Do you breathe heavily while you run? Great! Taking in more oxygen is a sign that you’re challenging your body to work hard and, thus, burn more calories. Fortunately, your body doesn’t stop this extra calorie burning once you stop running.
After intense exercise, your body uses more energy than it did before the run. This phenomenon is called “post-exercise oxygen consumption” or EPOC.
We spoke with two certified strength and conditioning specialists to learn more about EPOC and what it means for your training.
What is EPOC?
EPOC is simply a measure of the calories your body burns as it cools down after exercise. This cool-down process is actually another type of exertion, albeit not has intense as a long run or HIIT class.
After exercise, your body needs to rebalance its hormone levels, restock fuel stores, and repair damaged muscle tissue and cells to help return to its typical state, Janet Hamilton, C.S.C.S., and owner of Atlanta-based Running Strong, which offers coaching and rehabilitation services to runners tells Runner’s World.
EPOC is a lot like driving a car, says Pete McCall, C.S.C.S., national director of fitness education at EōS Fitness, based in Carlsbad, California. “If you do a long drive and you turn your car off, your car isn’t going to become cool automatically,” Mccall says. “It’s still going to be warm for—depending on the length of the drive—anywhere from one to five hours afterward.”
How does EPOC affect runners?
The more intense your workout is, the more EPOC you’ll likely experience. According to a small 2013 study published in Kinesiology, six recreational males burned more calories recovering from three 30-second maximal efforts than they did after 30 minutes of moderate aerobic exercise.
In order for EPOC to occur, your muscles have to work to the point of fatigue. Therefore, when you do speed work or strength train, you should deplete your muscles’ energy by the end of your session, according to McCall, if you want that after-burn effect.
That being said, the amount of calories the average person will burn with EPOC might not be as high as you’d think. “If you do a moderate to hard workout, you’re going to have an EPOC effect of maybe two to 10 hours. But it’s not significant—it might be anywhere from 150 to 200 calories in the course of that time, which is only about 20 calories an hour, maximum,” McCall says.
According to research published in Applied Physiology Nutrition and Metabolism in 2014, cyclists and runners who participated in speed interval training burned between 45 to 65 calories within the first two hours following their workout.
The bottom line: The EPOC effect from a longer, slower run—particularly those easy day runs—isn’t as big as workouts like sprints because you never deplete your muscles’ energy all the way.
How do you fuel for EPOC?
As a runner, it’s definitely a good idea to incorporate high-intensity workout sessions, such as speed work and lifting, into your routine. Not only will doing so allow EPOC to occur, but strength training on a regular basis can help boost your endurance, strength, and speed when it comes to running.
While you probably won’t burn a crazy amount of calories postworkout, there still is some extra calorie burn, so you don’t want to risk under-fueling, Hamilton cautions. You need to be consuming enough to account for the number of calories you’re burning both during and after your workout.
“If you’re already giving your body the least amount of fuel it can possibly get away with, [muscle] tissue repair and regeneration [after a hard workout] is probably going to get shortchanged, and that’s when you run into injuries,” she says.
McCall agrees, saying it’s a good idea to stagger your workouts, so that if you do high-intensity one day, you should do something with a lower-intensity the next. That’s because the day after a high-intensity workout, your muscles may not have recovered 100 percent, so you don’t want to make them work as hard as they did previously—you want your body to be able to sustain itself going forward. You also want the time to replenish your body with the right nutrition to help you keep crushing each new workout.
