Guerrilla Cardio.pdf

Wage war on that ornery abdominal fat

with this militant 4-minute aerobics alternative!

By Senior Science Editor David Kennedy

WARNING: If you are reading this article for sheer amusement and/or you are not the type of per-

son who likes personal challenges, and you’re entirely convinced that creating an ultra-lean, mus-

cular physique is solely contingent on your genetics or “scoring” a supply of some “miracle” fat-

loss supplement, now is the time to turn to the next article. To read any further will only confuse and

frustrate you.

CAUTION: The following program is extremely vigorous and intended for healthy adults, age 18

and over. Please consult a medical or health professional before you begin this regimen.

“The ideal cardio

program would be

just long enough to

‘spark’ your metab-

olism for that

important post-

exercise fat “burn”

but not so long that

it begins to eat

away at your hard-

earned muscle!”

Guerrilla Cardio: Your most pow-

erful weapon for fighting fat

Here’s the problem: You can

develop the best darn set of abs this

side of the big river; but if they’re all

covered up by fat, what’s to show off?

Nothing but a big fat belly, that’s what.

Here’s the solution: Wage war on that

ornery abdominal fat with Guerrilla

Cardio. It’ll “free” your dear abbies

from that prison cell of cellulite faster

than any other cardio program ever

developed.

“So just what is Guerrilla Cardio?”

you ask. Well, it’s an eight-week, mil-

itant aerobics alternative specifically

designed for folks short on time and

“fed up” with abdominal fat—or just

plain body fat in general. The premise

is simple: Rather than waste half your

day lazily plodding along in the so-

called “fat-burning zone” on the

Lifecycle or treadmill, hoping the fat

melts off before you die of boredom,

you radically pick up the pace and

alternate bouts of 20-second maxi-

mum-effort sprinting with 10-second

periods of rest. You do eight of these

gut-busting intervals. And all told,

excluding the warm-up and cool-

down, it’ll take you only four short

minutes a day, three days a week. Yep,

you read right … FOUR lousy minutes

a day, THREE days a week. That’s it!

“C’mon, four minutes!?” you say,

incredulous as Arnold Schwarzen-

egger watching an infomercial for the

Ab Slide. “Bull——!”

I know, I know … in an age when

we’re bombarded by suspect quick-fix

fat-loss strategies—if you can even

call things like thigh creams, “fat-

blockers” and prescription diet pills in

and of themselves “strategies” for los-

ing fat—what I’m proposing is indeed

enough to sound most people’s “BS”

alarm. I mean, four minutes of cardio

a day for ridding yourself of all your

superfluous flesh? It does have a ring

of those “hypish” infomercials for all

different kinds of ab-training devices—

you know, the ones that work so well

you only have to use them three min-

utes a day, and you’ll miraculously

develop rock-hard abs! Right.

The Guerrilla Cardio program, how-

ever, is different. It’s not a gimmick. It’s

not based on blind guesswork or

hype. It’s a real solution based on sci-

entific research as well as real-world

experience. In fact, according to

Japanese researchers, it may be one

of the best possible training plans ever

developed . 4,5 Here’s the deal …

Building a better fat-burning program

Recently, Dr. Izumi Tabata, Ph.D., and

colleagues from the National Institute

of Health & Nutrition in Tokyo, Japan,

set out in search of “the ideal” aerobics

training protocol—one that would most

efficiently increase fat burning and car-

diovascular fitness. Such a plan, the

researchers believed, should be:

High intensity . For years, we’ve

been told that low-effort aerobics is

the best method for burning fat. New

research tells another story. While

studies show high-intensity aerobics

may burn a little less fat than its low-

intensity counterpart during the time

actually spent exercising, the total

expenditure of calories (and fat!) is up

to 50 percent greater with intense car-

dio. 3 You see, most of the fat you burn

with high-intensity cardio occurs after

exercising, not during the workout

itself. Research presented in the jour-

nal Medicine and Science in Sports

and Exercise shows that when you

work out using high-intensity inter-

vals, the total amount of calories your

body burns is elevated up to 142 per-

56 MUSCLE MEDIA October 2001

cent more than low-effort aerobics

within the hour after your workout.

