EPOC

[Lief, one of our clients' has gone from five insulin shots a day down to one. He has been training with us for about four years. His testimonial is on this page.]

Researchers suspect that bursts of intensity during workouts elicit stronger contractions and therefore more glucose uptake in the large muscles attached to bones.

Men in a small study who added short, intense bursts of activity to mini workouts seemed better able to metabolize sugars – from this article The Brief Way to Better Blood Sugar:

When the men were given the equivalent of a meal's worth of glucose at the end of the study, their bodies metabolized it better than before the study.

The interval training in this study was performed on exercise bikes. Interval training can also be incorporating into strength training - perform a series of high intensity strength training exercises will little rest between the exercises.

The Wikipedia definition of EPOC : “Excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC) is a measurably increased rate of oxygen intake following strenuous activity.”

Anaerobic exercise increases EPOC more than aerobic exercise does. Resistance exercise (strength training) is primarily anaerobic. Circuit resistance training produces the largest EPOC response.

From this article The Brief Way to Better Blood Sugar:

Men in a small study who added short, intense bursts of activity to mini workouts seemed better able to metabolize sugars.

When the men were given the equivalent of a meal's worth of glucose at the end of the study, their bodies metabolized it better than before the study.

Researchers suspect that bursts of intensity during workouts elicit stronger contractions and therefore more glucose uptake in the large muscles attached to bones.

The high intensity interval training in this study was performed on exercise bikes. High intensity interval training can also be incorporating into strength training - perform a series of high intensity strength training exercises will little rest between the exercises.

Strength training helps you burn calories four ways:

1. Calories burned after the exercise stops. Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption (EPOC) occurs after the workout. After running your body replenishes sugar stores. Strength training produces a larger post-exercise calorie demand as the body replaces sugar and rebuilds muscle as a result of the micro-trauma that has been imposed on the muscles.

2. Added muscle burns additional calories. Muscle is metabolically expensive to maintain and will require calories 24/7.

3. The workout itself. All forms of exercise burn calories, but not really as much as people think. Those who exercise with lesser intensity will burn less calories that those who exercise with more intensity.

We burn calories four ways. One of the ways is the burning of additional calories after the exercise session is over.

Strength training helps you burn calories four ways:

This New York Times article Well: Can You Get Fit in Six Minutes a Week? asks the question:

The Yahoo article What Chain-Food Favorites Cost in Exercise presents equivalents of how many calories there are in a food item and how much exercise would be needed to burn the calories in that food item.

From this BBC article Lifting weights 'good as running':

“Weight training could be as effective as endurance exercises like running when it comes to burning fat and warding off diabetes, a study suggests”.

And this:

"We've shown that Type II muscle does more than allow you to pick up heavy objects," said Kenneth Walsh. "It's also important in controlling whole-body metabolism."

"If you have these muscles, even when you are not doing much, you are still burning up energy”.

From this article, 75 Percent of U.S. Adults Will Be Overweight by 2015, Study Says:

"The waistlines of Americans continue to grow and a new study estimates that by 2015, 75 percent of adults will be overweight and 41 percent will be obese".

"The percentage of adults in the U.S. that were obese increased from 13 percent in the 1960s to 32 percent in 2004".