Body fat percentage

Ask anybody – from your doctor to your green grocer – and they will recite the ‘rules’ of burning fat:
you need to perform endurance exercise for at least 20mins maintaining your heart rate in the ‘fat burning zone’ yada yada yada. They will also throw in the word ‘fit’ with the implication that it means the same thing as ‘lean’. But it doesn’t.

‘Fit’ is about being able to function ‘normally’ for a human. Its not about being lean.

‘Fat burning’ is about a technical, biochemical process whereby fatty acids provide temporary energy needs to your cells. We all burn fat; regularly. Even fat people do. That you are burning fat from time to time does not mean you will wind up with lower bodyfat over time.

‘Body composition’ is concerned with the quantities of tissues that a body is made up of. Specifically, it is concerned with the quantities of fat mass and lean mass (muscle). Body Composition is your concern when you talk about wanting less fat, more muscle or both.

‘Lean’ (ie low in bodyfat) is a synonym for ‘muscular’. Both refer to having a body composition low in bodyfat. Having low bodyfat means having a high lean-mass (muscle) percentage. Even if you don’t like the idea of being ‘muscly’, low bodyfat is still a step in that direction and is what you must train for.

So in order to achieve low bodyfat, you must train for muscularity. A muscles mass relates to its maximal force output; ie strength! So to have low bodyfat requires the greatest strength possible for your bodyweight. And yet it is guaranteed that you will not achieve this through endurance (“fat burning”) exercise.

For low bodyfat, the trick is to get as strong as possible while following a meticulously measured diet to avoid gaining body weight. A ‘healthy’ but random eating plan will not do. And a starvation or low calorie diet will prevent you ever getting strong. You need food; but you need consistent quantities of the right foods.(Im reading the Paleo Diet right now)

Such a delicate balance between food and exercise requires maximally efficient exercise; not maximal quantities of exercise. You don’t want to ‘burn calories’; you want to train your body to be strong. With limited resources you need your training to direct your calories toward muscle thereby directing them away from fat.

Efficient strength exercise means low volumes of extremely heavy weight training – using the hardest, heaviest exercises such as squats and deadlifts – and pushing every set to true muscular ‘failure’ (as opposed to emotional failure). Both food and training complement one another to achieve a single measured outcome: your body composition goal.

So is endurance fitness even related to body composition? Do finite periods of ‘burning fat’ actually have any bearing on how lean a person is? The answer is NO!

In most instances endurance exercise will have a negative NET effect on body composition because you just don’t need a strong, muscular body to do low effort, high duration movement. Not only is it unnecessary; its unwise!

To sum it up I don’t do long 5 mile runs!