his site:
http://www.maxwellsc.com/

Ten Reasons Why I Don't Do Aerobics

By Steve Maxwell

I spend my days at a corporate gym. It's a sweet gig and a temporary livelihood.

One morning, while observing a female member endlessly running the treadmill-to-nowhere-fast, I realized I see the same people returning day after day, iPods silently blaring or, worse, mindlessly captivated by one of the ten wall-mounted television screens, while grinding away on those steppers and treadmills.

The drudgery of their Sisyphean tasks compels their attempts to lose self-awareness by inundating themselves with external stimuli. Often, their bodies reflect this lack of self-awareness in skewed gaits and other imbalances.

These same people come in religiously to get the feel-good fix, believing somehow their mindless, movement addiction is in some way benefiting them. Interestingly, they stay fat, show no progress, and sometimes even get fatter, especially after holidays. Most of these people are loathe to touch a weight, much less engage in any kind of productive strength-training. You see this same phenomenon in gyms all over the country.

Some will say, "Well, some exercise is better than none,"

But I say, if you're going to spend the time, why not produce something worthwhile?
Here are ten reasons why I don't do aerobic exercise:

But first, what is aerobic exercise? Any steady state locomotion elevating the heart rate into the zone for twenty minutes or more. The zone is determined by formulas based on age and resting heart rate.

Now, ten reasons why it not only doesn’t work but is a poor use of exercise time:

1.

Oxidative Stress
Which causes a breakdown of tissues. It also predisposes one to cancer and heart attack.
2.

Elevated cortisol production
Which causes a breakdown of muscle tissue and increases fat storage or depot fat. People do aerobics to alleviate stress yet end up creating more stress.
3.

Lowered testosterone and HGH levels
For men, aerobics are a form of chemical castration. Low T-levels are associated with lowered libido, depression, anxiety, increased body fat and decreased muscle tissue. This contributes to muscle-wasting and lowers the basal metabolic rate.
4.

Increased appetite and a tendency toward binge eating patterns
Aerobic exercise makes people hungry!
5.

Excessive Muscular Fatigue
Making it difficult to do other more productive forms of activity. Aerobics creates muscular weakness.
6.

Conversion of fast-twitch muscle fibers to slow-twitch
The loss of fast-twitch muscle fibers contributes to aging and the loss of explosive power and speed. People become slower and slower.
7.

Burns a relatively small amount of calories vs. the time spent
One large meal completely offsets the pitiful amount of calories burned in an hour aerobics session.
8.

Overuse injuries to the feet, ankles, and knees from excessive, continual force transmitted throughout the body
This is exacerbated by over-engineered running shoes which cushion the feet in such a way to create a neural amnesia.
9.

Shortening i.e., deformation, of the muscle tissue from repetitive mid-range (partial range) movements
This creates inflexibility, immobility, and muscle imbalances. Besides being tight, the bodies postural alignment becomes compromised. Aerobics create tight, inflexible bodies that are in chronic pain.
10.

Adrenal burnout
A consequence of the “feel good” neurotransmitters which also stimulate the release of adrenaline. Adrenaline is the fight or flight hormone. Excessive adrenaline creates an addictive response and people going routinely for the so called “high” of running end up with adrenal burnout, e.g., chronic fatigue and depression.

Dr. Kenneth Cooper, the father of aerobic exercise (and the person who coined the term) completely recanted his assertions regarding aerobic exercise. After observing a disproportionate number of his aerobic-enthusiast friends die of cancer and heart disease, he reversed his ideas on the benefits of excessive aerobic exercise. He now claims anything in excess of 20 minutes has greatly diminishing returns. In fact, he's now an advocate of scientific weight training.

In strength and health,

Steve Maxwell

hmmm.

It's well known that you don't burn that many calories as opposed to just taking a brisk walk; however it greatly increases the body's ability to absorb and deal with sugar, thereby significantly decreasing insulin resistance (A precurser to diabetes and a TON of other things).

I've never seen a person who regular exercises who hasn't benefited from it both in stamina, overall happiness, and the looks department.

