilst maintaining a low body fat percentage?

First, we will first lay down the basics of what it takes for each of gaining muscle and losing fat.

To optimally build muscle, you need to give your body the resources to do so. Just like if you want to turn a single story house into a two story house, you need more material to make this happen. That material your body needs for optimal rates of growth is food. Now, it is possible to gain muscle eating at maintenance but the rate at which you gain will be a lot slower. Especially as you become more advanced in your training, these gains will become relatively insignificant. Spending a decent time in a surplus will likely mean your recovery ceiling is higher, meaning you can afford higher doses of stimulative volumes and intensities. This probably correlates to more muscle growth compared to a slightly lower recovery ceiling we would have eating at maintenance.

Spending extended periods of time in a surplus is going to be your best solution to gaining muscle unless you are of course on ‘that good shit’. If you are on ‘that good shit’ then that is totally fine and a choice of yours, although you will likely still need to follow the same principle to get maximal results anyway.

Fat accumulation is a bi-product of being in a calorie surplus. As we eat more, a percentage of this will go to muscle and a percentage to fat. The more we gain, the more this skews in favour of fat accumulation and the less muscle per kg of body weight change. So whilst we need to accept some fat accrual, we don’t want to let this get out of hand.

Staying lean means that we probably just finished dieting and were previously in a state of negative energy balance or we have gone through a few diets in the past and are currently quite lean as a result. A negative energy balance is not conducive to building muscle. Taking the above example, if we want to build that second story but we don’t have enough materials we can’t expect to finish building can we. We can’t expect to build a significant amount of muscle without enough food coming in. The best we can do is to try to maintain it.

If you have just finished your diet and you want to stay lean, this would assume that you are currently consuming enough to maintain your physique. This means whilst our situation in terms of the potential to grow muscle has improved, we are still going to be lacking the necessary resources to build muscle at ‘optimal’ rates. We may be able to build muscle very slowly but the rate at which we can build muscle in maintenance will be a lot slower than in optimal conditions such as a surplus.

So how do we have both? Simply, in the short term we can’t, long term we can. Unless you fit one of the 3 categories above then aiming to build muscle and stay lean is essentially setting yourself up in a hamster wheel.

Well how the f$%k do I get jacked and lean.

Using an example of an stock investor. A seasoned investor will invest money into a certain stock and likely leave it for years on end. If put into the right stock there is great potential for a substantial return on what you put in. But this takes time and patience. Compare that to a rookie who gets nervous when the stocks change even slightly. They invest money into a company and see that is has been going down for 3 months so they take their money out and cop a small loss. They reinvest into new stock and see after 2 months it has gone up so they take their money out. The cycle repeats and they are left with the same amount of money 2 years later.

If your overarching goal is to gain muscle and be lean then strap in for the long haul just like the seasoned investor does.

We know that muscle is most optimally grown when we have an abundance of energy. Being in a surplus allows our recovery ceiling to be higher and this in turn likely allows us to increase the amount of stimulative volume and intensities in our training. In an article by James Krieger on Weightology he states that “12-18 weekly sets probably gives you the best bang for your buck in terms of hypertrophy..” This is a recommendation that fits the mean, some people will sit outside these ranges. Schoenfeld et al. showed that up to 45 weekly sets can provide significant hypertrophy, although this is likely only practical to 1-2 muscle groups at a time in a specialisation phase. Being in a net positive energy balance, your best bang for your buck volumes ranges might be slightly higher than normal. So what might be 12-18 now could be 14-20.

If you position yourself in a surplus for an extended period of time, you are giving yourself every opportunity to gain muscle. Remember fat accrual is a bi-product of being in a surplus but the aim is to not let this get out of hand. We want to ensure the amount of muscle we gain per kg is still reasonable and we don’t overdo the fat gain in a surplus. For example if we spend 4-5 months in a surplus and go from 14% BF to 20% BF as a male, it may be a good idea to mini cut and bring your BF% back down to 15 or 16% to allow you to continue your gaining for another 3-4 months. A mini cut is NOT designed to get you shredded and hence why it’s still considered part of a massing phase. Once you’ve spent time building, now it’s time to get lean and in terms of long term progression this cyclic approach we suggest will be the best use of your time.

