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CST® for Fat Loss
Posted by: Adam on Apr 15, 2007 - 07:04 PM
3614 Reads
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A recurring question on the forums, and which I hear from clients and athletes as a coach, is that of affecting change in body composition. Some wish to put on muscle, but the majority are preoccupied with loosing fat. As you may know, CST is a health first system, so when addressing the question of fat loss we must do it from the perspective of our health. We must first ask ourselves, is this a healthy goal? And the answer, as with most things, is relative. As we know, excess body fat is an indicator for increased risk of certain diseases. It is also an important factor in self image, which carries a whole host of emotional factors which can affect health. Excess weight will also affect the health of our joints and hinder our capacity to fully enjoy and profit from our daily lives. So, if you are carrying extra fat, the answer to our question is probably yes. But if you are already at what would be considered an optimal body fat percentage in the context of health, and you do not have a specific performance related reason for losing more body fat, you may need to delve deeper into your reasons for wanting to lose more fat. This is not to say unequivocally that it would not be healthy.
Step 1 - State of Mind
Once you have determined whether your weight loss goal is a healthy one, and that may require the consultation of a health care professional, you need to go about attaining that goal in a way which honors your health. One of the most important first steps may be to address your mindset. It is important to frame your fat loss in the right context. If we aim to shift our diet progressively towards healthier choices, and guide our exercise habits towards sustainable, efficient and effective methods, the end result will be lost body fat. The places in which that fat comes off first, the way our muscles develop and show themselves as that fat comes off and the overall look of our bodies will be determined largely by our genetic dispositions and will be the result of our striving for increased health, mobility, function and attributes. In other words, we should not start with a picture in our minds of how we want to look. We can't all be magazine cover models. But we can all take our genetic potential to its edge using good nutrition and exercise.
Step 2 - The Transformative Power of Nutrition
That brings us to our next bridge. One of the biggest mistakes I see people making in trying to achieve a lean physique is attempting to exercise their way into "shape." The approach may seem to make sense. Eat the same amount and type of food, but exercise more to tip the calorie balance. It may even work for a while, until your overtraining catches up with you and you get injured, and gain all that fat back from inactivity. Or your chronic overtraining forces your body to protect itself by actually hoarding fat instead of releasing it for consumption. And on top of that, the idea of calorie balance (calories in vs calories out) is actually an over-simplistic view of body composition control. The quality and quantity of what you put in goes a long way towards determining what happens once it gets in your body. The point is that, hands down, the MOST important factor in your body composition is your nutrition, not your exercise. For an excellent primer on CST compliant eating habits, visit this thread: Circular Strength Training®® Nutritional Guidelines. It may also be helpful to visit the Diet, Nutrition, Biochemical Addiction Recovery section of the forums, where you will find a number of interesting threads on training the body to preferentially burn fat over carbohydrates. And now it bears repeating one last time, you cannot exercise your way to fat loss, at least not in a sustainable and healthy way. You must first achieve health first nutrition, then you can proceed to appropriate training, geared towards fat loss but respectful above all of our health.
Step 3 - Now We Can Finally Get Moving
If you are carrying excess fat, you get your nutrition right, and you follow any training regimen which follows the tenets of CST, it is more than likely that you will naturally begin to shed body fat. However, there are also tactics which we can use to accelerate the process if we have determined that fat loss is our premier health-first goal. There are various approaches to this summit, but which is the best route? Again, the answer is relative to the situation. First, everyone will come into this endeavor with pre-existing conditions which must be addressed. These should be tackled actively through our Intu-Flow®® and Prasara practice, but they must also be respected in the crafting of our fat loss Training Hierarchy Pyramid™. So although running may be the "go-to" exercise when someone begins to think about losing fat, it may not be a great choice if you have significant joint issues to address.
If you do have clearance from your health care professional to embark on a running program, it is indeed one of the most efficient calorie burning exercises in terms of calories burned per minute. I highly suggest that if you have any intention of adding running to your training arsenal that you consult the RMAX Powered Running DVD, co-authored by Coach Joseph Wilson and Coach Scott Sonnon (RMAX Store). With that as a base, we can look at how and when to run in order to garner the most efficiently effective fat loss.