I know when I incorporate a regular exercise routine to include aerobic activity, I feel much happier within about 2 short weeks. I just find the article to be a bit misleading. It seems to state that aerobic activity is unhealthy.

here's another

http://www.marksdailyappl...nst-cardio/

A Case Against Cardio (from a former mileage king)
We all know that we need to exercise to be healthy.

Unfortunately, the popular wisdom of the past 40 years – that we would all be better off doing 45 minutes to an hour a day of intense aerobic activity – has created a generation of overtrained, underfit, immune-compromised exerholics. Hate to say it, but we weren’t meant to aerobicize at the chronic and sustained high intensities that so many people choose to do these days. The results are almost always unimpressive. Ever wonder why years of “Spin” classes, endless treadmill sessions and interminable hours on the “elliptical” have done nothing much to shed those extra pounds and really tone the butt?

Don’t worry. There’s a reason why the current methods fail, and when you understand why, you’ll see that there’s an easier, more effective – and fun – way to burn fat, build or preserve lean muscle and maintain optimal health. The information is all there in the primal DNA blueprint, but in order to get the most from your exercise experience, first you need to understand the way we evolved and then build your exercise program around that blueprint.

anotherone

Like most people, I used to think that rigorous aerobic activity was one of the main keys to staying healthy – and that the more mileage you could accumulate (at the highest intensity), the better. During my 20+ years as a competitive endurance athlete, I logged tens of thousands of training miles running and on the bike with the assumption that, in addition to becoming fit enough to race successfully at a national class level, I was also doing my cardiovascular system and the rest of my body a big healthy favor.

Being the type A that I am, I read Ken Cooper’s seminal 1968 book Aerobics and celebrated the idea that you got to award yourself “points” for time spent at a high heart rate. The more points, the healthier your cardiovascular system would become. Based on that notion, I should have been one of the healthiest people on the planet.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t – and that same mindset has kept millions of other health-conscious, nirvana-seeking exercisers stuck in a similar rut for almost 40 years. It’s time to get your head out of the sand and take advantage of your true DNA destiny, folks!

The first signal I had that something was wrong was when I developed debilitating osteoarthritis in my ankles…at age 28. This was soon coupled with chronic hip tendonitis and nagging recurrent upper respiratory tract infections. In retrospect, it is clear now that my carbohydrate-fueled high-intensity aerobic lifestyle was promoting a dangerous level of continuous systemic inflammation, was severely suppressing other parts of my immune system and the increased oxidative damage was generally tearing apart my precious muscle and joint tissue.

The stress of high intensity training was also leaving me soaking in my own internal cortisol (stress hormone) bath. It wasn’t so clear to me at the time exactly what was happening – in fact it was quite confusing, since I was doing so much of this so-called “healthy” aerobic exercise – but I had no choice but to give up racing, unable to train at anywhere near the intensity required to stay at an elite level.

To make ends meet…

…I became a “personal trainer” and I refocused my attention on training average “non-athletic” people to achieve reasonable levels of general fitness and health. Of course, we lifted weights as part of the overall plan (and I will go into greater detail on that important aspect of fitness in a later post), but for the aerobic component of their training, I started doing long walks or hikes or easy bike rides with them. My many clients got the benefit of me actually working out right along side them and I got the benefit of 3 to 5 hours a day of very low intensity aerobic work (well, very low for me anyway). It was refreshing and really didn’t take much effort on my part, but I knew I had to be deriving at least some small benefit from those hours.

Since I didn’t have much time left in the week for my own workouts, once or twice a week I would do a very short but very intense workout for my own benefit, usually sprints at the track or “hill repeats” of 2-3 minutes each on the bike. Lo and behold, within a year, my injuries were healing, I was rarely sick and I was even back to occasionally racing – faster than ever. Something “primal” was happening and it made total sense in the context of the DNA blueprint. I was training like my hunter-gatherer ancestors, building my aerobic capacity slowly and steadily without overstressing my adrenals or my immune system, training my body to derive more energy from fats (and not glucose), requiring far fewer carbohydrate calories from my diet, and building muscle with occasional quick bursts of speed and intensity. I was suddenly both fit AND healthy. My Primal Health system was kicking in and it all made perfect sense.

