60 minute weight loss

[smeeagain]

Taking into consideration time for getting changed, warm up/diwn, shower etc, i can set aside 60 mins of work time on my C2, six days per week.

What are my best options/sessions to do for weight loss in the allocated time?

Smee

[hjs]

Just row, don,t waist time, nothing fancy is needed, just make meters, the more the better.

Food is still nmbr 1, no training can undo crap eating.

[Gammmmo]

Simple...find out the fastest you can row the 60mins consistently each day i.e. the maximum amount of load you can handle. The caveat to this is if you make ANYTHING too hard you'll likely not stick with it...play the long game for weight loss AND make it fun as the weight loss should be a side benefit. This second point is what I tell people when they want to get fit or lose weight - choose something active you really enjoy first and foremost.

[Ombrax]

Other folks will be different, but for me doing the same 60 minute steady row,day in, day out, would drive me bonkers in no time.

I agree that rowing as fast as possible for 60 minutes is surely the best was to burn as many calories as possible, but how long can you keep on doing that? A week? Two weeks? A month?

And as mentioned above, when it comes to loosing weight you get much greater bang for your buck controlling the food you eat. I won't bother going into the keto vs whatever diets, but if you want to loose weight, then reducing the input number of calories is much more efficient than burning more calories. IMO the best thing is to find the mix of both that works well for you.

Good Luck

[smeeagain]

Thanks guys. Im on top of the diet, having lost 19 lbs already since Jan 1st pretty much exclusively from diet and not that much exercise. I did 60 mins rowing last night . However, I could not maintain that pace day in day out as I was pushing it, but can easily scale it back.

As a former rower, rowing 60 mins a day doesn't faze me at all but I can see why it wouldn't work for others. I just wanted to check that I was better rowing continuously for 60 mins rather than doing say 2 mins on/off for the hour (or indeed any other variant of time/rest)

I should add that Im not going to row 60 mins every day week in week out, month in month out, and will change it and shake it up at some point, but just want to focus on fat loss for now and associated side befits such as getting fitter along the way

Is there an ideal hr rate/heart rate percentage I should be seeking out to make it a manageable level that I can row at each and every day?

Smee

[lindsayh]

I should add that Im not going to row 60 mins every day week in week out, month in month out, and will change it and shake it up at some point, but just want to focus on fat loss for now and associated side befits such as getting fitter along the way Is there an ideal hr rate/heart rate percentage I should be seeking out to make it a manageable level that I can row at each and every day? Smee

Smee my understanding is that weight loss occurs best if you are training in the zone where the body is burning fat for energy and that by and large this is at about 70-80% of Heart rate reserve (HRR). If you go harder and really push then the benefits are less rather than more. Long steady meters are best and the training effect is much the same whether it is one long piece or break it up like 8'/2'R or say 13/2'R - I do that to make it easier in my head and you can vary it a little.
you need to know your real MaxHR (not the formula) and your resting HR (say when really rested or just awake) Then do MHR - RHR = HRR then take 80% of that and add back the RHR and that is your cap.
there is a lot of material in the weight loss sub forum here of course
have you seen this:
https://indoorsportservices.co.uk/training/guide
There is a whole section on weight loss programmes

[smeeagain]

Thanks I will go and look at the HR- the info on the indoor sport services is fairly basic - top level stuff. some of the stuff is specific and good but there is an article there about weight loss without losing strength. Read the article by Tom Kay (who i raced many years ago and always got beaten by!) - he literally tells you nothing of any relevance or importance in the article.

Far more decent info on this forum and I will keep digging around

R

[jackarabit]

Fatburning associated with UT2 hr zone (55-70% HRR+RHR) in this table from Indoor Sports Services Interactive Programmes:
Thoughts?

[JerekKruger]

Greg of Quantified Rowing wrote a blog post about fat burning which might be interesting. It uses power rather than heart rate and you'd need an idea of your 2k power but for me at least the pace equates to high end UT2 to low end UT1.

Note however that this only considers fat burning during exercise. There's always a residual increase in metabolic rate after exercising and how large and how long this lasts is very likely affected by exercise intensity.

All that said, I think Henry's got it right: diet's by far the biggest factor in weight loss and as far as how to spend your hour: don't overthink it, just get in the metres.

[kini62]

Exercising at a HR that burns fat is a myth. Unless you're going to be doing it for an extended amount of time.

