Get out of your fat burning zone!

You probably heard about the fat burning zone.
This is a specific training zone intensity: into this zone, the metabolism burns more fat to produce energy. The problem with this zone is you train at a low intensity for long duration and in steady state.
The fat burning zone became popular with the use of heart rate monitors: controlling your heart rate is supposed to train with precision and get faster results.

Well, I know people who worked out for years without any good results!
What was going on?

When you train in your supposed fat burning zone, you have to train inside a specific heart rate zone: the range is usually between 120-150 according to your age and fitness level. People use also a percentage of the maximum heat rate to determine the zone: they take the classic formula 220 minus the age to get the maximum heart rate; then, use the range of 60-75% of this value.
The main problems are everyone is different and we know now that long duration cardio workout have very limited benefits.
To get the best benefits in terms of health and fat burning, you have to speed up and go higher in intensity with shorter durations: interval training is the top method you’ll need to apply.

If you use a heart rate monitor, don’t bother with heart rate zones, just check how fast your heart rate goes up and goes down, listen your body and feelings, use common sense and train with progressive intensities. You’ll get results in fat burning in a fraction of the time needed in the former method, except if you love to train for the marathon, but this is another story…