And it doesn’t stop there. Research

published in the journal Metabolism

shows this potent post-exercise

“burn” may persist for up to 48 hours

after exercising. 1

Fitness-promoting. The more fit you

become, the more likely you are to use

fat as fuel for any given activity. Peak fit-

ness is generally defined as having both

a high aerobic and anaerobic capacity.

Your maximum oxygen capacity, or VO 2

peak, is generally considered the best

measure of aerobic fitness. As exercise

intensity increases beyond your VO 2

peak, your body shifts to anaerobic

(without oxygen) energy production. In

the face of this oxygen debt, lactic acid

levels build up in tissues, making your

muscles feel sore. Your ability to con-

tinue exercising at this point is called

anaerobic capacity. Notice that athletes

in sports where a high level of both aer-

obic and anaerobic fitness are neces-

sary (wrestling, basketball, boxing,

speed skating, etc.) are some of the

leanest, most muscular individuals

around. Unfortunately, with most of the

cardio programs offered up today, it’s a

case of “either/or.” You either maxi-

mally stress your aerobic system (like

most slow-go cardio programs) or max-

imally stress your anaerobic system

(like most high-intensity cardio pro-

grams with long rest periods). So

clearly, a cardio program that maximally

improves both aerobic and anaerobic

capacity would be a godsend.

Brief. Too much aerobics burns

muscle! And muscle not only helps

you look leaner and stronger, it also

makes your body more metabolically

active . The ideal cardio program

would be just long enough to “spark”

your metabolism for that important

post-exercise fat “burn” but not so

long that it begins to eat away at your

hard-earned muscle!

In their search for the ideal cardio

program, the Japanese researchers

didn’t have to look far. Interestingly,

just up the road, their countrymen on

the National Speed Skating Team had

been practicing a form of cardio fitting

all of the above attributes for several

years. 2 And using it with astonishing

success, given their individual per-

formances at the most recent Winter

Olympics in Nagano, where Japanese

skaters won gold in the men’s 500

meters, bronze in the men’s 1,000

meters and bronze in the women’s 500

meters. More astonishing yet, per-

haps, might be these athletes’ builds—

www.musclemedia.com 57

muscular, powerful with hardly an

ounce of fat to show for … we’re talk-

ing body-fat percentages in the low- to

mid-single digits. Freaky lean, almost.

By now, you can probably guess

that this “secret” Japanese training

protocol is similar to the one I intro-

duced you to at the beginning of this

article—eight intervals of 20-second

maximum-effort sprinting intermixed

with 10-second periods of rest. That’s

right, four minutes total, excluding the

warm-up and cool-down. Intense …

fitness-promoting … short … and, as

you’ll come to discover, not so sweet.

To test the effectiveness of this brief

but brutally intense regimen, Dr.

Tabata and colleagues pit it against a

moderate-intensity endurance pro-

gram commonly prescribed by advo-

cates of the so-called “fat-burning

zone.” 4

In the moderate-intensity group,

subjects riding exercise cycles were

asked to pedal at 70 percent of VO 2

peak for an hour a day, five days a

week. VO 2 peak and anaerobic capac-

ity were measured before and after

each training session for the duration

of the six-week study.

A second group also exercised five

days per week—only, these folks

weren’t afforded the luxury of pedal-

ing along at such a leisurely pace.

After a short warm-up, this group was

made to carry out eight sets of 20-

second maximum-intensity sprints on

an exercise cycle (170 percent of VO 2

peak—were’ talkin’ intense, folks!)

Putting Guerrilla Cardio to the test

“… 8 very hard 20-second intervals

with 10-second rest periods may be

one of the best possible training pro-

tocols.” 2

—Izumi Tabata, Ph.D., National

Institute of Health & Nutrition,

Tokyo, Japan

58 MUSCLE MEDIA October 2001

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