[I offer the photo of the 58-year-old me not
to say “Dig me” so much as “Dig what is possible with remarkably little perceived
effort.” For the whole skinny, read on.]
When
you want to lose fat, move more, but don't train more.
Yeah, I hear ya, sounds like a paradox, or at the very
least a Zen Koan that is more intended to confound than impart wisdom.
But I sure you the opening statement is truth.
A verified scientific fact.
One known by the Old School Boxers, Wrestlers, Combination
Men, Rough n Tumblers of yore.
Little ado is made of “cardio” in 18th and
19th century thought and yet we wind up with staggering feats of
endurance in treacherous environments with little [if any] “dedicated training.”
We see enviable lean and mean physiques in early physical
culturists decades before the advent of anabolic “helpers” hell, not even a
scoop of creatine in sight.
Often the assumption is that these early hellions
simply trained harder and longer but…the record does not bear that out.
A careful examination of these feats of “in the field”
endurance or designated “gym” strength training seen without the bias of 21st-century
hindsight that attempts to “explain” what was through the lens of “What we
know now” reveals a tale that is in stark contrast to how we train for
strength, leanness and fat loss now.
The Current Formula
21st Century Athlete wishes to get
stronger, faster, and lose body fat.
So…
·
Gym time is put in.
·
Often copious time with hard CrossFit
style sessions.
·
If the mirror or the needle on the scale
does not provide us with what we want, the prescription is to double down on
effort, time and intensity.
And yet, often, that mirror and scale still don’t
quite deliver what we would like considering the effort input.
So, what’s going on?
We’ll get to that, but first…
The Old School Formula
Our Old School Athlete, Boxer, Wrestler, Combination
Fighter, Apache Scout wishes to be stronger, faster, leaner and meaner.
So they…
·
Engage in short duration intense effort
and then stop.
·
They go live life.
·
That’s it.
Well, actually there is more to it than that, see
these two historical essays for background.
Men That Gave Jack Dempsey Pause & An
Education
Dempsey’s Falling Step, Battle-Axes &
“The Enemy Line”
The key being the final bit of the Old School Formula “Go
Live Life” was at a time when life required more movement.
Be that…
·
Foot travel
·
Carrying milk from the barn
·
Garden Work
·
Dancing at this Saturday Night’s Hoedown
·
And the myriad attendant movements required
of a job of old.
·
Be it lumberjacking or housewife, more movement
was required of ANY standard task then—be that movement high or low grade,
movement was required.
Often, today, the only real movement outside of our “training”
is from car to house, from car to store, from couch to phone.
Not much else.
Let’s examine this in light of today’s Unleaded
Conditioning Tip.
Unleaded Conditioning Tip #15
When you want to lose fat, move more, but
don't train more.
The paradox resolves itself when we realize that short
intense training sessions raise our cortisol profile [our stress hormone] so
that we can respond to the effort.
One we are out of the effort requirement we want to
keep cortisol as low as possible as it is catabolic, that is, “muscle eating.”
[BTW-Your heart is a muscle, don’t keep stressing yourself over time be it training
or simply empty thought stressors.]
The Old School Prescription says go back to living
your life, which was one of assumed movement where activity continued but not
at a training level that required elevated cortisol.
Keeping cortisol elevated eats into the strength, muscle
aesthetic gains you are working for and counteracts the “fat burning” process.
When you cut calories, your body has a
lower capacity to recover from hard training.
When you keep cortisol elevated, as when
adding more training sessions or lengthening sessions, fat loss halts or slows
greatly.
Old School thought states, “Burn white hot for that
short duration of the training” and then allow low-grade activity/effort to
do the rest of the fat loss/leaning magic.
What we now call NEAT [Non-Exercise Thermogenesis.]
Old School thought would burn intensely as we do in 20–30-minute
Unleaded Sessions and then leave it to chores or Warrior Walking to keep
the furnace stoked.
Once one adopts this Old School Wisdom one can revel
in the ease of leaning and fat loss, get chores done, as a matter of fact see
chores as yet another opportunity to prime the pump.
I for one, have been living this Old School way for 8
going on 9 years now.
I have, in essence, never worked less hard to get
solid results—aesthetic and performative.
For more on the Old School
Way to get results historically accurate and backed by science see our Unleaded Conditioning Programs available at our store.
Volumes currently available:
Available Volumes in The Unleaded Program
·
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·
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·
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·
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·
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·
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·
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·
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·
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·
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·
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·
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·
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·
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·
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·
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·
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If you dug this consider browsing the blog for thousands
of pages of like material.
Or try our podcast Mark Hatmaker: Rough n Tumble Raconteur.
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