High Intensity Interval Training - NO pain, NO gain.

Life is time consuming. So is being an endurance athlete. Attempting to balance work, life, play and training for our favorite endurance events can often become overwhelming and lead to burn out. What if, however, I could suggest an exercise regimen that would match the countless hours one puts in for swim, bike, and run training that would take a quarter of ones time? A magic pill of some-sort your American brain might ask? No not exactly, but here’s the solution. . . .

            Endurance training provides a stimulus that challenges the respiratory and metabolic systems of the body. In doing so, the body adapts to the stimulus, and in turn, creates a more mature and efficient system able to handle the demands of aerobic exercise; I.E the exercise stimulus gets easier. Obviously, this is the desired result any endurance athlete is looking for, because, we are able then, to successfully participate at submaximal exercise competitions (such as a running or triathlon events). The problem with this system, however, is that endurance training requires INSANE AMOUNTS OF TIME!!          

To remedy the situation, a group of researchers from McMaster University out of Ontario Canada conducted research on the usefulness of High Intensity Training (HIT) on endurance performance. 

Through a simple protocol where 1 group participated in HIT and the other group (control group) did nothing, researchers observed a double in length of time (26 min on average to 51min) that exercise could be maintained at a fixed workload. This finding is interesting because the exercise bout that the participants volunteered for were multiple 30second sprints on a loaded stationary bike. What makes the finding even more interesting is that the researchers observed performance gains without significant increases in peakVO2 which suggests that the adaptations are taking place on a cellular level(I.E t.

You may be thinking, “Wait a minute! How can you compare a group of individuals exercising vs a group of non-exercisers? Great thought! That’s just step one. To clarify the role of the mode of exercise more, the authors utilized a similar protocol where individuals performed six sessions of HIT training over 2 weeks (30second bouts of VERY HARD CYCLING) and were compared to the control group who performed 6 session of continuous cycling at 65%peakVo2 for 90-120min (something similar to what your standard triathlete might do in a 1.5-2wk period).

Most surprisingly the two groups demonstrated similar adaptations both from an exercise performance stand point and a skeletal muscle oxidative standpoint (I.E they were utilizing fuel similarly during performance trials).

The current findings by Gibala and colleagues suggest that an athlete who is struggling to make their workouts fit into their daily schedule can exchange long aerobic training session with HIT sessions and obtain similar performance and metabolic (how you utilize fuel) adaptations as if they were performing their long aerobic workouts. Realize (disclaimer), these results must be scaled and an ironman athlete should not think he/she could replace their long ride (~5hrs) with 30second intervals and perform on the same level as if they had spent time in the saddle. Simply, the authors are suggesting that the metabolic and performance gains are similar and an athlete, in some cases, could use HIT training as a supplement or replacement in cases where their time is better spent attending their daughters soft ball game rather then spending 1-4 hours practicing their favorite endurance sport.