Love Your Family? Then HIIT Them!

When my family was young I worked diligently to provide for their needs. I provided them a life of comfort. You could even say I indulged them.

But here’s the thing.

As commendable as it is to make my family comfortable, it may be inadvertently killing them with kindness.

How could that be?

Plenty of research shows that a sedentary lifestyle can be considered a disease.

Fortunately the cure is simple.

The human body evolved in a mixed environment (drought & famine, hot & cold temperatures, variable oxygen, saber tooth tigers, etc). As a result we have inherited ancestral DNA that thrives when challenged.

Intermittent episodes of intense physical activity, fasting, or temperature can act as a “vaccine” against our modern sedentary lifestyle.

Here is a highly effective method to get you (and your family) fit and healthy quickly:

Speed Up Your Fitness

What if there was a magical way to get more fit in less time?

Turns out, there is a way.

Fitness is the result of challenging your body with a strenuous activity. (aka exercise). Eustress (positive stress) not only improves our strength and muscularity, it also improves our immune and hormonal systems leading to greater resiliency.

Positive stress (eustress) is a product the intensity and duration of the exercise. In other words:

Fitness = Intensity X Duration

If your body was a car you would get there sooner by driving faster, right?

If you increase the intensity of exercise, you can achieve the same level of fitness in less time.

The following graphic shows how higher intensity can reduce your exercise duration:

What is High Intensity Interval Training?

This 2 minute video briefly explains how to get fit with just 3 minutes of HIIT training per week:

This 28 minute video explains in more detail to get fit with just 6 minutes of HIIT training per week:

An enhanced version of interval training, HIIT involves completing at number of brief intervals close to VO2 max interspersed with recovery periods at low intensities. HIIT can be very physically demanding, as it involves exercising for short intervals of maximum intensity where the anaerobic system is pushed to its limit by reaching the lactate threshold. These intervals are combined with longer, lower-intensity intervals where you recover by using the aerobic system.

It was traditionally thought that endurance training that relied on aerobic activities was the best way to induce physiological adaptations necessary to improve endurance performance. More recently, numerous studies have shown that high intensity interval training (HIIT) can significantly improve both VO2 max and skeletal muscle mitochondrial enzyme production when a training program is carried out for as little as six weeks.

What are the benefits of HIIT?

Here is a brief summary of the benefits of high intensity interval training:

1. Fast & Convenient

• HIIT only needs to be done once every 7–10 days.
• HIIT sessions don’t need to exceed 12 minutes in length.

2. Fat Loss

• HIIT increases your metabolic rate for upward of 24 hours after exercise.
• HIIT increases catecholamine levels (leading to higher levels of fat mobilization and oxidation) and exercise post oxygen consumption (EPOC).

3. Longevity

• HIIT reduces your chances of a cardiovascular event (aka heart attack).
• HIIT triggers metabolic pathways that lower-intensity cardio doesn’t.

4. Stamina

• HIIT increases your aerobic capacity (VO2 max).
• HIIT spike growth hormone levels which builds lean muscle mass (strength).

5. Resiliency

• HIIT strengthens your immune system (responsible for the macrophage/cytokines and satellite cell activation).
• HIIT strengthens your hormonal system (testosterone, IGF-1, HGH responsible for building lean muscle).

You can read more about the science of HIIT further below.

Your HIIT Fitness Program

A good high intensity protocol for fitness and weight loss is 20 seconds of intensity followed by 10 seconds of recovery.

Whether it is running, cycling, rowing or using a cross trainer, subjects improve best when working at maximum intensity for 20s, then resting 10s.

These sessions need only be 6–12 minutes in length (12–24 intervals).

Start with the Starting Workout, followed by Intermediate and Advanced.

• This is important because it reduces your risk of a ‘pull’ injury.
• Progressing through the program allows your ligaments and tendons time to adapt to your muscles (which strengthen quicker).

Starting Workout

• 6 x 50 meter warmups (run, cycle, row, etc) at moderate effort, focusing on maintaining an efficient movement pattern. 20 second rest period between work intervals.
• Focus on good form and don’t worry about your speed.
• This is just a warmup for your sprint efforts.
• After your warmup strides, commence 6 x 50 meter sprints (they should take 8–15 seconds each) at 75% effort.
• Take a one-minute rest period between sprints or otherwise enough to be fully recovered and achieve normal respiration before beginning your next sprint.
• After two to three sessions over a few weeks time, increase your sprint efforts to full speed.

Intermediate Workout

• 6 x 50 meter warmups followed by 6 x 50 meter sprints as described previously, building to 100% effort as appropriate and able.
• TIP: Runners can estimate 50 meters at the park or beach by counting 50 left foot falls (ie. full pace count).
• TIP: Alternatively you can use your Smartphone GPS app or Running app to measure.

Advanced Workout

Perform each exercise in sequence:

 Set 1

• 4 X 50 meters at 75% effort.
• Ten second rest between efforts.
• One minute rest before next exercise.

Set 2

• 6 X 50 meters at 100% effort.
• Ten second rest between efforts.
• Two minutes rest before next exercise.

Set 3

1. 8 X 50 meters at 100% effort.
2. Ten second rest between efforts.
3. Warm down (light jog 2–3 minutes)

How Often?

One day a week is dedicated to HIIT. It’s a highly effective workout that takes only 10 to 15 minutes, including your warmup. Conduct these workouts only when you are feeling 100 percent rested and energized.