Humans, like all mammals, evolved two primary energy systems that powered the skeletal muscles of our hunter-gatherer ancestors 40,000 years ago and that would keep us all well-powered the same way today, if we weren’t so bent on circumventing them with our ill-fated (literally) lifestyle choices.

anotherone

The first energy system relied heavily on the slow burning of fats, keeping us fueled while we were at rest or sleeping, yet also allowing for continuous or intermittent low levels of aerobic activity (think of our ancestors walking across the savannah for hours foraging for roots, shoots, berries, grubs, insects and the occasional small animal). It makes sense. Fats are very efficient fuels that are stored easily in the fat cells and burn easily and cleanly when lots of oxygen is present (as when we are breathing normally). Even if there’s no food in the immediate area, a well-trained fat-burning hunter-gatherer could continue walking and foraging for days without compromising his or her health or efficiency.

The second major energy system we developed through evolution was an ATP-fueled system that allowed for intense loads of work to be done in very brief bursts (think of our hunter-gatherer ancestors sprinting to the safety of a tree to avoid being eaten by a lion). ATP is always sitting right there within the muscle cells, available in a split second, and it is the highest octane fuel we have. In fact, it’s ATP and adrenaline that allow the little old lady to lift the front end of the Ford Fairlane off her husband when the jack fails. Unfortunately, the muscles can only store about 20 seconds worth of this precious fuel to complete life-or-death tasks. If our ancestors survived that quick sprint to safety, their ATP reserves were filled again within minutes using the other energy systems.

Furthermore, that brief burst of intense energy sparked a small “growth spurt” in the muscle, making it even stronger for the next encounter with the next lion – a true survival adaptation.

(Note: While our energy systems are actually quite complex, varied and interrelated, I have simplified things here to make it easier to “digest”.)

Bottom line: Fats and ATP were the two primary energy sources for locomotion: we either moved slowly and steadily or “fight or flight” fast, and we became stronger and healthier the more we used only those energy systems.

But here’s the real take-home message for us: We did not evolve to rely heavily on a carbodydrate-fueled energy system, and yet, carbohydrate metabolism seems to rule our lives today. Yes, carbohydrate (in the form of glucose) can play a major role in the production of energy in skeletal muscle, but it turns out that the heart and skeletal muscle prefer fatty acids (fat) as fuel over glucose.

Our hunter-gatherer ancestors didn’t regularly ramp their heart rates up for over an hour a day like so many of us do now. Even when the concept of organized hunting came along, it would appear that our hunter-gatherer ancestors relied more on superior tracking ability (using our highly evolved and exceptionally large brains) and walking (using our superior fat-burning systems), rather than on actually “chasing down” their prey. In fact, squandering valuable energy reserves (and increasing carbohydrate metabolism by a factor of ten) by running hard for long periods of time was so counterproductive it would have likely hastened your demise (imagine chasing some game animal for a few hours and – oops – not succeeding in killing it. You’ve spent an incredible amount of energy, yet now you have no food to replace that energy. You have suddenly become some other animals prey because you are physically exhausted).

So, what does all that mean for us in the 21st century seeking to maximize our health and fitness?

Well, we know that this current popular high intensity aerobic pursuit is a dead-end. It requires huge amounts carbohydrate (sugar) to sustain, it promotes hyperinsulinemia (overproduction of insulin), increases oxidative damage (the production of free radicals) by a factor of 10 or 20 times normal, and generates high levels of the stress hormone cortisol in many people, leaving them susceptible to infection, injury, loss of bone density and depletion of lean muscle tissue – while encouraging their bodies to deposit fat. Far from that healthy pursuit we all assumed it was! What, then, is the answer?

Knowing what we know about our hunter-gatherer ancestors and the DNA blueprint, we would ideally devise an aerobics plan that would have us walking or hiking several hours a day to maximize our true fat-burning systems and then doing intermittent “life or death” sprints every few days to generate those growth spurts that create stronger, leaner muscle.

