Use of Interleaving for Weight Loss?

            I’m sure many people have heard that exercising three times a week is the key to start losing weight. However, I’m sure many people haven’t heard of exercising twice a day. The article “Why 2-A-Day Workouts Could be the Best Way to Shed Those Last 5 Pounds” argued that regular exercise is essential for leading a healthy life, but for some it’s just not enough. Sometimes people’s bodies are more responsive to the intensity of exercise rather than the amount of time they exercise.

            When exercising, it’s important to space it out. It’s important to avoid overtraining syndrome. A lot of people make this mistake when first trying to lose weight. Overtraining syndrome is when a person attempts to do vigorous training on consecutive days such as biking on a rocky terrain and then running ten miles the next day. Our bodies can’t be over-trained. It’s important to space out the workouts. The article recommended having two days between workouts involving the same muscle group. If you’re not sure which muscles you’re working out for each workout, just take a look at your performance. If your performance level is going down, you need to put more time in between the two workouts. Often, weight loss is not achieved because the body becomes used to the workouts that are a usual pattern. Your body is used to the stress and does not benefit from the workout.

            I thought this article related well to a recent seminar that was conducted by Barbara Knowlton. She talked about a new way of learning which is called the interleaving effect. This is when practicing on related skills are mixed with one another. For example, instead of learning skill A and practicing it till it’s perfect, you learn A then B then C then go back to A then C then B then back to A. Knowlton pointed out in her talk that interleaving is beneficial to long term learning and this shows up in motor skills also. With interleaving, our brains are forced to have more retrieval practice and this leads to a better retention rate.

            Although Knowlton explained this could be a new breakthrough in learning, this also applies to motor skills and exercise. By exercising two times a day, you’re splitting up the exercise into two parts. It’s important to space out your exercise as you’ll get the most benefit from this. For example, if you’re practicing shooting hoops, you can space out your exercise by shooting from the free throw line, then the 3-pointer line and then closer to practice your dunks. By practicing all sorts of shots, this forces the body to remember how to make a shot from the previous practices. Although it’s harder for your body, there’s more gain from the pain. This will show better improvement on all the skills you practiced. Also by interleaving, the body is forced to try out an exercise in a completely different pattern. This means that your body is not used to your usual workouts and therefore releases more energy as it tries to perfect this new pattern.

            Spacing out information is important to the brain as it gives more time to retain the information and gives better retrieval practice. The interleaving effect is effective not only in the classroom setting but also in the gym.

McDermott, N. (2015, November 10). Why 2-A-Day Workouts Could Be The Best Way To Shed Those Last 5 Pounds. Retrieved December 1, 2015, from http://elitedaily.com/wellness/working-out-twice-a-day/1248629/                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

Knowlton, Barbara J. “Brain–behavior correlates of optimizing learning through interleaved practice”Neuroscience Seminar. Illinois, Chicago. 24 Nov. 2015. Lecture.