We've all seen 'em. The folks who follow the same cardiovascular routine day after day, week after week, year after year. The same 30 or 60 minute run on the treadmill, elliptical, stair machine or pavement.

The funny thing is, all of these jokers seem to think that all this ground-pounding is actually going to "get them into shape," and yet despite the thousands of hours they spend on their aerobic pursuits, not only do they show little sign of fat loss, but they actually end up gaining fat.

I don't know about you, but if I were to expend that much time and energy on a cardiovascular activity, I'd want to lose some friggin' fat. I sure wouldn't want to see myself gaining more fat. So what gives?

To understand what's going on here, take a look at this chart, illustrating the metabolic, physiological and hormonal adaptations that occur throughout the cardio training spectrum.

In the green stage, a de-conditioned person can experience a number of benefits from introducing just two aerobic or anaerobic energy system training sessions per week.

The foremost benefit is improved heart health, along with improved Vo2 max and reduced resting heart rate.

Another interesting benefit is nutrient partitioning. Anytime you perform exercise, your muscle glycogen stores will drop. Granted, you won't use as much muscle glycogen doing a brisk walk on the treadmill as you would by performing a full body weight training session, but glycogen is still a fuel source, and levels will decrease.

When you eat a meal after a cardiovascular workout, the nutrients are better utilized by the body for muscle recovery, and for glycogen replenishment in the muscles and liver if the body is in a slightly depleted state.

Energy flux refers to the amount of your body's energy intake versus energy expenditure, or "energy turnover." The higher your body's energy flux, the better your chances of body re-composition.

Simply stated, you want to take in more energy, while also consuming more.

Whenever you exercise, your heart rate increases. When your heart rate increases, so does your metabolic rate, which is the rate at which your body burns calories. Performing low to moderate amounts of cardiovascular exercise will increase your metabolic rate, if only for a short amount of time.

Fat loss can certainly occurs during this stage, but only if the subject is out of shape (de-conditioned from having not exercised for a long time), or has a high percentage of body fat to begin with.

In the yellowstage, we have the best of both worlds. Some of the effects in the green stage also apply here, but overall caloric intake must be kept low enough to induce a substantial amount of fat loss.

This is the most difficult stage to maintain. The human body has extraordinary adaptive characteristics, so if a certain stimulus results in fat loss, it won't be long before that stimulus loses its effectiveness, and fat loss comes to a halt.

This leads me to the red stage, where chronic runners generally end up. The overuse of aerobic exercise over years and years can paradoxically turn your body into a fat storing machine.

I knew a girl back in 2004 who was having a hell of a time losing fat for a quickly approaching figure show. She was walking on the treadmill twice day, seven days a week. I found out that she had joined a running club the previous year, and had run an average of fifteen miles a week for the last eight months.

Her aerobic system had become so efficientthat she was actually making the problem worse. Lumping all of the treadmill walking on top of all the running, she had severely downgraded her body's fat-loss mechanisms.

Regular running improves exercise efficiency, meaning that you burn progressively fewer calories while performing the same amount of activity. If you run for 30 minutes three times a week at the same speed on a treadmill, you'll be burning fewer calories one month later and even fewer calories three months later!

If you're still doing the same pathetic half-hour treadmill jog ten years later, you can imagine how efficient you'll have become at running, but how inefficientyou'll have become at burning fat.

Dr. Eric Serrano has, in several seminars, explained that the body will improve its ability to store fat as part of its natural survival mechanism. Your body jealously holds onto every ounce of fat that it can, and the more fat you lose, the more difficult your body makes it to lose fat.

Once you get to the far end of the red stage, your body will produce cortisol, a catabolic hormone that maintains and adds body fat in desperate times such as starvation.

The body mistakes long periods of repetitive exercise for the kind of activities our distant ancestors did when they were starving: long, unsuccessful hunting expeditions and fruitless gathering parties.

So rather than stripping off the fat, that ten-mile jog is doing nothing but tricking the body into releasing enough cortisol to preserve the fat you have until you can bring down a wildebeest — or find a handful of berries.

So now that we understand why half of the competitors in a recreational triathlon have love handles and jelly-bellies that wiggle and jiggle as they trot across the finish line, it should be obvious that this isn't an ideal way to achieve our fitness goals.

Let's examine how one should transition back to normalcy and balance if this is your current exercise protocol.

• Perform two fifteen-minute quick burst, high intensity bouts of aerobic energy system work per week. These can be burpees, rope jumping or agility drills.

• Increase workout density by performing three total body workouts with brief rest periods under 60 seconds, heavy resistance and supersets between upper and lower body per week.

I can already hear the voices now. "If I don't run at least 30 miles this week, I'll get fat!" These voices must not have been paying attention. If you take into account the fact that regular running improves exercise efficiency, then you can imagine how low your actual caloric expenditure has dwindled down to after all those years of pounding the pavement.

When you introduce explosive bouts of interval training, and total body workouts using heavy loads, you create a great amount of metabolic disturbance.

By creating a metabolic disturbance, you will fire up the nervous system, deplete muscle glycogen stores, and activate the type IIB muscle fibers most responsible for building muscle and strength.

Remember that building muscle is very important, not only because it makes you look badass, but also because muscle is very metabolically active and will assist your body in burning more energy even when at rest.

Creating a metabolic disturbance is crucial for an individual who is suffering from spending too long in the red zone, and will serve as life support for anyone transitioning away from the world of the chronic runner.

About the Author     

Wet Wolf specializes in physique transformation, contest prep, eating patterns & sports performance training for clients in real life and online.