Jogging/Sprinting

[alphazeitgeber]

I just started doing jogging for cardio, so I don't know much about it. But I was reading, it sounds like long distance jogging forces your body to "eat" its muscles for fuel, whereas Sprinting uses up fat. Anyone have any good sprinting programs? I tried one tonight, doing a mile, I just sprinted everyother tenth of a mile, so i ended up running hard for half a mile total, and walked the other half (alternating), then i just walked till the rest of my time was up (which is 15 minutes). I guess that should be good for MMA since you have to explode and I don't want to lose any muscle. Later I will build up to sprinting 2/10 of a mile and then walk 2/10 of a mile, alternating that for 1 mile. Any other suggestions or advice?

[Standard]

Your not going to just burn up muscle running LSD man, just doesn't work that way.

What your talking about is HIIT, check the FAQ or do a search and you'll find alot of good material and routines on the matter.

[Bamaispriceless]

This information you talk about seems to be from a bodybuilding.com article. Your body will not burn up muscle doing LSD, but Sprints/HIIT will typically burn more fat than LSD will.

[BayAreaGuy]

Tons of heavyweight boxers do distance running. The man himself Fedor says he runs for 34 minutes everyday for like 5 miles or something. He does that along with Zentsov and Alex.

[tri4ben]

I am not sure what the original poster means, but I will try to break it down.

When you run distance, you burn mostly gycogen (sugars/carbs) and some protein for the first 30 minutes to 90 minutes depending on how trained you are. After that, your glycogen gets depleted and you start burning fats and protein.

Any anerobic exercise that you do burns glycogen while you are doing it. All the machines at the gym that say that you need to exercise in this heartrate zone (usually 130 - 150 bpm) to burn fat are retarded. You need to stay in that zone if you are a marginally trained person because you do not have the lactate threthold to run (exercise) in a higher heartrate zone for an extended period of time.

After you work out, your body need to replace the glycogen in your blood and in your muscles. The more glycogen you burn, the more calories from carbs, proteins and fats you need to replace them.

The more intensely you work out, the faster you burn your glycogen stores. As you get more trained, your body will replace the glycogen faster. You also burn more glycogen per minute and you increase the amount of work your muscles can perform. Sometimes but not always, this leads to bigger muscles, and as a result of your muscles using the calories that you take in, your body cannot also produce the buffer of fat calories that rest inside your skin and as a result you get more cut due to the lower body fat.

There are a lot of people here that will disagree with me here and say that you need to do HIIT training every time that you run and that you get a better benefit than running long distance. For each individual workout, that is true, but as an athlete, you cannot run at that intensity every day or your body will break down over time (over less time if you are not at least marginally trained).

This is a pretty incomplete version of what happens when you work out. Let me know if you want me to recommend a book that explains it better.

[Lopyswine]

my only suggestion would be to do it for longer.

I usually do this:

600meters as fast as I can, not a sprint, more of a fast jog. rest 30 seconds. Repeat 5 times.

Then I sprint 50m. rest 30 seconds. repeat 6 times.

I end up with a little over 2 miles ran at a pretty good pace.


on other days I'll do this:

20 seconds jog, 10 seconds sprint. Continue for 2 - 2.5 miles.

[Tommy Seoul]

You need LSD and HIIT. Both.

[Dan's Knuckles]

LSD will not cause your body to metabolize muscle unless you are really starving yourself. If you are starving yourself, even HIIT will cause you to metabolize Muscle. Tri4ben is mostly correct. Glycogen is stored in your muscles, but you are also burning fat when you are doing cardio. It's important to understand that all energy in muscles come from anaerobic metabolism of stored glycogen, aerobic metabolism of stored glycogen, and aerobic metabolism of stored fats. I have not heard of any research that says with training you replace the glycogen more quickly. With training you will store more glycogen, and your metabolic pathways will become more efficient, you will burn more fat than glycogen, which will shift the lactate curve to the right, so you will be able to go at higher intensities for longer periods of time.
Ignore all "zones" as far as training is concerned. Understand that all stuff like that is a continuum, you at no point stop burning fat and start producing lactate, you are constantly doing both, just to different extents.
Like everybody says, you have to diversify your training. Boxers do roadwork, as do MMA fighters and grapplers, that's long distance. But they also do extremely intense level training.

[tri4ben]

Originally Posted by Dan's Knuckles

Tri4ben is mostly correct.

That is what I was going for.

Although I don't completely agree with what Dan's had to say, if you can understand that you have to do both long distance and interval training to be a superior athlete, I will be happy.

I don't have the patience right now to reseach articles to argue with Dan's, and if I was, I think we would both end up being right. However, I will backpedal here anyway.

When you do long distance running your burn more fat per mile that if you were to sprint, but sprinting burns more total calories per mile because even though you burn about the same amount while exercising, recovery takes more calories if you sprint or run intervals.

[tri4ben]

When you get fitter, you can recover faster. Your body is better able to clear lactate out of your blood so you can go hard again after a shorter rest interval. That is what Dan's means by increasing your lactate threshold or shifting your lactate curve to the right. Your body also processes glycogen into energy faster, and natuarally there is more glycogen to be processed if you are fitter.