CrossFit Rx

“Why the Treadmill is Not Your Friend”

By CrossFit Flathead

BIGFORK – With Christmas just around the corner, we are all beginning to focus on friends, family, food and shopping. But lurking behind all that is the dreaded New Year’s Resolution list. 

Every year across America, the most common resolution is to lose weight and “get in shape.” Hundreds of thousands of people sign up at their local gyms, dust off the iPod and hurl themselves at every open treadmill, elliptical machine or stair climber. Each week, these well-intentioned folks dedicate hours to walking or jogging while listening to music, watching television or reading their favorite magazine. 

Unfortunately, the resolution’s resolve begins to drop off much faster than the extra pounds. 

Why isn’t the weight coming off? How can I spend hours jogging on a treadmill but shoveling my driveway leaves me breathless? Does getting in shape really require hours of tedious exercise? The answer is deceptively simple. The weight stops coming off because the traditional approach to long hours on a treadmill rarely works, and low-intensity aerobic activities do very little when it comes to actual fitness. 

Not sure if that is true? A quick test will reveal a startling truth. Compare the world’s greatest marathon runners with the world’s fastest sprinters. The sprinter is by far the more well-rounded athlete. Because sprinters utilize high-intensity, anaerobic training techniques, they are lean, strong athletes. A sprinter’s body can adapt to an endurance setting much easier than a marathoner can adapt to real-world fitness demands such as shoveling snow, hiking in the Jewel Basin or serving as a volunteer firefighter. 

Anaerobic activity is really the key to weight loss and fitness. The notion that only aerobic conditioning at low heart rates is the key to burning fat is a total myth. Anaerobic activity not only benefits cardiovascular function, but it is also a superior method to burning fat and requires much less time each day. Instead of spending an hour on a treadmill, spend 20 minutes in anaerobic workout. Anaerobic activity is unique in its capacity to improve power, speed and strength in ways that aerobic activities can not match.

This is why the CrossFit methodology is vastly superior for those truly seeking to “get fit.” Put a dedicated CrossFitter up against a pro cyclist in a snow shoveling competition, and the CrossFitter will dominate. Neither athlete trains to shovel snow, so why does the CrossFit enthusiast win? Because CrossFit’s workouts better model functional activities that all of us use in our daily lives. Think about it – a circuit of wall ball shots, lunges and deadlifts at max heart rate better matches more real-world activities than does cycling at any heart rate.

So we know anaerobic exercise produces greater fitness results, but how does that translate to that top goal of weight loss?

Our bodies are incredibly adaptive. The traditional (and, might I add, boring) model of cardio exercise may initially cause the body to shed some weight, but the low intensity requires very little adaptation within us. After a couple of weeks, that hour on the treadmill will begin to produce ever-decreasing results. Your body’s metabolism simply grows accustomed to an activity that never changes or stresses it. A couple hours after stepping off the treadmill, your body has regulated itself back down to a pre-workout state.

Constantly varied, functional and anaerobic workouts prescribed by the CrossFit model allow the body no such chance for laziness. The workouts cause your body’s metabolism to spike and remain charged up throughout the day, which burns much more fat. And because CrossFit promotes muscle growth instead of wasting it away on cardio, you gain some muscle mass. Muscle requires the body to burn more calories each day than fat. 

Are you starting to see the trend? If you want to really lose weight, get fit and have fun, you must get off the treadmill!