Key Takeaways

– There is no such thing as ‘lean’ muscle. Everyone has muscle and if you want to appear lean then you firstly need to have built the muscle and then you need to diet to reduce bf%, ultimately given the illusion of a lean muscle.

– Trying to gain muscle whilst staying lean likely an inefficient use of your time if you are natural. Gaining muscle and being lean are best done in isolation. That is, being in a surplus for an extended period of time to allow for optimal muscle growth rates and accepting that fat gain is a bi-product of this.

– Getting lean means dieting your fat away. This is best done being in a deficit for an extended period of time. Staying lean means you will be eating just enough to maintain your current physique. Some muscle can be gained here but optimal rates cannot be achieve as you do not have the abundance of materials required.

Training during a fat loss phase is a large area of contention within the fitness industry. Given that body composition improvements are arguably the leading goal of your average gym goer and that same gym goer would likely rather train hard than diet hard, this often leads to questions such as:

“What’s the best type of training for fat loss?”

“What are the best exercises for fat loss”

And so on.

This article aims to give the reader an overview of how to best apply training (resistance and cardio) as it relates to a fat loss phase in order to optimise body composition.

Before we begin, we will outline the basics of fat loss.

The Physiology Of Fat Loss

The fundamental concept to understand when it comes to fat loss is energy balance. As humans we have energy that comes into the body via the food and drink we consume. We then use this energy to function. Within the body we can then have 3 different conditions. These conditions can be summed up via the following equations:

Energy In > Energy Out = Weight gain.

Energy In = Energy Out = Weight Maintenance.

Energy In < Energy Out = Fat Loss

Zoning in on the last equation, we need to consume less energy than we expend and this is what we refer to as an energy deficit. Our body will always prefer to sit at its current maintenance and so when the energy coming into the body doesn’t match the energy going out, we have to find energy from another source. When this occurs, the body amongst other changes will begin to mobilise stored fat and break it down to be used for energy and this is how we lose fat.

In order to tip the balance of this equation in favour of fat loss we need to understand what each side consists of.

The energy in side is fairly straight forward. It’s simply the food and drink we consume. The energy out, side of the equation consists of the following:

• Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR): Amount of energy needed for the body to perform vital functions at complete rest. Energy that “keeps the lights on”.

• Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT): This is energy used for normal non incidental day to day activities. Walking to work or taking the stairs for example.

• Exercise Activity (EA): Energy used for purposeful exercise.

• Thermic Effect of Food (TEF): This is the energy needed for the digestion of food.

Combined, these all comprise of our daily total energy expenditure (TDEE).

Anyone that has spent a long time in a deficit or lost significant amounts of fat knows that it’s not as simple as just dropping calories once and breezing through. Our body is adapted for survival and when we create a deficit our body naturally moves to mitigate this deficit and bring the body back to an equal energy balance. Specifically, it does this by manipulating the 4 components of energy output. These 4 factors will see a down regulation in an attempt to bridge the energy gap created and to ultimately restore energy balance.

BMR reductions during a fat loss phase are largely a result of a down regulation in the secretion of Thyroid hormones. Put simply, one of the main roles of thyroid hormones is to set the base metabolic rate for all cells in the body so it makes sense that if we see a decline in its secretion, BMR would also down regulate. Depending on the length and severity of the diet we may see entire systems become affected. A classic example is when females lose their menstrual cycle from long periods of dieting as energy is pulled away from non essential systems and redirected simply to survival.

As we lose fat we also become smaller, meaning we cost less to function i.e A 90kg person likely has a higher BMR than an 80kg person simply because there is more of them. Unfortunately for BMR there is not much we can do in order to preserve it as thyroid function is largely dictated by energy intake and if you’re losing fat, bodyweight reductions will obviously occur.

NEAT is a key player for energy expenditure. Less energy coming in will cause the body to reduce energy going out from various non-purposeful activity. You’ll inherently begin to fidget less, you’ll sit every chance you get, take the elevator instead of stairs, some people even speak slower. These changes often creep up on you without even noticing and this can lead to frustrating stalls in fat loss.

EA will be addressed in the cardio section below but essentially it’s another ‘tool’ we have to assist in creating the required deficit. Resistance training also falls within this category but as you will read, our opinion is that energy expenditure is not the primary goal of resistance training as it relates to a fat loss phase.

