Switching up cardio - is it really effective

If you've been doing the same exercise for several months or longer, your body is not burning nearly as many calories as when you started. It has become very efficient at doing it. You also need some resistance training at least twice a week,

Hi all:

So I stalled after a good start in weight loss. Mostly just not sleeping enough and being so tired (and hungry) from work and study that I end up eating slightly more than I should. But anyway..

A fitness dude at a health fair told me that one of the keys to loosing fat is switching up one's cardio routine from time to time. Do one thing for 3 months, then something different. I currently jogg for cardio and have done it for a few years now - the ROI on it is so high - you burn so much in so little time - perfect for me. If I switch to, say, power walking for a while, I will have to add time to compensate for lower intensity. But he got me thinking.

Has anybody heard of this? True/false?

No that is not true. That statement is related to the concept of "muscle confusion" popularized by an infomercial workout program. The idea is marketing gibberish. Varying the training stimulus is important for making continued fitness improvement. However this doesn't mean you have to change activities. Randomly changing activity will more likely lead to FEWER calories burned, not more. That's because you won't be proficient enough at he new activity to push yourself as hard.

Hi OP, sorry to hijack the post, but after reading the responses, I have a follow up question.

I am resistance training and jogging. Does increasing weight in my resistance training add up to increasing/adjusting the level of intensity of my workouts? Or would I need to do something else in addition to that to keep my body from getting bored (reason tells me that increasing weight would challenge my body while building strength and therefore accomplish the same aim as "switching it up" but I'm still a bit of a novice about all of this...)?

Thanks, all!

Hi OP, sorry to hijack the post, but after reading the responses, I have a follow up question.

I am resistance training and jogging. Does increasing weight in my resistance training add up to increasing/adjusting the level of intensity of my workouts? Or would I need to do something else in addition to that to keep my body from getting bored (reason tells me that increasing weight would challenge my body while building strength and therefore accomplish the same aim as "switching it up" but I'm still a bit of a novice about all of this...)?

Thanks, all!

Yes, increasing the weight would be adjusting the level of your workout. You need to increase the weight in order to increase the work load on your muscles and build more muscle mass. You wouldn't want to do the same weight routine, or work the same muscle groups, every single workout, though. You could do an upper/lower body split or do push-pull exercises on alternating days. You could also add yoga or cardio (or other activity of your choice) on non-weight training days.

Thanks all. I will check out intervals and try changing pace when I run. I don't think I will be raising intensity more and more, though. I don't feel that that's right for my body - not 17 any more plus want to stick to something that is sustainable. Guess I will have to watch my food more:(

If you are enjoying running, there is no reason to change it unless you really want to. A lot of runners bring in some form of CT (for you it is Yoga) to engage active recovery. But, if you are doing the same thing day in and day out running then your body will not adapt to become better. Think of it as a cardio version of body building. Body builders don't lift the same weight day in and day out and build muscle and strength that way. They need the added stimuli of more weight to enduce muscle growth.

Same concept with running. If you just stop at the 3 miles 3 times a week, that is what your body will become used to and eventually your body will have adapted as far as it needs to maintain that activity level. The calorie burn drops, and the running just becomes another activity in your every day life. But, if you add different stimuli (hills, intervals, speed sessions, varying long runs) then you are constantly creating some form of stress that your body has to adjust to which means cardio improvement...which in us runner's language means we can run faster or longer in the same period of time so maintaining the average calorie/hr burn.

Training progress may stop, but, if weight stays the same, the calorie expenditure will also stay the same. It does not drop. Over an extended period of time, mechanical efficiency "might" result in a decreased energy demand, but the decrease is not that great. Professional cyclists who ride hundreds of miles per week have only shown a 3%-5% improvement in "mechanical efficiency" over 5 years, so I hardly think the average jogger is going to see much difference in the course of a few weeks.

People constantly confuse training effect with caloric expenditure. Varying the training stimulus is essential for making continued improvement in fitness level and performance. However, varying exercise activity has no independent effect on calorie burn. As I have said before, it will likely decrease calorie burn because the person won't be able to push themselves as hard during the new activity.

The only indirect effect that what you are describing will have is that improved training will increase fitness level, which will in turn allow the exerciser to work at higher workloads and thus burn more calories. However, that is a result of the higher fitness level, not because of "muscle confusion".