EPO-whaaa?

Today I want to talk about a little thing called EPOC! This little word is otherwise known as Exercise Post Oxygen Consumption. So what does that mean? When you exercise you create an oxygen debt... This oxygen debt will increase as exercise intensity increases. Your body needs more oxygen, so you start to huff and puff to deliver that much needed oxygen to working muscles (through the blood stream of course). OK now that we have that, let's plug it into the big picture. Think about a long distance run, or the girl at the gym lifting 3lb dumbbells. Are they breathing hard? N to tha O!!! Now, think about 100m sprints, or carrying ALL your groceries in the house at once. When you are finished, your breathing is shallow, your muscles burn a little bit, and depending on how hard your worked, you may be gasping for air. So do that several times over, and you have continually created an oxygen debt that you body must catch up to in order to return to normal. (EPOC from Med and EX in Sports Science ) Brief breakdown, they tested female subjects at either low intensity or high intensity for two sets of resistance exercises. They then took a whole host of tests post training on each of the groups to measure EPOC. Those that trained with higher intensity had greater EPOC, therefore continued to burn calories after the exercse session was over! So let me get to my point... stop slugging around! If you are gonna go to the gym, add some intensity to your workout! Push a little harder, breathe hard!! If you do, you'll continue to burn after you have left the gym...if you don't, great news is you still burned calories, and you are much better off than if you didn't go!!