However, since allocating a few hours a day to this pursuit is impractical for most people, we can still create a plan that has a fair amount of low level aerobic movement, such as walking briskly, hiking, cycling at a moderate pace, etc a few times a week and keep it at under an hour. Then, we can add a few intense “interval” sessions, where we literally sprint (or cycle or do anything intensely) for 20, 30 or 40 seconds at a time all out, and do this once or twice a week.

If you are willing to try this new approach, but haven’t sprinted for a while, you may want to ease into it. Start with maybe three or four the first time, resting two minutes in between and, after a few weeks of doing this, work your way up to a workout that includes six or eight all-out sprints after a brief warm-up. An easy few minutes of stretching afterwards and you’ve done more in less time than you could ever accomplish in a typical “80-85% Max Heart Rate” cardio” workout. That’s exactly type of the plan I do myself and that I give all of my trainees now.

Let’s recap:

The benefits of low level aerobic work (walking, hiking, cycling, swimming):
- increases capillary network (blood vessels that supply the muscle cells with fuel and oxygen)
- increases muscle mitochondria
- increases production of fat-burning and fat-transporting enzymes
- more fun, because you can talk with a partner while doing it

The benefits of interval training (sprinting in short intense bursts)
- increases muscle fiber strength
- increases aerobic capacity (work ability)
- increases muscle mitochondria (the main energy production center in muscle)
- increases insulin sensitivity
- increases natural growth hormone production

The costs of chronic (repetitious) mid- and high-level aerobic work
- requires large amounts of dietary carbohydrates (SUGAR)
- decreases efficient fat metabolism
- increases stress hormone cortisol
- increases systemic inflammation
- increases oxidative damage (free radical production)
- boring!

I started reading that, but the guy writes like he swallowed a thesaurus. Just spit it out, dude - there's nothing worse than someone trying to look smarter than he is with a bunch of SAT words.

That said, I'm not a fan of mindless cardio, either. I prefer to do a mix of stuff that I actually enjoy doing - riding my bike for an hour here, swimming for a half hour there, playing a walking round of golf (rather than riding a cart).

I'm not thin (and never will be). But my weight is stable, my blood pressure was 108/64 at my last physical, and I'm not burned out on exercise (as I was in my aerobics-intensive days 10 years ago).

[Edited 6/4/10 4:30am]

AWESOME.

People used to ask me why I lift weights and don't do any running or aerobic exercise, and my standard smart-ass answer was, "When the fighting starts, I might need a few things but the ability to run away isn't one of them".

But seriously, I always figured that I got plenty of aerobic exercise in my workout. They last about 1.5 hours and I don't rest more than 90 seconds between sets, so my heart rate is constantly elevated. Especially when I do legs. I still don't know why doing lunges increases my heart rate so much. Especially since I do in-place lunges, and don't lunge around the gym.

I also think that the repetitive jolts a long aerobic workout puts on your lower body joints and your back can't be good for those of us on the other side of 50. I quit running several years ago because I could feel the toll it was taking on my knees and back.

Great info, Bboy. It makes me feel good that my strategy has been right, at least for me.

I've read articles like this before, but I've never heard that cardio LOWERS testosterone. That confuses me.

Efan said:

I've read articles like this before, but I've never heard that cardio LOWERS testosterone. That confuses me.

Cardio is a "depleter" - just burns and burns and burns. And (in general), cardio bunnies don't give their bodies enough time to recover between sessions.

I find some of this confusing. I mean look at soccer players (football-for the rest of the world). I mean one game is intense cardio. They don't look like they are depleted.

there are more weight machines than cardio in every gym ive ever been too. all of my workouts centered around resistance work- on the mat and even while doing incline walking on the treadmill i've hammered weights.

the only thing i can think of are the classes-like step-tae bo-etc....

kewlschool said:

I find some of this confusing. I mean look at soccer players (football-for the rest of the world). I mean one game is intense cardio. They don't look like they are depleted.

Wellllll...you can't really know you're depleted until it happens. Can you? What is the average retirement age of a world class soccer player?

