Does the body adapt to cardio?

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Replies

  • mom23mangos
    mom23mangos Posts: 3,069 Member
    TavistockToad wrote: »
    mom23mangos wrote: »
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    The idea that you have to switch up your cardio routine, or your body adapts and stops burning calories, is a convenient lie fostered by people who want you to keep buying different cardio programs/equipment, and "strength" programs/equipment (quotes because silly high rep cardio circuits, usually), so they keep makng money (lookin' at you, Beachbody).

    Just no.

    What burns calories is work, in pretty much the basic physics sense of the term "work". As you get fitter, you have the ability to do more work per unit time, and burn more calories per minute/hour, if you wish. Or, you can do what you're doing at the same speed/objective-intensity for the same amount of time (and it will burn about the same amount of calories if you're the same body size, but feel easier because you're fitter (so deceptive! ;) ), or you can go longer at the same speed/intensity once fitter, and burn more calories that way.

    There's lots of silly nonsense in blogs and such, and it's reinforced by our (misleading) perceptions. Same (per objective measure) activity at same body weight burns about the same number of calories, regardless of how many years you've been doing it. It just feels easier. There may be truly minor calorie differences because of increased efficiency (by which I mean less wasted motion, not something exotic). Otherwise, same.

    I got my RMR tested at the University of Houston's Sports Medicine lab. The guy that did my testing was a Ph.D. student who was doing his doctoral thesis on metabolic efficiency in long distance runners. He said that is was surprising at just how efficient the body can become in highly trained athletes and from his research they burn way less calories than you would assume from calculations.

    Edit - because I lift and had higher muscle mass my RMR was actually higher than expected from calculations.

    Good job I'm not a highly trained athlete!

    I know, me too!
    NorthCascades wrote: »
    What does "way less" calories mean?

    There is only 5% variation in how efficient people are at turning carbs and fats into mechanical work on a road bike. Among all people, from TDF champions to overweight people who just got off the couch.

    I have no clue. It was just a passing conversation about his research findings as he was measuring me. His tone implied a significant amount, but who knows. I'm sure it is also because of mechanical efficiencies as well as posted by someone earlier.
  • mom23mangos
    mom23mangos Posts: 3,069 Member
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    mom23mangos wrote: »
    TavistockToad wrote: »
    mom23mangos wrote: »
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    The idea that you have to switch up your cardio routine, or your body adapts and stops burning calories, is a convenient lie fostered by people who want you to keep buying different cardio programs/equipment, and "strength" programs/equipment (quotes because silly high rep cardio circuits, usually), so they keep makng money (lookin' at you, Beachbody).

    Just no.

    What burns calories is work, in pretty much the basic physics sense of the term "work". As you get fitter, you have the ability to do more work per unit time, and burn more calories per minute/hour, if you wish. Or, you can do what you're doing at the same speed/objective-intensity for the same amount of time (and it will burn about the same amount of calories if you're the same body size, but feel easier because you're fitter (so deceptive! ;) ), or you can go longer at the same speed/intensity once fitter, and burn more calories that way.

    There's lots of silly nonsense in blogs and such, and it's reinforced by our (misleading) perceptions. Same (per objective measure) activity at same body weight burns about the same number of calories, regardless of how many years you've been doing it. It just feels easier. There may be truly minor calorie differences because of increased efficiency (by which I mean less wasted motion, not something exotic). Otherwise, same.

    I got my RMR tested at the University of Houston's Sports Medicine lab. The guy that did my testing was a Ph.D. student who was doing his doctoral thesis on metabolic efficiency in long distance runners. He said that is was surprising at just how efficient the body can become in highly trained athletes and from his research they burn way less calories than you would assume from calculations.

    Edit - because I lift and had higher muscle mass my RMR was actually higher than expected from calculations.

    Good job I'm not a highly trained athlete!

    I know, me too!
    NorthCascades wrote: »
    What does "way less" calories mean?

    There is only 5% variation in how efficient people are at turning carbs and fats into mechanical work on a road bike. Among all people, from TDF champions to overweight people who just got off the couch.

    I have no clue. It was just a passing conversation about his research findings as he was measuring me. His tone implied a significant amount, but who knows. I'm sure it is also because of mechanical efficiencies as well as posted by someone earlier.

    If he literally said "it was surprising . . . that they burn way less", it wouldn't surprise (heh) me if the effect is still of a fairly moderate absolute magnitude, because finding a statistically signficant difference might be surprising in itself.

    The few elite endurance athletes I've known, and some I've read about, still eat massive amounts of food to fuel their activity level, and they have that increased-muscle-mass thing going on with their RMR, too, in all likelihood.

    Making things up here, if elites are 10% more efficient than normal people doing the same thing, that would probably be "a surprisingly large effect" in a research context, but even if it applied to someone like me once I get really, really good at my cardio of choice (hah!), the calorie burn difference of 30-50 calories per workout would be lost in the noise of other sources of calorie-estimating error on both the CI & CO sides of the equation. When you offset that against the increased calorie expenditure of having the fitness to go harder for the same timespan, or go longer at the same intensity, or whatever, it seems like a difference that doesn't make a practical difference for regular people's lives, even if it's substantially more than 10% difference for the duration of the activity.

    I could totally back that hypothesis. ;)
  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,968 Member
    mom23mangos wrote: »
    TavistockToad wrote: »
    mom23mangos wrote: »
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    The idea that you have to switch up your cardio routine, or your body adapts and stops burning calories, is a convenient lie fostered by people who want you to keep buying different cardio programs/equipment, and "strength" programs/equipment (quotes because silly high rep cardio circuits, usually), so they keep makng money (lookin' at you, Beachbody).

    Just no.

    What burns calories is work, in pretty much the basic physics sense of the term "work". As you get fitter, you have the ability to do more work per unit time, and burn more calories per minute/hour, if you wish. Or, you can do what you're doing at the same speed/objective-intensity for the same amount of time (and it will burn about the same amount of calories if you're the same body size, but feel easier because you're fitter (so deceptive! ;) ), or you can go longer at the same speed/intensity once fitter, and burn more calories that way.

    There's lots of silly nonsense in blogs and such, and it's reinforced by our (misleading) perceptions. Same (per objective measure) activity at same body weight burns about the same number of calories, regardless of how many years you've been doing it. It just feels easier. There may be truly minor calorie differences because of increased efficiency (by which I mean less wasted motion, not something exotic). Otherwise, same.

    I got my RMR tested at the University of Houston's Sports Medicine lab. The guy that did my testing was a Ph.D. student who was doing his doctoral thesis on metabolic efficiency in long distance runners. He said that is was surprising at just how efficient the body can become in highly trained athletes and from his research they burn way less calories than you would assume from calculations.

    Edit - because I lift and had higher muscle mass my RMR was actually higher than expected from calculations.

    Good job I'm not a highly trained athlete!

    I know, me too!
    NorthCascades wrote: »
    What does "way less" calories mean?

    There is only 5% variation in how efficient people are at turning carbs and fats into mechanical work on a road bike. Among all people, from TDF champions to overweight people who just got off the couch.

    I have no clue. It was just a passing conversation about his research findings as he was measuring me. His tone implied a significant amount, but who knows. I'm sure it is also because of mechanical efficiencies as well as posted by someone earlier.

    Somebody who does aerodynamic research for bike racing told me that the difference between zipping your shirt up to the bottom of your neck vs all the way up is surprisingly big. At time trial speeds, it accounts for 10 watts of drag. For context, in a time trial I'm putting out 275 to 300 watts. We're talking about a difference of about 3%, "enough to make me say 'woah!'"

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