too high HR- "muscle burning"?
RNChristie33
Posts: 144 Member
Today I had a trainer tell me if my HR got higher than 164 (I'm a 27 yo female) while working out that my body would enter the "muscle burning" zone instead of the "fat burning" zone. I've never ever heard of this. I run, I have a great resting HR of 55-60 bpm but when I'm doing HIIT or sprints, my HR is always in the high 160s or low 170s. I have a hard time understanding that term "muscle burning", and believing that my higher intensity workouts are causing me to destroy my muscle instead of build it. Can anyone shed some light on this idea?
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Nonsense.0
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The trainer is incorrect. Exercising burns calories. More from glycogen than "muscle burning". More than likely the trainer is trained in broscience training.
To actually burn muscle as a source of energy, glycogen would have to be totally depleted from cells (a rare occurrence) and an extreme calorie deficit would usually also accompany this.
Just stick to what you're doing.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
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following.0
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Trainer is full of crap. I can't explain this well enough so I'll let some article try and do so.
http://breakingmuscle.com/health-medicine/understanding-energy-systems-atp-pc-glycolytic-and-oxidative-oh-my0 -
Ridiculous. Get a new trainer0
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I'd also like to add: The "fat burning" zone is a myth as well.
What is true, is when you are at a lower heart rate, the PERCENTAGE of calories you barn from fat is greater than the PERCENTAGE you burn from glycogen. However, as you increase your heart rate, you increase the TOTAL number of calories burned. The PERCENTAGE of calories you burn from fat decreases, but since you are burning more calories in total, you end up burning more fat in total.
Your body will not, for the most part, feed off of your muscles unless you completely deplete your glycogen stores (possible in an hour or more), you do not feed your body during your workout, and you are training at an intensity where your body cannot convert fat to glycogen fast enough to feed your muscles.
If I were you, I'd get a new trainer. The one you are talking to doesn't know Jack about heart rate zones.
More evidence that you don't need an education to be a personal trainer.0 -
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Awesome, thanks for the replies. Definitely was feeling pretty skeptical when she said that.. She isn't my trainer, I just joined a new gym and they have free training consults. I was looking to get a little more structure into my free weight training so I signed myself up but without getting long winded, the hour I spent with her was a complete waste of time.0
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RNChristie33 wrote: »Awesome, thanks for the replies. Definitely was feeling pretty skeptical when she said that.. She isn't my trainer, I just joined a new gym and they have free training consults. I was looking to get a little more structure into my free weight training so I signed myself up but without getting long winded, the hour I spent with her was a complete waste of time.
Send her a bill for your time ... $90 an hour sounds about right.0 -
To actually burn muscle as a source of energy, glycogen would have to be totally depleted from cells (a rare occurrence) and an extreme calorie deficit would usually also accompany this.
Actually, the body doesn't wait until the gas tank is empty to switch on gluconeogenesis, the process of burning muscle as fuel. It happens each morning before breakfast (triggered by high morning cortisol) and increases if you exercise then.. especially at higher intensities:In humans, as hepatic glycogen stores are reduced during fasting, glucose production (GP) is maintained by an increased contribution of gluconeogenesis... Compared with rest, increases in GP were sustained by 92 and 135% increments in [gluconeogenesis] during moderate- and hard-intensity exercises, respectively.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8755648
So exercising at a high HR could be called a "muscle burning zone" if you're in a fasted state. Granted, it's not a huge amount of muscle lost, but it's still not a favorable state for an athlete to train in.. in my opinion.
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The trainer is incorrect. Exercising burns calories. More from glycogen than "muscle burning". More than likely the trainer is trained in broscience training.
To actually burn muscle as a source of energy, glycogen would have to be totally depleted from cells (a rare occurrence) and an extreme calorie deficit would usually also accompany this.
Just stick to what you're doing.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
I am still going with this.
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Cherimoose wrote: »To actually burn muscle as a source of energy, glycogen would have to be totally depleted from cells (a rare occurrence) and an extreme calorie deficit would usually also accompany this.
