Expert Advice - by Dangerous Donna
EPOC; the more common term is excess post-exercise oxygen consumption, EPOC.
EPOC is the larger volume of oxygen consumed during the minutes immediately after exercise ceases compared to what your body would normally consume at rest. Hey! Climb really fast up those several flights of stairs and experience the consequence of rapid pulse and breathing hard; EPOC. Your body is physiologically adjusting to support the larger needed volume of oxygen to get up all those stairs.
During exercise or activity, our body cannot perfectly and immediately match oxygen needed with the energy requirement of the activity. Oxygen consumption requires several minutes to reach the necessary exercise energy level because this aerobic process has to build up to full function in order to supply the oxygen to the active muscles.
Hey! It has been a minute now since you have reached the last step on the last flight of stairs and although muscle activity has stopped, because you are flat lying out, your breathing is not back to normal rest value. Your oxygen requirement is still elevated and you actually are getting more oxygen than your body needs to have while you are lying there. This using up of excess oxygen is referred to as the "oxygen debt; EPOC." During your first few recovery minutes after activity, oxygen consumption does not immediately decrease even though your muscles took a break.
The EPOC phenomenon gives us better insight into why our metabolism remains temporarily elevated after exercise ends. Our metabolism returning to resting state can require several minutes after light exercise (walking), several hours after very heavy exercise (playing a football game) and up to 12 - 24 hours+ for exhaustive exercise as in running a marathon in a hot, humid environment.
There is much talk in the fitness / health industry about EPOC. Some fitness workout companies highly promote their workout coaching service to be best at promoting EPOC. They are claiming that an individual will reach EPOC, maintain EPOC longer; thereby, burning more calories after the workout session due to the metabolism taking longer to return to the individual's resting state. Because the body continues to expend energy after exercise, EPOC has a calorie-burning role in a weight management exercise program.
Studies on EPOC have taken place since the early 1990's through mid 2000 on both males and females. These studies suggest that a high-intensity, intermittent-type of training has a more pronounced effect on EPOC. Moreover, the studies convey that intermittent, high-intensity weight training produces greater EPOC responses than aerobic exercise.
In 2013, the Universities of Central Florida and West Florida produced a study "Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption (EPOC) Following Multiple Effort Sprint and Moderate Aerobic Exercise." The findings of this study convey that brief repeated bouts of maximal exercise produce a significant higher duration and magnitude of EPOC. The universities' research compared intervals of 1.5 minute Sprints (anaerobic) to Moderate Aerobic Running of 30 minutes. The greatest elevation of oxygen intake above baseline was seen in the Sprints (anaerobic) trial and stayed elevated throughout a 30-minute recovery period. The Moderate Aerobic Running trial resulted in oxygen uptake remaining elevated for the first six minutes of the recovery period. The results of this study support the hypothesis that magnitude and duration EPOC is primarily dependent on exercise intensity and that high-intensities at short intervals rather than steady state (continuous at approximately same intensity) results in a greater calorie burn.
In 2011, a research study "demonstrated that six weeks of high intensity sprint training resulted in an equal reduction of fat mass compared to moderate aerobic training over the same six-week period with a fraction of the time commitment." (MacPherson, Hazel, Olver, Patterson and Lemon).
We, at DangerousFit, understand that most individuals find it difficult to exercise due to time commitments and restraints. For over 15 years of fitness / health consulting, we have been training and educating our clients in the results of an intermittent, high-intensity weight lifting, anaerobic workout. We believe that an individual can quickly adjust and shape up with this training approach; moreover, this training protocol is very conducive to busy schedules. We have witnessed the proof that short intervals of high-intensity resistance, anaerobic and aerobic exercise disturbs the body's normal function to a greater degree. Thereby, the amazing result is a larger energy requirement after exercise to restore the body's systems to normal and therefore, the conquest of a higher EPOC
