Month: April 2008

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Steady State vs. Intervals: Summing Up

In the previous article, I looked at research examining The Metabolic Effects to Short-term High-intensity Interval Training.

Summing up briefly, it showed quite clearly that, at least in relatively untrained individuals, a short-term (2-6 week) program of high-intensity interval training (workouts typically done three times per week) can generate similar adaptations to longer duration training.

In that post, I finished by asking the following questions:

There’s no doubt (and I haven’t intended to suggest otherwise) that high intensity interval training can have benefits. It’s time effective and may induce similar performance adaptations to longer duration traditional cardio. With regards endurance athletes, it’s clear that even short periods of low volume interval training can have rather large benefits for performance.

But with most of the benefits seeming to occur with only a handful of sessions per week (2-3 is the norm) and with benefits appearing to end fairly quickly (3-6 weeks), we might ask what a trainee should do when either

  1. They need to train more frequently than that
  2. They are looking at their training over a period longer than a few weeks.
… Keep Reading
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Metabolic Adaptations to Short-Term High-Intensity Interval Training

Continuing from my discussion of Exercise Efficiency, I want to dip back into the research and look at the metabolic adaptations to high-intensity interval training (HIIT).  Specifically I want to look at the following review.

Gibala, MJ and SL McGee. Metabolic Adaptations to Short-Term High-Intensity Interval Training: A Little Pain for a Lot of Gain. Exerc Sport Sci Rev (2008) 36: 58-63.

Which looks at the research (as of 2008) on the adaptations seen with HIIT.   In this regard the researchers state:

High-intensity interval training (HIT) is a potent time-efficient strategy to induce numerous metabolic adaptations usually associated with traditional endurance training. As little as six sessions of HIT over 2 wk or a total of only approximately 15 min of very intense exercise (approximately 600 kJ), can increase skeletal muscle oxidative capacity and endurance performance and alter metabolic control during aerobic-based exercise.

My Comments

It’s long been felt or argued that the only way to reach the pinnacle of endurance performance is through years of grinding effort, usually involving absolute piles of low-intensity training.… Keep Reading

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Explaining Exercise Efficiency

Continuing with the topic of steady state vs. interval training, I want to look at the topic of exercise efficiency.  This is an aspect of exercise physiology that is misunderstood by most who write about it.  And sadly this misunderstanding is what leads them to draw some very bad conclusions.

What is Exercise Efficiency?

You can consider this article a sort of side-trip about the whole issue of intervals versus steady state cardio that I’ve been discussing in the previous articles. I’ve mentioned exercise efficiency briefly in a couple of posts but want to make some more detailed comments before continuing on with the series..

One of the common arguments against steady state cardio is something akin to ‘Steady state is useless because you become more efficient at it and burn less calories doing it.’

I’ve already addressed part of why this argument is stupid but want to go into a bit more detail.… Keep Reading

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Estimating Maintenance Calories

Question: If you would allow me a brief intro . . . my name is Leland Hammonds and I am a 29 year old Kinesiology professor here in San Antonio, Texas. I also own my own personal training business. For the last three years, I have spent approx three hours a day, six days a week studying nutrition and exercise research as they relate to fat loss. It consumes my every waking thought.

Although I do absolutely no marketing – I am booked solid Mon-Fri early mornings and late evenings (basically every second I am not at the college) with fat-loss clients. I believe this has more to do with my client selection/admission process and absolutely constant nagging about nutrition (I normally do not allow a client to continue training with me if they don’t get their nutrition right within the first few weeks of training). All my clients are referrals and almost all of them want fat loss.… Keep Reading

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Steady State vs. HIIT: Explaining The Disconnect

In this series of articles, I’ve been addressing some issues relating to the debate over steady state and interval training for fat loss.    In the last two posts, hopefully I’ve made the point that a lot of what the pro-interval crowd is resting the benefits of interval training on (namely EPOC, which is the post-exercise calorie burn) is a whole lot of nothing.

With any realistic amount of intervals, not only does the total calorie burn of the workout itself pale compared to longer moderate intensity steady state sessions, the EPOC simply doesn’t amount to anything. Certainly not enough to explain the rather rabid and myopic recommendation of that form of training.

Yet we seem to have something of a real-world problem, there is an apparent disconnect with the physiology that I’ve (so-far) looked at and the results of research (or the real world), many of which are showing greater fat loss with the interval versus steady state exercise mode.… Keep Reading