The amount of food we eat is going to be significantly less during a diet and this will in turn cause our TEF to be lowered. We can do our best to offset this as much as possible by consuming a diet high in protein with sufficient levels of fibre (vegetable and whole grains) as these along with total food intake are the main contributors to TEF.

Training For Fat Loss

To best dissect training during a fat loss phase we believe it should be split into two categories. These categories being resistance training and cardio and each coming with their own objectives.

Resistance training as it relates to fat loss should be designed with the goal in mind to maximise muscle retention. When we refer to improving body composition the aim is for specifically fat loss, not weight loss. The difference is that weight loss simply refers to a total loss in body mass, no matter where it comes from. This means weight loss doesn’t account for or put in place measures to prevent muscle loss and this is something we want to avoid.

Cardio as it relates to fat loss should be designed to:

1. Help maintain a baseline energy expenditure in order to allow the deficit created by decreased food intake to have an effect or,

2. To work synonymously with decreased food intake to increase the energy deficit.

Resistance Training & Fat Loss

In a fat loss phase, obviously fat loss is our primary goal. But in order to achieve the best body composition possible we want to hold onto our muscle mass, hence why muscle retention becomes a very important secondary goal. When resistance training is combined with a calorie surplus and a sufficient protein intake, we have the 3 key players for effective muscle growth. During a fat loss phase we lose that calorie surplus and therefore expecting significant muscle growth should be out of the question. We can however turn our attention to muscle retention and this is accomplished through resistance training and sufficient protein intakes.

The question is, how do we best organise our resistance training for fat loss?

‘What ever built muscle, keeps muscle’

That’s right! The best place to start is to change nothing at all. The same training principles that helped you build muscle will help you retain it in a deficit. Obviously there are some considerations we need to take into account mainly around fatigue management but if you want to view resistance training in its simplest terms, the least you change the better. What does this likely look like/ what are the current recommendations? In general you’ll be:

• Volume: 10-20 working sets per muscle group per week

• Frequency: Training each muscle group 2-4 times per week

• Intensity: Working with an absolute intensity between 60-85% of 1RM or relative intensity/RIR of 1-4.

Structuring your training around these 3 parameters and progressively overload as adaptions allow and you’re 90% of the way to a productive training program regardless of your net energy position.

In saying all that, there are some considerations that you may need to take into account as a fat loss phase will clearly have it’s own unique set of obstacles to work through. The above is a good starting point for most, but it doesn’t mean there can’t be any flexibility within that framework to better suit a fat loss phase.

Exercise Selection

Fatigue management should be always be an important consideration in your training but during a fat loss phase you have conditions that will likely make it somewhat harder to navigate. On one hand we ideally want to maintain and potentially progress our training volume in order to maintain muscle mass but we also need to account for the decrease in energy intake compared to what we are accustom to. Whilst fatigue accumulation should be expected and is a necessary bi product of training and dieting, too much can lead to things like injury, poor training and low compliance.

Is maintaining our training volumes optimal? Yes, it likely would be we must take into account our limited recuperative abilities. Given training with similar volumes will probably give us the best chance to retain muscle, how can we afford to do it without grossly ignoring the concept of fatigue management. One way we can do this is exercise selection.

When selecting exercises we can look to ones that are highly stimulative of the target muscle but don’t generate the systemic fatigue it’s counterparts do. Muscles respond to stimulus not exercises. Your quads don’t know if they are squatting, leg pressing, lunging or doing leg extensions but they are getting a stimulus from all these exercises.

This is where we come to the stimulus to fatigue ratio which was developed by Mike Istratel of Renaissance Periodisation.

The stimulus to fatigue ratio is the amount of stimulus an exercise provides to the intended muscle in relation to the amount of fatigue it brings to your body. Ideally we move to exercises with a high stimulus and low fatigue cost during a fat loss phase. To determine if an exercise is stimulating you are looking at the following metrics

• Pump

• Mind muscle connection

• Local soreness

If you get a really good pump, have a great mind muscle connection during the movement and have a degree of soreness in the following days then it’s likely a stimulating exercise. You want to try and find exercises that tick the above but don’t induce heaps of fatigue. For example, a deadlift is a common exercise people use to target glutes and hamstrings. Whilst is does provide a good stimulus on these muscles, the systemic fatigue it induces is huge and this may affect the productiveness of subsequent exercises, workouts and your recuperative ability while energy availability is limited. Another proposed exercise to hit your hamstrings and glutes would be RDL’s. The increase in hip flexion moves the glutes and hamstring through a greater ROM with a lighter load, a 2 fold benefit. The fatigue cost of an RDL is much lower than a conventional deadlift for comparatively similar stimulation of target muscles. In its full use, the stimulus to fatigue ratio can be determined numerically (hence ratio) but we believe you can still develop a good understanding of appropriate exercises without this just based off training experience.

