Ripped Women

[rah]

I think he's saying that it's more effort than he want to put into it.

[DanS]

I think PH could be in good shape, but still chubby. You don't have to work out 1.5 hours a day to be in good shape, but you might need to work that much in order to lose the chubbiness.

Most of us have lives and being a gym rat would seriously crimp our styles.

[Al B. Sure!]

I think PH could be in good shape, but still chubby. You don't have to work out 1.5 hours a day to be in good shape, but you might need to be in order to lose the chubbiness.

I DanSed you. My final paragraph notes that and notes that PH seems to think a leaner frame will provide him benefit with women... so it may be in his best interest to bust his ass even if it's not for health benefits.

[giblets]

I bet if he was an unemployed man who incessantly obsessed over his health he could get his waistline smaller. I don't understand why PH has such a defeatist mentality.

[DanS]

Al, you're saying a lot of things that are contradictory. But in any event, when you're trying your best to lose weight and get buff, how much time do you spend a day at it?

[Al B. Sure!]

Al, you're saying a lot of things that are contradictory. But in any event, when you're trying your best to lose weight and get buff, how much time do you spend a day at it?

Not as much as you think.

A 3 mile run takes less than 25 minutes for most people and most Crossfit workouts are 30 minutes or less (some are less than 5 minutes).

Intensity is key, not trudging along for hours at a time. You said you bike, but I am pretty sure you could get as good results with half the time spent on the bike if you did whatever the bike equivalent of sprints are.

Or take the Tabata Protocol. Four (4!) freaking minutes of exercise and it has been proven in repeated studies to be more effective than an hour of moderate cardio.

From a New York Times article:

“There was a time when the scientific literature suggested that the only way to achieve endurance was through endurance-type activities,” such as long runs or bike rides or, perhaps, six-hour swims, says Martin Gibala, PhD, chairman of the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. But ongoing research from Gibala’s lab is turning that idea on its head. In one of the group’s recent studies, Gibala and his colleagues had a group of college students, who were healthy but not athletes, ride a stationary bike at a sustainable pace for between 90 and 120 minutes. Another set of students grunted through a series of short, strenuous intervals: 20 to 30 seconds of cycling at the highest intensity the riders could stand. After resting for four minutes, the students pedaled hard again for another 20 to 30 seconds, repeating the cycle four to six times (depending on how much each person could stand), “for a total of two to three minutes of very intense exercise per training session,” Gibala says.

Each of the two groups exercised three times a week. After two weeks, both groups showed almost identical increases in their endurance (as measured in a stationary bicycle time trial), even though the one group had exercised for six to nine minutes per week, and the other about five hours. Additionally, molecular changes that signal increased fitness were evident equally in both groups. “The number and size of the mitochondria within the muscles” of the students had increased significantly, Gibala says, a change that, before this work, had been associated almost exclusively with prolonged endurance training. Since mitochondria enable muscle cells to use oxygen to create energy, “changes in the volume of the mitochondria can have a big impact on endurance performance.” In other words, six minutes or so a week of hard exercise (plus the time spent warming up, cooling down, and resting between the bouts of intense work) had proven to be as good as multiple hours of working out for achieving fitness. The short, intense workouts aided in weight loss, too, although Gibala hadn’t been studying that effect. “The rate of energy expenditure remains higher longer into recovery” after brief, high-intensity exercise than after longer, easier workouts, Gibala says. Other researchers have found that similar, intense, brief sessions of exercise improve cardiac health, even among people with heart disease.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/can-you-get-fit-in-six-minutes-a-week/

The only thing that keeps my workouts long is that I walk a mile to the gym and a mile back (I do often run it, though), and when I run a distance like 3 miles, I walk the full distance back. I try to walk a few miles a day because of the military applications.

[DanS]

I don't think you answered my question.

[Al B. Sure!]

I don't think you answered my question.

It's not a meaningful question. It depends what I'm doing.

