why did i wait so long?

my sister had a long talk with her personal trainer guy yesterday and she wrote me an email to tell me what she learned. I am sharing it with you guys…. these are questions I was wondering about, and asked her to ask him.  so here is her email:

ok, so he said it really doesn’t matter if you are going to do cardio first or strength training first. he said if you are going to do strength training first at least do 5 mins of cardio before hand to warm up the joints and get blood flowing to the muscles. it helps healing and repair time for the muscles. but it is always the best to combine cardio with strength training.  (like circuit training)

as for intensity here is the skinny on that.
your body has 3 possible sources of energy… carbs, protein and fat. protein is the last resort, so it really has 2 choices.. fat or carbs. and that does depend on your intensity of the workout. training at a high level of intensity forces your body to draw on carb cals for energy. they are more efficient sources of energy, so your body goes for that (carbs) if you are working hard. if you are training at a low intensity, your body doesn’t need to be as efficient, and it will draw on a higher percentage of fat cals for fuel. that is why so many ppl think it is better to train at a lower intensity. they are WRONG!! they think ppl should only train in their fat burning zones. the thing is, even though a greater PERCENTAGE of fat cals is used during low intensity exercise, the TOTAL number of fat cals used is greater during high intensity exercise b/c more overall cals are burned. for example, in a half hour of low intensity exercise, you might burn 100 cals… of those, 80% would be fat cals…. meaning you’ve burned 80 fat cals… in a half hour of high intensity exercise, you might burn 300 cals. of those, about 33% will be fat cals, meaning you’ve burned 100 fat calories. get it? even though the percentage of fat cals burned is higher during low intensity exercise, you are burning so many more total cals during high intensity exercise that, percentages aside, you are still burning more fat cals, not to mention the 200 carb cals you are burning as well. high intensity workouts also give you a higher fat afterburn.  you will burn more fat long after your workout is over…

it is also true that carb cals become fat cals after a while anyway, so a calorie is a calorie is a calorie. BURN AS MANY DAMN CALORIES AS YOU CAN. that is the point.