Running Down Fat
In the Companion Text to the RMAX Powered Running DVD, Coach Wilson makes a case for fasted running in the morning, and it is a compelling one. It is worth examining the advantages of fasted running for fat loss. None of this is perfectly proven, but the theories are compelling and the advantages seem to outweigh any disadvantages, especially since we are looking at health first fitness and not bodybuilding, where muscle loss becomes an issue. Exercising in a fasted state has the potential of taking advantage of a naturally lower level of insulin in the blood, which means that another substance called cyclic AMP is less likely to be degraded by insulin. This element is responsible for breaking down glycogen and stored fat, which can then be released into the blood stream as fuel, and since we are in the midst of exercising, those free fatty acids will be used up instead of being reabsorbed and stored once again as fat. Furthermore, during the night, due to the extremely low activity levels and to a dump of hGH soon after hitting deep sleep, we use predominantly fatty acids as fuel during our sleep. This means that fatty acids are being freed into the bloodstream and that it is logical that there would be an abundant supply of them upon awakening. Rather than allowing them to be reabsorbed into fat cells, early morning exercise allows us to preferentially burn this fuel. But here we need to make an important distinction. Running, or any exercise, at too high an intensity will begin to bypass fat breakdown and oxygenation as a fuel source and the body will start to preferentially use stored carbohydrates. Therefore, low to moderate exercise, in the range of 60% VO2 max or in the range of a Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) of 5-6, would be more likely to fully take advantage of the aforementioned advantages to fasted running. Finally, it is noteworthy that running is not the only option for this type of fasted exercise. For example, FlowFit™™ performed at an RPE in the range of 5-6 for an extended period of time would nicely achieve similar results while taking us through all the 6 degrees of freedom in human movement.
Or You Can Always HIIT the Fat
Another option explored by Coach Wilson is High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), which is an excellent alternative to the Long Slow Distance approach we discussed regarding fasted running. But we just discussed how low to moderate exercise seems to have the most chance of directly tapping fat as a fuel source. So the idea of HIIT for fat loss may seem confusing. After all, high intensity bouts will target the ATP-PC and the Glycolytic energy systems, which means tapping ATP, PC and glycogen. Where is the fat burning? First of all, training in high intensity bursts requires an enormous amount of calories. Interval training also has been shown to raise your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR) for up to 24 hours post training, which means your body is using up more calories than usual. And on top of that, both during that post training RMR boost, and during the rest pauses of the training itself, fat seems to be the preferential fuel source. So you are burning more calories and the body seems to want to get them from fat!
And although running is an excellent delivery system for HIIT, and Coach Wilson details amazing programs using running, it is not the only way to train in intervals. Clubbells and Prasara Body-Flow exercises can all be arranged in an interval training format and can be melded to attend to progressing attribute development throughout a THP™. The 4x7 protocol is an excellent example of one way in which Clubbell®® Athletics and Prasara can be focused in on similar energy system work as HIIT.
One Step At A Time, But Keeping Moving Forward
And another important component which is worked into the 4x7 approach is Incremental Progression. With weight loss, as with anything, if you want to continue to create adaptations, you need to continually, but incrementally, progress your training. If you do not, you will stagnate. For example, at 175 lbs, your body will need a given load and duration of exercise to lose fat (given your nutrition is nailed). At 170 lbs, that same load and duration may only be sufficient for homeostasis (keeping your weight consistent). If the same thing does work for a long time, the chances are that you started out at way too high an intensity and took the risk of over training and injury. In fact, this is why many people drop out of exercise programs! You are better to start at Optimal or potentially Toughness level training and progress various elements as you go in order to remain in the fat reduction parameters that you need. Among common variables which can be manipulated to progress are volume, intensity and load. What is often forgotten, and is held dear by CST, are the elements of sophistication and density. Through sophistication, exercises can become increasingly more complex, or exercises can be melded together to make more complex exercises which consequently are more demanding physiologically, thus keeping us in our fat loss parameters. Density refers to the amount of time in which we do the work. By compressing rest time, as in the 4x7 protocol or in a Density Cycle™, the sum total of the work done becomes more dense and taxes the system to a higher degree, much in the way we explored in discussing HIIT. By incrementally increasing density we avoid over training while constantly maintaining our training effect.
You Don't Have To Step To Your Own Tune - Ask For Help
So there you have it. If you want to lose fat you need to start with appropriate nutrition. Then adopt the mindset of healthful adaptation to training stress in lieu of starting from a body image perspective. Then build a Training Hierarchy Pyramid taking your own particular issues into account, using strategies that are likely to accelerate fat loss, and making sure that you intuitively assess your progress and build in incremental progression as needed. There are a wealth of resources available from RMAX International to help you with this endeavor (RMAX Store). I also highly suggest that you consult with a certified CST Instructor or Coach in order to ensure the safest, fastest and most efficiently effective progress.
If you would like to know more about how coaching can help you to meet your goals, whether for performance or body composition, I invite you to visit me at my website and leave a question in the FAQ secion or contact me be email.
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