All you're doing is burning calories. All of it is glucose (sugar). During extended periods of low aerobic work the body starts using fat to convert to glucose as the glucose in the muscles starts to get low. This takes a LONG time.

Just burn as many calories as you can in the time you have and watch your diet. Plodding along at a low heart rate for hours on end is just a waste of time. 20 minutes of HIIT will burn more calories than an hour at a "fat burning" pace. It will also be more beneficial as well.

[Ombrax]

Exercising at a HR that burns fat is a myth. Unless you're going to be doing it for an extended amount of time.

All you're doing is burning calories. All of it is glucose (sugar). During extended periods of low aerobic work the body starts using fat to convert to glucose as the glucose in the muscles starts to get low. This takes a LONG time.

Just burn as many calories as you can in the time you have and watch your diet. Plodding along at a low heart rate for hours on end is just a waste of time. 20 minutes of HIIT will burn more calories than an hour at a "fat burning" pace. It will also be more beneficial as well.

I've always suspected this (that there is no "magic" HR range that preferentially helps you burn fat compared to some higher range) but have never seen it stated this unequivocally. Plus, there's so much out there about that magic range, you end up believing it.

Not being an expert, I have no idea what's true and what isn't, but I assume others will respond and hopefully we'll have links to official references that will sort this all out.

[Carl Watts]

Rowing has not really helped me loose weight, rather maintain some muscle mass and my current weight for years.

I found that time in the pool was better, I think you know your going to loose weight when you finish and your really, really hungry straight after. About 120minutes in the pool doing 60 lengths of the 50m with fins made me really hungry.

Probably it comes down to controlling the heart rate, rowing always takes me up the bands and its almost impossible to stay in UT2. Typically the rowing suppresses my appetite straight after but you feel the need to drink but the hunger generally doesn't kick in until the next day.

60min of any physical activity keeping the heartrate low will work if your over weight.

When I was younger, nothing came close to jogging. Just 38min a day for 3 days a week and the weight just fell off, lost like 10Kg in 3 months but jogging is really hard work if your really overweight so you need to walk until you shift enough to start running..

[Dangerscouse]

In my experience steady sessions at circa 140-145 HR really worked for me, but that might also be due to the length of the sessions i.e. 2 hours and above. HIIT didn't ever make much difference when I used to do it years ago.

If I was you I'd incorporate both fast and slow sessions, using time targets and HR limits. That will make it more interesting too

[JerekKruger]

Exercising at a HR that burns fat is a myth. Unless you're going to be doing it for an extended amount of time.

The paper reviewed in the link I gave above suggests otherwise, although it's not clear how long the participants were exercising for (the paper is behind a paywall with no institutional login so I can't find out either) so depending on what your definition of an extended amount of time is, they may have been doing so.

That said, what is true is that in calorie terms you're going to have to do a lot of exercise to have much of an impact. If I do an hour of steady state rowing I burn around 900 calories (according to the machine). If half of that is fat that's 450 calories of fat which, at 9 calories per gram, is 50g of fat. That might not sound too bad if you're losing it every day, but in reality your body will replace that fairly easily through diet.

During extended periods of low aerobic work the body starts using fat to convert to glucose as the glucose in the muscles starts to get low.

Muscles can use fatty acids as a fuel source directly. They do not need to be converted to glucose. Indeed improved fatty acid metabolism is one of the adaptations to endurance training and it's important since fatty acid metabolism doesn't produce lactate. Hence, if you can increase the proportion of your energy coming from fatty acid metabolism, even by a small percentage, you decrease the rate of build up of lactate allowing yourself to go faster and/or for longer.

[jackarabit]

Muscles can use fatty acids as a fuel source directly. They do not need to be converted to glucose. Indeed improved fatty acid metabolism is one of the adaptations to endurance training and it's important since fatty acid metabolism doesn't produce lactate. Hence, if you can increase the proportion of your energy coming from fatty acid metabolism, even by a small percentage, you decrease the rate of build up of lactate allowing yourself to go faster and/or for longer.

The pre-condition for adaptation to (stored) fat as fuel source is? Fasting? Starvation (prolonged fasting)? Limiting dietary carbohydrate?

And the best reason to optimize fat burning is? To lose weight? To increase endurance by controlling cellular chemistry?

And the best exercise intensity to optimize (quantized) fat burning is? Dogtrot all day? Run six miles? Sprint to refrigerator?