Two Wheel Blogs

Feeling a little thick around the middle after the big holiday? I have just the solution for you. It's my very own fat burner workout. Do this easy workout 2-3 times a week and those libbies will melt away.

OK enough sounding like and infomercial, but I did in fact do a really nice fat burning workout today. It occurred to me while I was out there spinning up a storm that by the end of my ride I would likely expend more calories on this ride than on many others I do around here. The reason is I substituted intensity with duration. I rode easy for a long time today.

In reality I exchanged intensity for duration not to burn fat but to see whether I have my bike fit dialed in well enough that I'm comfortable even on longer rides. It is. After about 2½ hours I decided I wasn't going to get uncomfortable. That's a big step forward.

In the process of trying to torture my back, however, it became apparent to me that this particular kind of workout is ideal for someone looking to burn fat. Why? Because the calories expended are high. Wattage wise, I did 25% to 50% more work on my bike today than I typically do in a regular threshold / sweet spot workout. But wait! There's more! (sorry, don't know what came over me... no ginsu knives or whatever) In all today's ride amounted to a bit over 140 TSS. The really interesting thing here is this: I could do this 140 TSS again tomorrow. I'm not particularly tired or sore. I have no real fatigue to speak of.

Normally I've found that once I get a day's worth of TSS up in the 140-150 range I'll feel it the next day. I just can't quite recover from that much training stress overnight. I have no doubt that I can and will recover from today's training stress. Making an estimated comparison, I'd say today's low intensity 140TSS feels about like a 90TSS day with an IF of 90 or more.

And that's what makes this such a great fat burning workout. It's not so hard that you can't come back and do it again. No doubt it's true you burn fat faster when the intensity is cranked up, but I think this is a case of the tortoise beating the hare. The need for rest and recovery from high intensity efforts will limit the absolute number of calories which can be burned per day. It's a case of slow and steady winning the fat burning race.