That said, we're not talking about elite athletes. We're talking about average people who've been told that the road to fitness is paved with cardio, cardio and more cardio. They hit that road - and then, one day around their 40 birthday, wake up with pain in their knees...pain in their hips...pain in their lower back. And, at that point, the damage has already been done.

kewlschool said:

I find some of this confusing. I mean look at soccer players (football-for the rest of the world). I mean one game is intense cardio. They don't look like they are depleted.

you mean those young fit men that seem to be keeling over from unexplainable and undiagnosed heart disease at an alarming rate, often on the field?

Genesia said:

I started reading that, but the guy writes like he swallowed a thesaurus. Just spit it out, dude - there's nothing worse than someone trying to look smarter than he is with a bunch of SAT words.

Co-sign. This sentence did it for me: "The drudgery of their Sisyphean tasks compels their attempts to lose self-awareness by inundating themselves with external stimuli."

PunkMistress said:

Genesia said:

I started reading that, but the guy writes like he swallowed a thesaurus. Just spit it out, dude - there's nothing worse than someone trying to look smarter than he is with a bunch of SAT words.

Co-sign. This sentence did it for me: "The drudgery of their Sisyphean tasks compels their attempts to lose self-awareness by inundating themselves with external stimuli."

That sentence actually triggered my gag reflex.

Those seem like side effects that would occur with extreme amounts of cardio: marathon runners, cross country runners, etc. I don't think the average person has to worry about those side effects. Also, what may harm one person may be of no concern to another. There are some people who can run mile after mile everyday and have no problems.

It's about what works the best for you. I just try to keep it balanced. Lift some weights. Do some cardio.

[Edited 6/4/10 13:22pm]

Genesia said:

PunkMistress said:

Co-sign. This sentence did it for me: "The drudgery of their Sisyphean tasks compels their attempts to lose self-awareness by inundating themselves with external stimuli."

That sentence actually triggered my gag reflex.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who was thinking "get to the point already!"

Shawnt27 said:

Those seem like side effects that would occur with extreme amounts of cardio: marathon runners, cross country runners, etc. I don't think the average person has to worry about those side effects. Also, what may harm one person may be of no concern to another. There are some people who can run mile after mile everyday and have no problems.

It's about what works the best for you. I just try to keep it balanced. Lift some weights. Do some cardio.

[Edited 6/4/10 13:22pm]

I totally agre with this.

I keep it balanced by eating a lot of food, then I make sure to rest by lying down on the couch.

PunkMistress said:

Shawnt27 said:

Those seem like side effects that would occur with extreme amounts of cardio: marathon runners, cross country runners, etc. I don't think the average person has to worry about those side effects. Also, what may harm one person may be of no concern to another. There are some people who can run mile after mile everyday and have no problems.

It's about what works the best for you. I just try to keep it balanced. Lift some weights. Do some cardio.

[Edited 6/4/10 13:22pm]

I totally agre with this.

I keep it balanced by eating a lot of food, then I make sure to rest by lying down on the couch.

I like to lift scrap metal and carry around logs. Then I eat salted fish.

Very interesting. I think I KNEW muscle was a better thing to work on than cardio, but I was always hung up on cardio because I'm a chunk. Everyone says, cardio burns fat and calories, and that's what I needed.

But if I ever really KICKED up my cardio, my fat ass would be raiding the kitchen.

Also, when I ever picked up some intense weight training, my appetite was more manageable, and the weight was not only "easier" to take off, but it was easier to recover from a weekend or vacation binge. It was like the muscle helped burn my calories even as I was NOT working out.

Makes sense, but I guess I have been programmed to think that cardio is most important.

Now that I think of it, that P90X shit I bought really works because there is more emphasis on building muscle and only doing cardio 2 days out of the week.

hmmmmmmmm.

PunkMistress said:

Shawnt27 said:

Those seem like side effects that would occur with extreme amounts of cardio: marathon runners, cross country runners, etc. I don't think the average person has to worry about those side effects. Also, what may harm one person may be of no concern to another. There are some people who can run mile after mile everyday and have no problems.

It's about what works the best for you. I just try to keep it balanced. Lift some weights. Do some cardio.

[Edited 6/4/10 13:22pm]

I totally agre with this.

I keep it balanced by eating a lot of food, then I make sure to rest by lying down on the couch.