Re Organise Your Training Split

From a fatigue management stand point, reorganising your training split and increasing the frequency you train muscle groups may prove beneficial especially in the back end of a fat loss phase. Increasing the frequency doesn’t necessarily have to correlate to more volume. If you take 15 sets weekly sets of quads and divide them into 1 session with 8 sets and 1 session with 7 sets VS 3 sessions with 5 sets, volume remains the same but session frequency increases in the second scenario.

How is this potentially beneficial for training during a fat loss phase?

With the increase in fatigue associated with a fat loss phase we can potentially avoid a drop off in weekly set quality if training frequency for muscle groups increases. Let’s go back to our quads example where you have a total of 15 working sets over the week. Whilst in a surplus your training split may be lower, push, pull, lower and upper. The quad exercises in your first leg day are 4 sets of BB back squat, 3 sets of leg press and 2 sets of leg extension. The second lower day has 3 sets of hack squat and 3 sets of walking lunges. Remember that these exercises will be combined with other glute/ham dominant exercises so your typical lower body sessions likely has 5-8 exercises. In a surplus this is fine. Deep into fat loss phase a leg session starts to become quite a daunting prospect and it’s likely that session quality will begin to tail off as you get further and further into the diet. Instead of 15 good quality quad sets, we may get 10 quality sets and then the other 5 we just float through. Obviously not ideal but we may be able to combat this by re organising training. For example, in the last training block of our fat loss phase where fatigue is at its highest and motivation lowest we might train with a split that looks like full body, full body, full body, full body and upper. In 3 of those full body days we train quads, allocating 5 sets to each session. This is much less daunting than a thought of having to do 8 sets of quads plus our glute and hamstring work in a full lower body day. 5 sets of quads and likely 1 posterior exercise and it’s over for that session. After that you can rest, eat and get ready to go again. Now we have a situation where we are giving ourselves the best chance of 15 quality sets over the week.

It should be noted that some research suggests that reaching around 8 sets and above per session per muscle group is needed for to achieve optimal muscle stimulation within a single session. The reality is that appropriate levels of stimulation can likely be achieved either side of this figure in a range. Therefore just because you don’t reach 8 sets for a particular muscle group it doesn’t mean growth hasn’t been stimulated, there might just be slightly less of it and remember we are likely training that muscle again in quick succession. For example, dropping to 4 hard working sets per session for a muscle group should still be stimulating and allow for this growth.

Fat Loss Workouts and Best Exercises For Fat Loss

Above we stated that:

“Resistance training as it relates to fat loss should be designed with the goal in mind to maintain muscle mass.”

This means that creating a calorie deficit with resistance training should NOT be at the forefront of your mind. Often we see people who are looking to improve body composition switch from a well-designed resistance training program into what something that resembles F45. The training focus switches from muscle stimulation to:

• How many reps/exercises can I cram into this session.

• How exhausted can I make myself within this time.

Whilst there is nothing wrong with this style of training (all forms of exercises are great), we can all agree that for the purpose of hypertrophy and muscle retention it’s not ideal. Muscle hypertrophy has no correlation with how exhausted you can make yourself.

With that being said, the best resistance training for fat loss is the one that best helps you retain muscle mass. Leave the energy deficit to food and a little cardio.

Cardio

Again, as we have stated earlier,

Cardio as it relates to fat loss should be designed to:

1. Help maintain a baseline energy expenditure in order to allow the deficit created by decreased food intake to have an effect or,

2. To work synonymously with decreased food intake to increase the energy deficit.

Unlike resistance training, cardio’s main role is to contribute to the energy deficit. It should be viewed as a tool to at the very least uphold our baseline starting energy expenditure. From there to assist in creating a further deficit where reductions in food intake are already in place. All of this whilst again taking into consideration its role in fatigue.

Cardio Should Work To Compliment Decreased Food Intake Not Replace It

If you try to train or exercise your way to fat loss then you’re in for an unpleasant time. There are generally two ways in which you’ll create your starting energy deficit for a fat loss phase.