Actually, the body doesn't wait until the gas tank is empty to switch on gluconeogenesis, the process of burning muscle as fuel. It happens each morning before breakfast (triggered by high morning cortisol) and increases if you exercise then.. especially at higher intensities:In humans, as hepatic glycogen stores are reduced during fasting, glucose production (GP) is maintained by an increased contribution of gluconeogenesis... Compared with rest, increases in GP were sustained by 92 and 135% increments in [gluconeogenesis] during moderate- and hard-intensity exercises, respectively.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8755648
So exercising at a high HR could be called a "muscle burning zone" if you're in a fasted state. Granted, it's not a huge amount of muscle lost, but it's still not a favorable state for an athlete to train in.. in my opinion.
So the "fat burning zone" is a myth, but not the "muscle burning zone"?
Same concept, different substrate. Can't have it both ways.
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RNChristie33 wrote: »Today I had a trainer tell me if my HR got higher than 164 (I'm a 27 yo female) while working out that my body would enter the "muscle burning" zone instead of the "fat burning" zone. I've never ever heard of this. I run, I have a great resting HR of 55-60 bpm but when I'm doing HIIT or sprints, my HR is always in the high 160s or low 170s. I have a hard time understanding that term "muscle burning", and believing that my higher intensity workouts are causing me to destroy my muscle instead of build it. Can anyone shed some light on this idea?
There is no limit on how far faddist "trainers" will go to jump on the anti-cardio bandwagon.
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More proof that someone calling themselves a trainer means nothing. How many years of secondary education does this person have? What is their degree? Or do they only have a online certificate?0
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Cherimoose wrote: »Actually, the body doesn't wait until the gas tank is empty to switch on gluconeogenesis, the process of burning muscle as fuel. It happens each morning before breakfast (triggered by high morning cortisol) and increases if you exercise then.. especially at higher intensities:In humans, as hepatic glycogen stores are reduced during fasting, glucose production (GP) is maintained by an increased contribution of gluconeogenesis... Compared with rest, increases in GP were sustained by 92 and 135% increments in [gluconeogenesis] during moderate- and hard-intensity exercises, respectively.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8755648
So exercising at a high HR could be called a "muscle burning zone" if you're in a fasted state. Granted, it's not a huge amount of muscle lost, but it's still not a favorable state for an athlete to train in.. in my opinion.
So the "fat burning zone" is a myth, but not the "muscle burning zone"?
The way the trainer explained it, the "muscle burning zone" is a myth. But like with most broscience, there's a grain of truth in it. Muscle burning does commonly happen, and while it's usually an insignificant amount, some people, like athletes & bodybuilders, may wish to be aware of which factors increase the amount of muscle burned (length of time since last meal, and exercise intensity & duration).
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I don't think yr going to burn muscle. If yr really concerned, have a protein shake before your workout. I seem to have more energy/feel better by doing this.0
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RNChristie33 wrote: »Today I had a trainer tell me if my HR got higher than 164 (I'm a 27 yo female) while working out that my body would enter the "muscle burning" zone instead of the "fat burning" zone.
Um....what?!?
Training at 164 HR (or higher during HIIT) seems very reasonable for someone in your age group. Keep doing cardio- in my experience your far more likely to gain muscle than lose it.0 -
You know...science is always changing with each new "study" and somebody, somewhere probably published something that said something like what the trainer repeated but maybe she misunderstood it, or repeated it verbatim. Here's another viewpoint on that...
http://www.builtlean.com/2013/04/01/fat-burning-zone-myth/
I will say at some point I probably spouted off lots of info regarding the "fat burning zone" back in the day as I've been teaching Spin for a decade and there was a lot of research on the subject.
I think in extreme cases if someone exercises at high intensity for long periods repeatedly without refueling properly, their body could start using muscle for fuel. I personally lived that scenario in my wayward youth but it was because of ridiculous amounts of high intensity cardio every day with no lifting, no rest and not a lot of calories, nor quality calories. Skinny fat was the result of that in case you are wondering.