I could do tabata sprints and be done in 4 minutes. I could do a pyramid of burpees from 1 to 10 then back down to 1 and spend 15 minutes doing it. I could do sets of single rep deadlifts and spend 30 minutes in the gym but spend almost the entire time resting between sets. I could run 5 miles and take 40+ minutes.

It varies considerably. I'm of the Crossfit mentality and with Crossfit, just as exercise and exercise selection should be variable, so should the time spent doing the exercises.

I would never say, "Okay. I will spent exactly 45 minutes in the gym, no more no less." If that's how any of you approach fitness, there's a problem.

It's about intensity. Not about time spent exercising.

[DanS]

You're such a weasel. Is this some sort of secret? How much time on average do you spend when you're trying to lose weight and be buff? It could be a daily average, weekly average, whatever.

[Darius871]

Well short of virtually starving myself of course. We all tend to have different rates of propensity to burn and store energy. My body is very good at storing it. Great for an ice age. Not so useful at the moment.

Oh what a complete and utter crock of ****. Of course some people have metabolic differences of genetic origin. So what? If you have to eat 90% as much as Alby and exercise 1.5x as much as Alby to accomplish a bod like Alby's, then that's just how it is. The fact remains that somewhere inside you there is a hardbody trying to get out.

If you have simply resigned yourself to the notion that you're too impulsive or too lazy or too busy to become the inner hardbody that nature bestowed upon you, then that'd be a different story. Hell, I'll be the first to admit that I'm all three.

[Ben Kenobi]

You're such a weasel. Is this some sort of secret? How much time on average do you spend when you're trying to lose weight and be buff? It could be a daily average, weekly average, whatever.

It doesn't even need to be high impact. Just walking for a half hour every day will get you there. If you want to be buff, you'll have to do different sets of exercise. Personally buff doesn't really matter to me.

[Provost Harrison]

Oh what a complete and utter crock of ****. Of course some people have metabolic differences of genetic origin. So what? If you have to eat 90% as much as Alby and exercise 1.5x as much as Alby to accomplish a bod like Alby's, then that's just how it is. The fact remains that somewhere inside you there is a hardbody trying to get out.

If you have simply resigned yourself to the notion that you're too impulsive or too lazy or too busy to become the inner hardbody that nature bestowed upon you, then that'd be a different story. Hell, I'll be the first to admit that I'm all three.

Assuming that I am those three is leading you dangerously astray. Hell buddy, I'm not justifying anything I am doing to a jumped up pr*ck like you.

[Provost Harrison]

Whatever, keep giving PH excuses. I already said it's not Sisyphean, even if it's harder for him. Just got to suck it up and work harder.

Swim 3-4km 3 times a week.
Run 10km once a week. Sometimes I will run twice but only swim twice. Quite a lot of walking too, but never really quantify that - that depends on my schedule.

Diet, well Christ knows. I do like to eat, but never snack.

And yeah, before we get carried away, I am not morbidly obese - I hit a certain point very easily and it is impossible to get any thinner. But of course, you think you know it all

[giblets]

Swim 3-4km 3 times a week.
Run 10km once a week. Sometimes I will run twice but only swim twice. Quite a lot of walking too, but never really quantify that - that depends on my schedule.

Diet, well Christ knows. I do like to eat, but never snack.

And yeah, before we get carried away, I am not morbidly obese - I hit a certain point very easily and it is impossible to get any thinner. But of course, you think you know it all

Wow, that sounds like more than Ben's "walk 30 minutes a day" exercise regimen.

[Provost Harrison]

Yeah, slightly Don't get me wrong, I am not unfit by a long shot. Resting heart rate of about 50. And I swim 3km in just over an hour...do a bit more just to round off (and it is easy to get access to swimming wherever you are).

Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention that when I go to the gym for the run, I do quite a lot of weight stuff as well as running 10km takes me about 50 minutes.