"There Are Levels to This Thing"
That’s a line made popular by former NFL MVP quarterback Cam Newton after a standout performance in a game. “There are levels to this thing” denotes that not everyone operates on the same tier. Some are simply far more effective than others.
When it comes to fitness, it can be helpful to use a hierarchy. This is something we first came across in the mid-2000s from brilliant and respected personal trainer and strength and conditioning coach Alwyn Cosgrove.
Aside from working with professional athletes in the NFL, MLB, and UFC, Cosgrove also consulted with Nike, Titleist Performance Institute, and Men's Health, just to name a few organizations that respected his expertise.
He built a successful personal training gym outside of Los Angeles, where he worked with not only professional athletes, but everyday people helping them lose body fat, gain muscle, and look and feel their best.
He also authored or co-authored several books on training and fat loss in his “New Rules…” series of books.
He is well respected in the industry by other coaches and trainers and is seen as a pillar in how many trainers operate and gyms work.
One big challenge many people working out - and even many fitness coaches - experienced was understanding the best use of workout time.
For most of us, time is our limiting factor. In all aspects of our lives, we need to do the stuff that maximizes our time.
So when it comes to working out, we often need to do workouts that will give us the greatest result for the time we devote to them.
Or put another way: what kinds of training is most important for results, and what should someone prioritize if they want to see the greatest change and achieve their best shape?
So Cosgrove took the available research, combined it with years of working with thousands of clients, and simplified the concept into what became his “Hierarchy of Fat Loss.” It was a pivotal moment in fitness.
Up until that point, few people had done such a good job organizing different forms of exercise and ranking how impactful they were toward achieving results.
At the time, many people believed the best way to lose body fat was through hours of long, steady-state cardio or workouts designed mainly to “feel the burn.” (See our post on Fatigue Versus Failure here.)
Looking at both research and real-world results, Cosgrove flipped many of those ideas on their head and helped inspire a movement that allowed more people to get into the best shape of their lives for the least amount of time possible.
The average person barely has 2–4 hours per week to devote to fitness and exercise. They need to get as much out of that time as possible and can’t afford to waste time on workouts that are, at best, less effective and, at worst, a poor use of precious time.
For just about everyone, time is the greatest limiting factor. Unless you want to spend 8–15 hours per week in the gym, maximizing your available workout time is paramount.
Over the years, Cosgrove has updated his hierarchy, and other versions have emerged using his ideas as a foundation.
At its core, Cosgrove’s Hierarchy of Fat Loss starts with Nutrition and Recovery (Sleep & Stress) as numbers one and two, respectively. Those elements have a massive impact on changing body fat percentage and “losing weight.”
Now for the part everyone wants to know: what workouts work best?
When it comes to workouts and training that are the most impactful and yield the greatest results, Cosgrove generally lays out the following order:
1. Strength Training
It’s important here to distinguish strength training from simply doing resistance exercises. They can overlap, but they are not necessarily the same thing.
It’s kind of like how all thumbs are fingers, but not all fingers are thumbs.
The main driver here is whether or not you are getting stronger over time.
Almost anything can work for six weeks. But true strength training — progressively getting stronger over months and eventually years — is where the magic happens.
This is how you achieve a more “fit” look, look better in your clothes, and develop a more athletic aesthetic if that’s your goal.
This is also where what many people call “toning” happens. Scientifically speaking, you cannot actually “tone” a muscle. What you can do is increase lean muscle tissue through regular strength training while simultaneously lowering body fat percentage. That combination creates the look most people refer to as “toned.”
Without proper strength training, many people simply become a version of “skinny fat,” where body weight may decrease but lean muscle mass remains low while body fat percentage stays relatively high.
2. Conditioning (HIIT/Cardio Intervals)
There are levels here too. If fat loss is a goal, we need to elevate heart rate and challenge conditioning systems. High-intensity interval training (HIIT) is still viewed by many as one of the most time-efficient ways to accomplish this.
There are mountains of research — including studies still being published today — highlighting the effectiveness of high-intensity intervals as one of the best “bang for your buck” approaches for cardiovascular fitness and calorie expenditure.
2A. NEAT Calories (Steps & Daily Movement)
Just under conditioning in the hierarchy is NEAT: Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis.
Or put more simply: get your steps in.
The data supporting daily movement and step count for overall health is enormous.
One major benefit of increasing daily steps is that it typically does not dramatically increase hunger and appetite. Compare that to multiple intense workouts per day or extremely long workouts, which can often increase hunger and make maintaining a calorie deficit more difficult.
The challenge with relying only on NEAT for fat loss is the time commitment. It can take a significant amount of time to accumulate 10,000 steps per day compared to doing a few hard conditioning intervals.
Again, for most people, time is the limiting factor.
3. Steady-State Cardio
Steady-state cardio falls lower on the hierarchy because it generally takes more time, is less effective overall than strength training for body composition, and can potentially impact hunger and appetite.
Now don’t get us wrong — we will never say that adding movement is bad.
The challenge is that for decades, many people believed endless cardio sessions were the key to fat loss. Not only is that not necessarily true, but excessive cardio training can potentially interfere with muscle development and contribute to the “skinny fat” look.
You do not need endless cardio sessions to “burn calories” when reducing daily calorie intake by even 200–300 calories can create a similar calorie deficit without the same time investment.
You may be asking, “What about other forms of activity?”
That could include sports for exercise, barre, tai chi, Pilates, yoga, running, tennis, hiking, and countless other activities.
Again, some activity is always better than none, and at Park Fitness we constantly say:
“The best workout is the one you will actually do.”
Anything here is better than spending the time sitting on the couch.
You may love tennis or running and that’s how you stay active. Perfect.
You may love yoga, which can be excellent for flexibility and mobility. Awesome.
And here’s the kicker: if you have a routine you enjoy and you are happy with your results, you do not necessarily need to change anything.
It’s when we want to see more change that we go back to these basics and re-evaluate what we are doing and whether we are getting enough of these foundational pieces in place.
For effectiveness, we try to use the lens of data and research and evaluate activity through that perspective.
- Am I doing actual strength training?
- Am I getting stronger over time?
- Am I getting my heart rate up with some intense work?
- Am I getting enough daily movement and steps?
Those are the things that tend to move the needle the most.
It can also help to think about these priorities based on how much time you realistically have available each week.
- If you have 3 hours or less per week, prioritize strength training.
- If you have 3–6 hours, combine strength training with interval conditioning work.
- If you have 6–8 hours, add more regular cardio.
- If you have more than that, add in anything else you enjoy — sports for exercise, Pilates, barre, hiking, mountain climbing, recreational activities, and more.
Remember, if we can move beyond personal preference for a moment, there is a large amount of science and literature on this that can help save time and produce better results.
There are levels of effectiveness to this exercise thing.
And this is just a quick glimpse into why we do what we do and why we program workouts the way we do at Park Fitness.
And if you ever have questions about any of this, we are always happy to talk more. Just let us know.