Maybe that's what she was trying to articulate??0 -
False, false, false! Your trainer is just trying to secure his job! My resting hr is 52 and my max is 195 when I do HIIT my rest time is 165 Hr and my 30sec-1min work time my HR is 190-192 that's fat burning not muscle! Similar specs to you as well im 27.0
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Negative...hopefully he might of misspoke although there are people that were and still are trained to think this way, but its rubbish.0
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RNChristie33 wrote: »Awesome, thanks for the replies. Definitely was feeling pretty skeptical when she said that.. She isn't my trainer, I just joined a new gym and they have free training consults. I was looking to get a little more structure into my free weight training so I signed myself up but without getting long winded, the hour I spent with her was a complete waste of time.
Apart from being utter nonsense, how can your trainer know your maximum heart rate? The usual equations often don't work for women as (I only read that, not sure if true!) many have somewhat smaller hearts that need to beat faster. Many women have a much higher heart rate than the usual 220-your age as I noticed from spinning classes with the heart rate projected to a wall. That equation would bring me to 179bpm. Yet my maximum heartrate is around 205, maybe even a little bit higher. See the problem?0 -
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RNChristie33 wrote: »Today I had a trainer tell me if my HR got higher than 164 (I'm a 27 yo female) while working out that my body would enter the "muscle burning" zone instead of the "fat burning" zone. I've never ever heard of this. I run, I have a great resting HR of 55-60 bpm but when I'm doing HIIT or sprints, my HR is always in the high 160s or low 170s. I have a hard time understanding that term "muscle burning", and believing that my higher intensity workouts are causing me to destroy my muscle instead of build it. Can anyone shed some light on this idea?
There is no limit on how far faddist "trainers" will go to jump on the anti-cardio bandwagon.losingitseattle wrote: »You know...science is always changing with each new "study" and somebody, somewhere probably published something that said something like what the trainer repeated but maybe she misunderstood it, or repeated it verbatim. Here's another viewpoint on that...
http://www.builtlean.com/2013/04/01/fat-burning-zone-myth/
I will say at some point I probably spouted off lots of info regarding the "fat burning zone" back in the day as I've been teaching Spin for a decade and there was a lot of research on the subject.
I think in extreme cases if someone exercises at high intensity for long periods repeatedly without refueling properly, their body could start using muscle for fuel. I personally lived that scenario in my wayward youth but it was because of ridiculous amounts of high intensity cardio every day with no lifting, no rest and not a lot of calories, nor quality calories. Skinny fat was the result of that in case you are wondering.
Maybe that's what she was trying to articulate??
I think she was basing her comments on research that shows that with extended exercise at threshold intensities, amino acids
can make up as much as 15% of fuel substrate used. In the average cardio workout, AA use is negligible, but 10-15 years ago, research showed a higher use of AAs during the workouts described above.
As often happens, the research was misunderstood by some, and overgeneralized. As with the "fat burning" idea, it is a common mistake to assume that acute, transient responses to exercise during a workout represent permanent alterations in body composition. As long as protein intake is sufficient, there is no evidence I know of suggesting that using AAs during exercise has any significant effect on "muscle".0 -
Cherimoose wrote: »To actually burn muscle as a source of energy, glycogen would have to be totally depleted from cells (a rare occurrence) and an extreme calorie deficit would usually also accompany this.
Actually, the body doesn't wait until the gas tank is empty to switch on gluconeogenesis, the process of burning muscle as fuel. It happens each morning before breakfast (triggered by high morning cortisol) and increases if you exercise then.. especially at higher intensities:In humans, as hepatic glycogen stores are reduced during fasting, glucose production (GP) is maintained by an increased contribution of gluconeogenesis... Compared with rest, increases in GP were sustained by 92 and 135% increments in [gluconeogenesis] during moderate- and hard-intensity exercises, respectively.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8755648
So exercising at a high HR could be called a "muscle burning zone" if you're in a fasted state. Granted, it's not a huge amount of muscle lost, but it's still not a favorable state for an athlete to train in.. in my opinion.
^
Have you trainer trade in his training certification for a garbage man certification.0
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