Aerobic Base Rate Training

lindalee0315

I've been doing a lot of research on this topic and was pretty surprised to learn how low my heart rate should be to build an aerobic base. Basically, according to what I'm reading, this is the zone that will encourage your body to use fat instead of carbs for energy. Building your base over a period of time helps you become more efficient, but it's difficult because most of us (including me) don't have the patience for it. At any rate, here are some links to the most recent articles I've read in case anyone is interested.

http://www.markallenonline.com/maoArticles.aspx?AID=4

http://philmaffetone.com/180formula.cfm

http://www.lifetimefitness.com/magazine/index.cfm?strWebAction=article_detail&intArticleId=640

Azdak

You don't have to do a ton of it--depending on your program, 1 or 2 days is plenty. And yes, it does take patience because it is pretty mindless.

However, don't be confused about the benefits. The primary benefit is endurance, which will enhance all of your exercise efforts, including higher-intensity steady-state or interval work.

The "fat burning" benefits are often misinterpreted. Yes, doing aerobic base training enhances your ability to utilize fat DURING EXERCISE, and that can benefit your overall training effort. However, those changes have no effect on your ability to lower body fat.

It's one of the current paradoxes of fitness science. Even though endurance training improves you body's ability to burn fat, and it increases the percentage of fat burned as fuel during training, over 24 hours, there is no difference in either the percentage of fat burned or total amount of fat burned.

It's the classic case of looking at a "micro" event -- in this case the percentage of fat burned during exercise and the long-term enhancement of the body's fat burning mechanism -- and falsely generalizing those results to a "macro" explanation--i.e. the long-term loss of body fat.

Over the decades the same mistakes have occurred with such concepts as "oxygen debt", "anaerobic threshold", and "lactic acid/muscle fatigue". They all sounded great on paper until we developed the ability to actually test the results--then....oops.

So, do a little endurance training to benefit your overall routine, not because it helps with "fat burning".

lindalee0315

Thanks. I do a lot of exercise-usually between 11-14 hours per week. I had only heard of this through my Spin class and was interested, so I began researching it. I can't imagine getting rid of all my higher intensity workouts, unless I became an endurance athlete, which I am not. I was interested to see if it would make a difference in my running ability, and it has. I've been able to maintain a 10 minute mile without exceeding 150 for 30 minutes, which for me is a big deal.