• Through an appropriate reduction in energy intake.

• Mostly through a reduction in energy intake and a slight increase in energy output.

After the first initial reduction, the relationship for decreases in food intake or increases in output will be dictated by the individual’s circumstances. Never in my coaching career have I attempted to get someone lean by only increasing energy output without considering food intake. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, creating a deficit through food is much more accurate and measurable than measuring energy expenditure from exercise. Whilst it’s not perfect as we have to account for human error, it’s a hell of a lot more accurate and practical than a treadmill monitor. Second, cardio doesn’t burn as many calories as we might think for the amount of effort we put in. Subjectively we can feel like it’s been a very challenging session but the reality is the number of calories used will be far less than what we’d hoped for. This means that trying to simply train your way to fat loss is a very inefficient way to go about it. You will end up with the required cardio being far beyond what’s maintainable due to time restraints and fatigue accumulation.

So how do we use cardio? If all we do during a fat loss phase is reduce our food intake, there is the potential to be eating very little quite soon. Cardio helps prevent this or at the very least, delay it. Everyone will stall at some stage(s) during their fat loss phase. Whilst we could take 200 calories out straight away, another viable option would be to drop by 100 calories and add 40 mins of cardio into the week. Anyone that has seriously dieted knows the difference 100 calories can make and would happily add 40 minutes of cardio to their week to keep those 100 calories (Note: If can’t add more cardio because you’re at a point where it’s already too high for further increases and calories very low then it’s time to think about ending the fat loss phase).

We can also take a step back and look at cardio as a means to uphold baseline output. Remember above we mentioned that when we create an energy deficit your body will spring into action in an attempt to bridge that gap. One way it does this is through attempting to reduce your NEAT. Essentially you will begin to move less both consciously and subconsciously and this can potentially negate the deficit initially created by food. NEAT is often simply measured by daily steps. So if your coach programs you for a 20 min walk each day in the aim to hit a desired step count, yes it is cardio but the aim is to offset reductions in NEAT from you moving less in other parts of your day.

Type Of Cardio

“Which type of cardio is best for fat loss?”

In general we have two main contenders, these being

• High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)

• Low Intensity Steady State (LISS)

HIIT is characterised by short bursts of maximal effort followed by rest periods. LISS is characterised by longer single bouts of low intensity exercise like walking. When considering which one to choose you need to make a decision based on recovery, enjoyment, energy levels and time.

All training during a fat loss phase will require a fine balancing act. As we have said fatigue is expected and a necessary bi product but if not managed it will commonly result in non-compliance. If time is a not an issue then from experience LIIS would be generally be our recommendation when it comes to cardio. When calorie expenditure is equated, the recovery cost and perception of fatigue will likely be higher from a bout of HIIT training than LISS. Although it requires a longer duration it doesn’t appear to be accompanied with the same fatigue. Further the more intense the cardio, the higher the likelihood we will see a drop in activity for the remainder of the day. For example, you’re much more likely to want to chill out on the coach all day after a 20 minute all out HIIT session as opposed to a 60 minute brisk walk.

As we just touched on, time is another important factor for a cardio. Some people simply won’t have 45 – 60 minutes (sometimes more) in their day on top of everything else to dedicate to LISS. This means a HIIT session or a combination of both will need to suffice.

Arguably the most important is which form you enjoy the most? Fat loss success is largely dictated by our adherence and adherence is made easier if we enjoy what we are doing.

If you take all the above factors into consideration as it relates to choosing a cardio modality then you are well on your way to making a well informed decision.

Conclusion

There you have it! Hopefully this article has answered all your training related questions when it comes to fat loss. In summary

• Resistance training should have the goal of retaining muscle mass during fat loss and therefore it should follow the same principles as if you were in a surplus. What builds muscle, keeps muscle.

• Exercise selection and smart re organisation of our training week can help accommodate for the increased fatigue that comes with being in an energy deficit, while still getting appropriate stimulation.

• Cardio should have the goal of assisting in creating the energy deficit with decreasing energy intake being the primary method. Cardio prescription can also be a means of simply accounting for natural decreases in daily activity.

• LISS and HIIT are both common cardio modalities. Time allowance, fatigue and enjoyment must all be considered when making a decision on which to do.