The afterburn effect

barrattandrew

Hi everyone,

Has anyone come across the afterburn effect or EPOC as I think it is properly known. I'm curios to see if this is all marketing spin or whether anyone has examples of routines that cause it. Everything online seems to be weighed down with marketing rubbish. There is a little bit of info on wikipedia, but I feel with a little bit of knowledge I'd be dangerous!!

Thanks in advance

Andy

drop_it_like_a_squat

If by afterburn you mean that your body tends to burn more calories after you're done with your workout - They say HIIT is causing that effect.

phjorg1

It's a increasing scale thing that is based upon intensity.

Cardio in the 'fat burning' zone won't have much if any impact. And it goes up from there. the more intense, the more afterburn. I know of one study that was an hour of exercise at 70% vo2max that had aprox 30% afterburn over the next day. So it is very much real.

In addition, resistance training can have a slight tissue repair afterburn effect too. burn victims for example have MONSTER caloric demands to rebuild damaged tissue. Like 10x a normal caloric intake if the burn is bad enough. It won't be picked up on oxygen calculators or anything as it's not activity based. But it's very real. The catch is, you need to actually push yourself hard enough to actually damage muscle. And thats something most people just utterly cannot do as they are not near trained enough to push hard. But if you can, it's quite something turning your body into a crazy calorie burning machine.

EvgeniZyntx

Just go play hard.



But if you insist, here is the reference review: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14599232