Once a week is the maximum you need to sprint, while once every ten days is a good minimum to shoot for. I noticed something weird about my weekly HIIT sessions:

• At the start, HIIT is my least favorite exercise ever.
• When I’m done, HIIT is my most favorite exercise ever.

HIIT may be be not for everybody. In fact, only ~15% of the population prefers intense exercise. The majority of people prefer their exercise level only to the level of a brisk walk or casual bike (Metabolic Equivalent Level 4, see below).

UPDATE: Recent research indicates that HIIT can be perceived to be more enjoyable than moderate-intensity continuous exercise. The greater enjoyment associated with high-intensity intervals can improve exercise adherence for some people.

How Intense is Intense?

A good threshold for HIIT is 90% of your VO2 Max limit. There are 2 ways to assess this:

1. HIIT heart rate threshold = 0.9 * (220 — your age)

• Personally I DO NOT LIKE this method because it requires a HRM and most HRMs are too slow to meaningfully measure short bursts of effort.

2. Talk Test

• Requires no equipment
• Personally I DO LIKE this method because I can concentrate on my form and intensity and balance during max effort, without having to alter my arm or head motion in order to read a HRM.

Using the Talk Test, at 90% of your VO2 Max limit you should be breathing so hard you cannot be able to say 1-word breaths (Level 9, see following Levels of Exertion chart).

If you can say out loud “One, Two, Three”, you are at 70% V02 Max

• See Level 7 in the graphic below

If you can say out loud “One”, you are at 80% V02 Max.

• See Level 8 in the graphic below

If you are too busy breathing to count out loud, you are at 90% V02 Max.

• See Level 9 in the graphic below

Avoid This Common Mistake

Ethiopian marathon runners like to observe the following about their second place competitors:

“Your hard training days are too easy, and your recovery training days are too short”

As a fitness coach I observe a similar pattern in executive fitness routines:

• Too frequent “medium” workouts result in inadequate recovery which then limits exercise effectiveness (as measured by intensity of output)
• This is shown by the red line in the graphic below.
• SOLUTION: Do fewer but more intense work outs (i.e. HIIT).
• This is shown by the green line in the graphic below.

Burn Fat While You Sleep

Excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC, informally called afterburn) is a measurably increased rate of oxygen intake following strenuous activityintended to erase the body’s “oxygen deficit”. EPOC is accompanied by an elevated consumption of fuel. In response to exercise, fat stores are broken down and free fatty acids (FFA) are released into the blood stream.

Similar to how a car’s engine remains warm after being turned off, once a workout is over and you’re back in your daily routine, your body’s metabolism can continue to burn more calories then when at complete rest. This physiological effect is called excess post-exercise oxygen consumption, or EPOC. Also known as oxygen debt, EPOC is the amount of oxygen required to restore your body to its normal, resting level of metabolic function (called homeostasis). It also explains how your body can continue to burn calories long after you’ve finished your workout.

Reduce Your Heart Attack Risk

Fitness is can be expressed as V02 Max or METs (Metabolic Equivalents) — a clinically meaningful metric — both to understand how healthy you are as well as to determine how much exercise intensity you can cope with.

Essentially 1 MET =~3.5 VO2 units, which basically is the amount of oxygen you need to sit & watch TV!

One of the seminal studies that looked at the relationship between fitness, cardio-vascular health & all-cause mortality was conducted by a group led by Saturo Kodama. They combined data from 33 different studies that covered 100,000+ subjects and segmented people into different levels of fitness.

Those with fitness of less than 7.9 METs had a 40% higher risk of mortality than those with intermediate fitness (7.9–10.8 METs) and 70% higher risk than those with high fitness (10.9+ METs).

Every 1 MET increase in fitness tends to result in ~15% improvement in cardiovascular health.

HIIT training increases your METs and VO2 Max, and those greatly lowers your mortality and increases your longevity.

Use It Or Lose It

Muscle that isn’t sufficiently challenged via strenuous activity (or exercise) isn’t deemed worth the “carrying cost” and gets downsized via atrophy genes.

Strength and muscle is a “use it or lose” proposition.

Sports scientists at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, examined different methods of exercising and concluded that high intensity training is better than long, steady workouts.

• Specifically, strength training activates the mTOR genetic pathway which builds muscle via protein synthesis. Cardio training activates the AMPK genetic pathway and makes existing muscle smaller and more efficient. Research shows that too much cardio prevents the addition of new muscle as the up regulation of AMPK seems to down regulate mTOR (the so-called “interference effect” that bodybuilders have observed for decades).
• Lead researcher Martin J. Gibala published these metabolic pathways in the Journal of Physiology:

The Science of HIIT

Research has shown that HIIT dramatically improves VO2 max and other exercise performance capabilities in athletes who rely on aerobic energy metabolism for their chosen sport. In addition, HIIT is shown to directly improve exercise performance in real situations, as shown in lab tests simulating bicycling races lasting from anywhere between 2 minutes to an hour.

VO2 max and other metabolic adaptations are induced faster than was originally believed with just a small amount of HIIT. In study conducted by Gibala and McGee, participants were able to double the amount of time they could exercise after just six HIIT sessions over two weeks; subjects were able to bicycle at 80% of their VO2 max (as calculated prior to beginning the study) for 51 minutes on average, up from 26 minutes.

The most significant point of the Gibala/McGee study was its use of a far smaller quantity of HIIT than in similar investigations. Subjects bicycled at “all out” effort using a braking force on an ergometer for 30 seconds, completing four to six intervals with a four-minute recovery between each interval.

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Originally published at The Healthy Executive.