Return to fitness, return to riding after crash

Anonymous

I had a huge crash in June, which resulted in me not touching my bike until 4 days ago. I'd describe my level of fitness as, must try harder. I play football and badminton once a week, and spend 80% of my working day on my feet.

I am trying to put together a plan to return (and increase) my fitness.

Resting heart rate: 69bpm
Max heart rate: 195bpm (using 220 minus age, I know this isn't science)
Weight: 13.5 stone
Height: 6'1"

My plan is to do two road sessions a week trying to build endurance, and one or two turbo sessions to build speed. I need advice on fat burning.

Road sessions: 3 hours at 60-70% MHR, first two hours steady, last hour 6 15 second sprints with 8 minute recovery periods.

Turbo: Follow one of British cycling or GCN fast sessions.

Would this be enough to start building a base, to go on a increase my overall ability?

JayKosta

At your age (25 years I assume), whatever type of additional exercise you do will probably yield noticeable improvements quite quickly. The program you mentioned will work fine.
But be careful to not let your enthusiasm for exercise outpace needed rest and recovery.

About 'fat burning' - fat gets used as energy during just about all levels of effort - except perhaps for max-effort of 1 minute or less.
What changes is the percentage of fat that is used. At very low intensity, a very high percentage of the (low) amount of needed energy comes from fat. As intensity increases, the percentage of fat being used decreases because more glycogen is used to provide the needed energy - BUT the actual AMOUNT of fat being used is also increasing, tho not as quickly as the increase in glycogen usage.

Regardless of any 'fat burning' benefits from exercise, the critical concern for reducing body fat is to consume less calories than you expend during a day.

Jay Kosta
Endwell NY USA

Anonymous

Thanks Jay, appreciate the input.

So working at 60% MHR will be a good level for burning fat.

I'm working on my diet now, trying to work out a minimum amount of calories a day to consume whilst not allowing it to affect my energy etc. Any advice there?

FatTed

I suspect 60% is far to low, If you cycle on feel for the first month and then add some structure after it may be a better way to balance your return to fitness and the rehab from what ever injury you had.

diy

Just to put more context on what has already been said.. It will take you about 5-6 hours of additional exercise to burn 1lb of fat (roughly 3,300 kcal). You can take that out pretty easily with two days of moderate fasting. You can accurately calculate how much you need based on your BMR and work effort etc, but there isn't much point to be honest. If you've got some to shift, but love your food, you may find a 7 day healthy diet too hard. In which case you could try a bit of fasting. It will probably lower your resting HR too.

2 days a week restrict in take to 25% of your RDA (around 600kcal) - that is enough to stop your burning muscle and still get 100% of the essential things you need. Be vary careful to build the exercise up gradually and make sure your stretch properly and warm up. Its so easy to get new injuries when you try to get back in to it too quickly.

mr.b-campag

Also wonder what the motivation is for the sprints in the long session? I think the received wisdom is that if you want to improve your sprinting you should do it whilst fresh i.e. at the start of a ride. If you want to do something harder at the end of a ride perhaps try doing some sweet spot for the last hour as this is supposed to have considerable benefits (I think I spied a sweet spot thread on here atm). Remember if using hr that it will drift upwards over a longer ride (cardiac drift) so you might be able to push yourself harder than you think at those points. Also wonder if you might want to incorporate some skills work? Regardless of who/what caused the crash it can definitely affect your confidence and hence riding pleasure (and speed)...Apols if you know all this already.

imposter2.0

sjmclean wrote:

Thanks Jay, appreciate the input.

So working at 60% MHR will be a good level for burning fat.

I'm working on my diet now, trying to work out a minimum amount of calories a day to consume whilst not allowing it to affect my energy etc. Any advice there?

There isn't really a 'fat burning' zone, as such - and in any case, if you are using 220-age to work out your MHR, then what you think is 60% of MHR will almost certainly be inaccurate anyway.

MikeWW

If you want to lose fat then change your diet
main thing is to lower carb intake and make sure you are taking in protein (and fats)

If you want to get fitter-exercise more

If you are limited to 6 hours in 3 sessions then make them as hard as you can and recover well inbetween

Anonymous

MikeWW wrote:

If you want to lose fat then change your diet
main thing is to lower carb intake and make sure you are taking in protein (and fats)

If you want to get fitter-exercise more

If you are limited to 6 hours in 3 sessions then make them as hard as you can and recover well inbetween

Yeah I've been working on my diet a lot, eating smaller portions, more vegs, cutting out fizzy drinks etc.

I'm limited to 6 hours on the road just now, and will look to do 3 hours on the turbo over the week.

Also wonder what the motivation is for the sprints in the long session?

I've been reading and they recommend doing some very short efforts with long recovery, to help with freshness for the next day.

diy

Lowering carbs is one way - its by no means the main way there are many ways to reduce your calories.

MikeWW

diy wrote:

Lowering carbs is one way - its by no means the main way there are many ways to reduce your calories.

I was answering the point about losing fat. What do you think the main way is?

diy

Low carb diets can be more effective, in the short term at increasing the metabolic rate in obese/sedentary people - that is why they are promoted as fat burning diets. Once you take away the benefits of the metabolic kick they are no more or less useful at getting rid of fat than any other diet that reduces calories.

The most common way to shift fat - is less in and more out. Whichever model works for an individual depends on their lifestyle and attitude to food. The only time you wont burn just fat is if you go below 25% of your BMR for more than about 36 hours. In this situation your body will start to consume muscle mass too.

Good summary of the popular versions here:
http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/loseweight/P ... eview.aspx

MikeWW

diy wrote:

Low carb diets can be more effective, in the short term at increasing the metabolic rate in obese/sedentary people - that is why they are promoted as fat burning diets. Once you take away the benefits of the metabolic kick they are no more or less useful at getting rid of fat than any other diet that reduces calories.

The most common way to shift fat - is less in and more out. Whichever model works for an individual depends on their lifestyle and attitude to food. The only time you wont burn just fat is if you go below 25% of your BMR for more than about 36 hours. In this situation your body will start to consume muscle mass too.

Good summary of the popular versions here:
http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/loseweight/P ... eview.aspx

But really important to recognise that all calories are not the same and that your body reacts very differently to the type of calories you consume and how easy or hard the process of reducing fat is http://drhyman.com/blog/2014/04/10/calories-dont-matter/#close

diy

Ok thanks for the link it was useful to see what you meant. There are lots of different views on this stuff. I'd certainly be skeptical of the conclusions of that article.