This is not to suggest that everything you do should relate to exercise. Indeed, your life should definitely not only be focused on exercise, because rest is an essential part of being a successful bodybuilder.
There is also a school of thought that maintains that too much aerobic or cardiovascular exercise can increase the production of cortisol, so it is essential that you keep your cardiovascular exercise in the ‘fat burning zone’.
This is one reason why, for a non-competitive bodybuilder, the best time to undertake aerobic exercise is immediately after a weights session.
By doing so, you ensure that the excess glycogen in your body (the first source of energy that your body turns to before it starts to burn the fat) has been exhausted by your weight training before you start exercising. Therefore, as soon as you start aerobic exercise, you are straight into the ‘fat burning zone’ the minute you start.
Remembering that there is a counterbalance between the importance of burning fat and accumulating muscle mass, this ability to start burning fat immediately after a weights session is an excellent way of keeping your body fat percentage to a minimum.
As an approximate formula by which you calculate the point at which you enter the ‘fat burning zone’, use this formula:
FBZ = 220 – (your age) x 0.75
This will give you an approximate idea of how many heartbeats a minute you need to experience in order to start burning fat. Once you are in this ‘zone’, the average male should aim for 5 or 6 aerobic exercise sessions a week for 30 minutes a time, whereas females should be looking at 20-30 minutes the same number of times every week.
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