Is your workout providing the “afterburn effect?” , the style of training that continues to burn 1000’s and 1000’s of calories after you finish? There’s a superb likelihood you are not since it doesn’t exist, no less than not in the style some could have you suspect.
Technically referred to as exercise post-oxygen consumption, or , this sort of training became famous within the late Nineties and early 2000s when HIIT training was all the fad.
This text will let you know all the pieces it is advisable learn about EPOC and why you do not have to be that concerned about it to burn calories.
What Is EPOC?
EPOC stands for exercise post-oxygen consumption. Knowing that probably doesn’t help much in understanding what it truly is, so let’s break it down a bit more.
To know EPOC, it is advisable realize two things.
- Our body loves being in a state of homeostasis; this implies all the pieces functions at a traditional level that requires minimal energy to maintain and maintain your body’s ebbs and flows
- The body has dozens of physiological systems that can fluctuate up and down to maintain the body in homeostasis depending on the given environment it’s in.
Once we train, the body’s physiological systems all go into hyperdrive to support the energy demand and alter in physiology.
This may include:
- Replenish ATP stores
- Increasing body temperature
- Increasing heart rate
- Flushing out metabolic waste
- Altering your hormonal balance
- Producing sweat
Now, imagine all of those systems are going nuts when you train. You then finish your workout and regardless that you are finished training, your body is not! It’s going to proceed to work until it will probably bring all these systems back right down to homeostasis. Plus, for those who tear down your muscle, there’s much more work to do with muscle repair.
This extra work requires calories, which ultimately requires more oxygen.
Due to this fact, your exercise post-oxygen consumption is the quantity of oxygen the body requires after training to bring the body back to homeostasis.
In other words, it is the calories needed after training to repair your body.
How Many Calories Does EPOC Burn?
Have you ever ever heard of those claims about how an “EPOC” class workout will assist you burn 1000 calories? Or you are going to “keep burning calories for 48 hours!”
We hate to burst your bubble, but these are highly misrepresented.
The whole amount of calories burned during EPOC can vary widely, but there’s one primary variable that controls it: intensity.
Exercising at a greater intensity ultimately requires a bigger response to your physiological systems.
Due to this fact, when you stop, it takes longer to bring them back to homeostasis.
EPOC will likely be greater with exercise of greater intensity.
For instance, some studies using sprint interval training at lower intensities saw a rise in EPOC for just 8 hours, leading to an additional 85 calories burned.
Nonetheless, one other study used 4 sessions of a Wingate test. A Wingate test is just peddling on a cycle ergometer at maximum intensity for 30 seconds.
These 4 sessions resulted in a rise in EPOC that lasted 24 hours, which equaled an additional 315 calories burned!
That sounds pretty impressive…but it surely’s not as significant because it sounds which we’ll discuss down below.
What Type Of Training Is Best For EPOC?
People generally associate EPOC with HIIT or interval training. That is the one sort of training that is often reported, making it seem as if HIIT training has a monopoly on EPOC. This is not true.
If you could have ever performed resistance training at a correct intensity, that your physiological systems are going haywire. This alone will generate a rise in EPOC.
Nonetheless, resistance training is exclusive regarding increased EPOC because it creates a bit bonus variable: muscle repair.
Muscle repair includes increased protein degradation after which increased synthesis during recovery. This extra work requires more calories!
Some researchers have taken advantage of this and performed eccentric training sessions with an emphasis on muscle damage.
One study resulted in an increased EPOC of 550 calories over 72 hours, the best EPOC from resistance training ever reported! Other research has reported that using a 4-second eccentric could produce an additional 300 calories burned over 72 hours!
The “after burn” effect is even seen with a gradual state. Obviously, there are a ton of variables that may affect the magnitude of the effect. Nonetheless, some researchers suggest that 60-80 minutes of regular state at 70% could end in an EPOC effect of 170 calories! That does not sound too bad! It’s not 300 but it surely’s lots greater than nothing!
Now, we wish to be clear that each study that has measured the EPOC of HIIT, resistance training, and steady-state has shown that the effect will likely be best using HIIT.
So yes, HIIT will produce greater burn during post-exercise.
EPOC And Total Energy Expenditure
The calories burned during EPOC are only a part of the equation. To calculate the whole calories burned, you will need to account for the calories burned through the actual session as well.
For instance, let’s compare two hypothetical exercises:
- Exercise A has an EPOC of 10 calories.
- Exercise B has an EPOC of 100 calories.
