Jodi
More exercise is better, RIGHT?
WRONG.
More exercise will not stimulate more growth, it is actually COUNTERPRODUCTIVE!
It will use up more energy; it will use up more metabolic resources; your body will have less time to recover; and your body will have less time to produce the muscular growth that was stimulated by your workout!
Instead, you ONLY need to perform a few movements intensely!
BRIEFER WORKOUTS WILL waste less of your recovery energy and encourage more intense training – since you are less inclined to hold anything back during an exercise when you don’t have to do it for too long. It also keeps your mind stimulated because the training is more interesting and fun rather than just slow boring …!!!
CELLULAR METABOLISM
You’ve likely heard the terms: anaerobic, aerobic and cardiovascular training. If you look at cellular metabolism, whether you’re doing steady-state aerobics or high-intensity work, both proceed to a certain shuttle…where glucose is taken into the cell …through an insulin receptor and you go through glycolysis… [which turns it] into pyruvate.
That pyruvate is then moved into the mitochondria, where it goes through a cycle of chemical reactions. What occurs from glucose to pyruvate is—in the absence of oxygen—the anaerobic metabolism…Then the pyruvate gets moved into the mitochondria, that becomes your aerobic metabolism (which eventually benefits your heart- “cardio”).
But you cannot carry out any aerobic work without doing anaerobic work first. The aerobic cycle cannot even run unless it has the substrate delivered from the anaerobic cycle.
So if you want an aerobic workout, the best way to do it is by delivering that substrate as fast as possible, and that requires high-intensity exercise.
When you do truly hard work, you cycle this anaerobic process really quickly. And the ONLY way to maximally stimulate the aerobic system, is by delivering as much substrate as it can handle. So the extra pyruvate you generate with the intense exercise gets converted into lactic acid.
At the end of a HIT workout, while you are laying on the carpet, what your body is doing taking all this lactic acid and taking it back through the central vein in the liver the liver converts it back to pyruvate, sent through your bloodstream, sent back to the mitochondria, and shuttled through the aerobic cycle. (and for up to many, many hours afterward)
So, while you are lying on the carpet, driving in your car, going back to your job, sitting at your laptop at your desk, you are getting a superior aerobic workout than running on the treadmill for hours. You are now continuously upregulating that aerobic metabolic cycle during your recovery period because you did your workout HARD ENOUGH to matter.
You can see how HIT can prepare your endurance and benefit your heart, more efficiently (short time), effectively, and safely (joint sparing).
Greater Health Less Time
You’re actually getting MORE benefits from high-intensity training, than you do from aerobic/cardio, in a fraction of the time. You can literally be done in about 20 minutes, compared to spending an hour running on the treadmill. The issue isn’t necessarily the running for hours and hours and hours. It’s the modality itself!
(You will never, in nature, see an animal jogging… )
The steady-state activity trains the plasticity out of your physiologic system, and your ability to handle widely varying levels of exertion within a short span of time gets trained away. You actually make yourself less plastic and less adaptable to physical stress, in general.
High-Intensity Exercise Effectively BUILDS & PREVENTS MUSCLE LOSS
High-intensity exercise sequentially recruits all the different types of muscle fibers in your body, predominantly the fast-twitch fibers (which produce a lot of power). Your fast-twitch fibers are largely glycolytic and store a lot of glucose. When these muscles are recruited, it creates the stimulus needed to grow muscle. It enlarges the glucose storage reservoir in the muscle and it enhances your insulin sensitivity.
=>Normalizing your insulin is one of the primary health benefits of our high-intensity exercise.
ON THE OTHER HAND…..doing long, slow, distance-type of exercise recruits the slow-twitch motor units. And those will recover quickly. So rather than moving to the next set of motor units, you’re just recruiting that one group over and over again.
Your fast-twitch fibers actually begin to atrophy!
Aside from losing muscle mass, you’ll also experience earlier onset of loss of insulin sensitivity, which leaves your body open to a cascade of health ramifications, such as metabolic syndrome.
HIIT is More Effective AND Safer Too!
The most important benefit exercise can provide to someone trying to lose fat is not the increase in calories burned during workouts, but the maintenance or increase in muscle mass and metabolic rate. This can only effectively be accomplished with HIIT.
Steady-state activities such as aerobics, running, cycling, swimming, etc. 
do not burn a significant amount of calories, are ineffective for maintaining muscle mass, and can even cause a loss of muscle if performed too long or too often. You are not stimulating the body to produce a response (not training intensely enough), you are interfering with or preventing the body from producing a response (usually by doing more exercise more often than the body is capable of recovering from or by not getting adequate nutrition or rest).
Improvements are greatest when exercise programs combine resistance training and cardiovascular exercise; activating and recruiting the most muscle fibers in a short amount of time at a high level of intensity are the key goals for glycemic control. Performing total body training (complex movements like squat with shoulder press, lunge with bicep curl, and deadlift into upright row) 2-3 times a week at 60-80% effort provides the most effective and optimal glucose clearing and post-glycemic control. And since prediabetes and type 2 diabetes can be reversed with exercise, weight loss, and dietary changes – all things that our system at Palm Beach Fit Body Boot Camp incorporates – our clients are seeing drastic results!
With our creative exercises that are multi-joint and whole-body, you will not only improve insulin sensitivity but you will also build strength, have fun, and get a smokin’ hot body!
References
Jones, Arthur. Nautilus Training Principles, Bulletin No. 1. DeLand, Florida: Nautilus Sports/Medical Industries, 1970
Jones, Arthur. Nautilus Training Principles, Bulletin No. 2. DeLand, Florida: Nautilus Sports/Medical Industries, 1971
Jones, Arthur. Nautilus Training Principles, Bulletin No. 3. DeLand, Florida: Nautilus Sports/Medical Industries, 1973
Maisch B, Baum E, Grimm W. Die Auswirkungen dynamischen Krafttrainings nach dem Nautilus-Prinzip auf kardiozirkulatorische Parameter und Ausdauerleistungsfähigkeit (The effects of resistance training according to the Nautilus principles on cardiocirculatory parameters and endurance). Angenommen vom Fachbereich Humanmedizin der Philipps-Universität Marburg am 11. Dezember 2003
McGuff D, Little J (2009) Body by Science: A Research-Based Program for Strength Training, Bodybuilding, and Complete Fitness in 12 Minutes a Week. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Sigal, R.J., et al. 2007. Effects of aerobic training, resistance training, or both on glycemic control in type 2 diabetes: A randomized trial. Annals of Internal Medicine, 147 (6), 357-69.
Smith D, Bruce-Low, S. Strength Training Methods and The Work of Arthur Jones. Journal of Exercise Physiology Online 2004;7(6): 52-6
