Being into fitness for any length of time, you will have probably heard someone ask, "How many calories does that burn?" On the surface, it seems like a fairly straightforward question! People exercise to lose weight all the time, and a LOT of fitness programs advertise how many calories per hour their workouts are guaranteed to burn. It seems like the more calories are burned, the more effective a workout might be.
Losing weight is a fairly straightforward equation. If you have more energy going OUT of a system than is coming IN to a system, the system is less overall. So, it serves to reason that the more output that a person does the better. This often goes hand-in-hand with dieting (which is, essentially, modifying the intake to bring in fewer calories overall). The net result is burning more energy than a person intakes, thereby leading to weight loss.
Conventionally, this makes a lot of sense. Eat less and burn more and there is a catabolic effect on stored energy (as body tissues).
So, does this mean that our goal should be to work as hard as possible to burn as many calories as possible?
To break this down, we have to look at a couple of factors.
1) What is the person's GOAL?
2) How does increasing intensity effect the outcomes?
3) What factor are you using to measure intensity?
4) What effect does intensity have on overall performance?
Goals
For the first factor, the goal, we have to ask ourselves how intensity can help a goal. If our goal is to be a bicyclist in the Tour de France, that intensity is going to look very different from the intensity in a bench press, or the intensity of nailing a high dive. If the goal is to lose weight, well, I'll come back to that at the end.... But I wanted to mention cycling, weight lifting, and diving specifically to bring up the idea that there are different kinds of intensity.
To increase intensity, most people think of increasing the LOAD or performing the movement with increased SPEED. But the truth is, there are a lot of different ways to make something harder (used here intentionally in place of "making something more intense.")
A short list of things that can make something harder is: slowing it down, changing the variation, doing it for a longer duration, increasing the psychic effort by adding mental tasks, making it harder to balance, changing the breathing patterns, and on and on. For each of those modifications, there is an added complexity or challenge to the base pattern. It's not always about being more intense!
A dancer, for instance, has a very high demand on their system during a performance, but doing it with weight, or doing it faster would not necessarily help their goal. To increase fluidity, they need to work on timing, transitions, mobility, balance, and other, more subtle factors.
Outcomes
What happens when we make a workout more intense? Let's take an example that most people will be familiar with: starting a weight lifting program. When you add a lot of volume and effort that you are not accustomed to, you generally end up SORE. This delayed onset muscle soreness is a clear sign of systemic stress that the muscles in question are not used to. This can also happen with things like cardio dance or swimming or even Tai Chi! Whatever you are not accustomed to can make you sore. Another negative outcome for increased intensity or load could be an acute injury like a strain or sprain.
This is not always the case, but it is a caution to go into new activities with a degree of mindfulness and self-awareness. Gradually build up the intensity over time. That way, you can progress slowly and safely!
This means, though, that we aren't exercising as hard as possible to try to burn as many calories (or create as much output) as possible PER SESSION. If I lift weights really hard on Monday and I'm sore Tuesday through Friday, my output for the week is 1 day. If I lift light weights for 30 minutes Monday - Friday and take the weekend to rest, I have increased my total output overall for that week.
This means that intensity MIGHT NOT be the best metric for per-session outcomes.
Factors
We touched on this earlier. The factor that is used to measure intensity is very important! If you do relatively simple movements at a relatively slow speed with relatively light weight, but a high degree of mental focus, you will be tired at the end of your workout. If you keep the same parameters, but only focus on breathing slow and even, it will be the same result. I would break down the factors for each exercise into four broad categories:
1) Mental Focus Required
2) Breathing Emphasis
3) Prime Movers
4) Essential Posture
For every exercise, you can look at each category as a general way of WHERE you are placing your emphasis. Sometimes this will be in one of those four, sometimes in a combination, or sometimes in another category altogether. For the most part, and for the sake of this simple look at output, we can focus on these general areas. If your emphasis is strictly on the prime movers, you are missing a lot of qualitative essentials for a movement! Even in a bench press, most people know that you want the back flat on the bench (posture), to exhale on the exertion (breathing), to explode up and descend slow (mental factors). This is even more important with an exercise like a high dive. It takes more than just pushing off as hard as you can! There's timing, trying to get your line, and (I'm sure!) a bunch of other factors that are more important than just the initial take-off.
Performance
This is where we look at movement efficiency. If everything is just about maximal output, what effect does that have on the performance of the activity? If we are doing jumping exercises, and we just jump as many times as we can in a row before we can't do it anymore, what effect is that having on our joints? Will I be able to jump again tomorrow? How many years can I jump like that before there is a negative effect from all the jumping?
Performance is twofold: short-term and long-term. If my goal is merely to lift as much weight as possible in my current session, am I really maximizing my potential for future sessions? Am I better off reducing my focus on the Prime Mover factor and spreading the intensity out to Mental, Breathing, and Postural so that I create a foundation for growth down the line?
I think there is a lot to be said for creating a balanced intensity. Not only in each individual workout, but over a span of time as well.
To create a lasting physiological adaptation, we need to change our body's set point.
By lifting a heavy weight once, I do not create any lasting change. By lifting weights regularly over time, I acclimate my body to lift weights. It's the same with flexibility, endurance, and sitting in meditation. What you repeat, your body gets better at doing.
I think that is why efficiency is so important!
But, did we ever really define what efficient movement is?
Efficiency
What is efficient movement? I would broadly define "efficiency" as "movement that uses no more effort than it has to to accomplish it's goal." I know, I heard the eyerolls. That is NOT really a practical definition. Nor is is a particularly complete definition!
So, what is efficient movement?
Let's take a look at an example real quick.
Going back to bicycling: If I have my bike seat set really low so I don't extend my legs all the way, and if I have to geared so that I have to pedal at a high rate of speed with a low rate of forward movement, I'm doing a LOT of work. My legs will hurt, and I will burn a lot of calories... BUT, I won't be able to go very far very fast before I get tired. If my goal is to do the Tour de France, I would imagine that you need to figure out what settings allow you to go as fast as possible with as little effort as possible. There might not be any specific metric for that! But by paying attention, by study, and through investing a lot of time into trying to figure out what that looks like, I will inevitably become more efficient at going fast for long periods of time.
It's very easy to spend a lot of energy. It requires a great degree of sensitivity to become efficient.
I think that this really brings us to a fundamental question of what we value out of fitness and how we measure success in fitness. Do we become better at moving well or do we become better at using a lot of energy? Can we move a lot for a long period of time, or are we trying to move really hard once?
There's a lot of middle ground, there, and a lot of area to explore more. I think, for myself, I want to move efficiently and invest a balanced intensity into my movements so I can continue to perform over a long period of time.
I would love to hear your thoughts on movement, intensity, and the way to achieve outcomes!