With only this information, it is easy to conclude that exercise B is “higher” since you burned an additional 90 calories post-exercise. Nonetheless, if you look a bit harder, you see that an individual burned 500 calories during exercise A. Nonetheless, exercise B only resulted in burning 300 calories. Which means exercise A burned 510 calories and exercise B burned 400 calories. And that is what’s often seen when researchers have a look at total calories burned.
Consider a 2016 study that compared EPOC and total calories burned across three different exercise protocols:
- Sprint Interval Training (SIT): Six 30-second sprints with 4 minutes of energetic recovery.
- High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT): 4 4-minute intervals at 95% intensity with 3 minutes of energetic recovery.
- Regular State Cardio: half-hour at 80% intensity.
The calories burned (EPOC/Total Energy) were:
- SIT: 110/270 calories
- HIIT: 83/329 calories
- Regular State: 43/349 calories
As you possibly can see, regardless that the sprint interval training burns 110 calories vs. the 43 of regular state, overall, regular state burns almost 80 calories more!
A typical claim is that performing SIT or HIIT takes less time. Nonetheless, this too just isn’t as significant as one would think. If you perform steady-state cardio, an individual can get right into it. Further, there aren’t any resting intervals since it’s regular state.
Quite the opposite, regardless that a HIIT session may only be “10 minutes”, you possibly can’t just jump right into acting at 100% intensity. It is advisable warm up more beforehand in addition to spend more time cooling down.
So, while HIIT and SIT are frequently shorter, it’s not all the time as significant as one might imagine. On this study, the SIT group only performed six 30-second sprints for 3 minutes of actual work. Nonetheless, if you account for the work, rest, and funky down, the whole time is 23 minutes. As compared, the whole time of regular state was half-hour.
Getting back to calories, other studies have demonstrated this same result.
Recall the sooner mention of the study involving 4 Wingate tests that led to an EPOC of 315 calories. While significant, it becomes less so in comparison to the great data. The steady-state group, previously described as exercising for half-hour at 70% intensity, had an EPOC of only 60 calories but achieved a complete caloric burn of about 500 calories—185 greater than anticipated.
This reinforces the importance of considering total energy expenditure alongside EPOC when evaluating the effectiveness of various training regimens.
Should I Use EPOC?
When people talk about using EPOC, we sometimes forget that it has all the time existed! While we just discovered its existence, lifters were benefiting from EPOC eternally!
As we have now seen, resistance training and regular state each cause a rise in burns long after an individual finishes training.
So, you needn’t “use” EPOC!
We don’t have to actively get your hands on the EPOC effect. So long as you’re using appropriate intensity and pushing yourself, your body will almost definitely see a rise in calorie burn after exercise.
How To Use EPOC
Okay. For example the truth of EPOC but still need to try to profit from it; what are you able to do?
- Well, we all know that EPOC increases dramatically with intensity and we saw quite a few studies that used 30-second sprints to elicit significant EPOC.
- Due to this fact, proceed your normal training as normal. Then, when you’re finished, you could possibly perform a pair 30-second max effort sprints or cycles. In this example, you’ll already be warmed up so you possibly can jump on a treadmill, bike, or rowing machine and get to it quickly! There isn’t any have to make it any more complicated than this.
- An alternative choice might be to perform a set of eccentric training at the tip of every exercise. The study that produced 550 EPOC calories over 3 days used a 4-second eccentric, in order that’s a superb place to begin. For instance, let’s pretend you normally perform the bench press using a 3X5 rep scheme with 225 lbs. Do this after which perform yet one more set specializing in the prolonged eccentric phase. You can adjust the load but you get the thought. Plus, if it doesn’t increase EPOC, the worst thing that’ll occur is you’ll construct more muscle!
Bottom Line On EPOC
EPOC is yet one more cool function of our body that has been twisted and misrepresented to assist sell classes and programs. Yes, EPOC does exist. Nonetheless, after we examine the main points, we realize that any advantages from purposefully manipulating EPOC are minimal.
Regardless that the consequences have been highly exaggerated, it doesn’t mean typical “EPOC” workouts are bad! Performing sessions reminiscent of HIIT have many other advantages with or without EPOC. The identical thing could be said about steady-state and resistance training. EPOC is there, but it’s best to not construct your workouts in an try and maximize its effect. Relatively, just give it some thought as a pleasant, little bonus.
Read this next: Regular State vs HIIT, Which is Best for Fat Loss?
