Posts Tagged: HIIT

Low-Intensity Exercise Part III – Lactic Acid and Growth Hormone

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growth hormone lactic acid aging diabetes anorexia

There isn’t a whole lot more that I wanted to say about low-intensity exercise other than for some indivuals, particularly those very sensitive to stress, may fare better keeping intensity level very low.  But I did want to get a few words in about lactic acid and growth hormone, as there is a huge blind infatuation with growth hormone these days. Growth hormone is far from being worthy of blind worship.  Growth hormone is something that surges when the body is subjected to major stresses.  Two of the most major stresses – fasting and high-intensity exercise at or near one’s maximum heart rate, stimulate the most dramatic increase in growth hormone.  Anorexics, for example, have much higher levels of growth hormone, and are even thought to develop resistance to growth hormone similar to what happens… Read more »

The Case for Low-Intensity Exercise Part I

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Benefits of aerobics

The whole world is drowning in the incredible, magnificent, growth-hormone spiking, heart-rate variability improving, lung-expanding, fat-burning benefits of high-intensity exercise. I define high-intensity exercise as basically the type of exercise that you can’t do for more than a minute or two at a time before either a) dying or b) slowing down and catching your breath. The superiority of high-intensity over low-intensity exercise just keeps on rolling in. And the fitness world has been thoroughly hijacked by it. Crossfit, Insanity, P90X, HIIT, Plyometrics, Bodyrock – it’s all grueling work at high heart rates in excess of the lactate threshold (the level of oxygen-deprivation where lactic acid starts being produced at a high rate). The case for high-intensity exercise – interval training, hard weightlifting, etc., is a strong case. So how… Read more »

Heavy Weights Low Reps

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heavy weight low reps

I don’t have much time to post today, but I received an email from a girl just the other day, and she mentioned jumping back into Crossfit after resting and refeeding for about a month.  Not good.  She experienced major insomnia as so often happens when doing really grueling exercise, which seemed to only worsen as she continued.  Research and ideas I came across touting the benefits of high intensity interval training managed to seduce me a couple of years ago.  While it may be true that higher intensity exercise (like Crossfit or HIIT) yields certain benefits, the fact of the matter is that really hard, grueling exercise has some negatives too – and I just don’t find it very sustainable.  There’s only so many times that you can realistically motivate yourself… Read more »

Oxygen Debt

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In Diet Recovery I recently added some new content about the importance of stressing exercise intensity more than duration for achieving metabolic adaptations that help with achieving a better ratio of body fat to lean body mass. Strictly from a body composition point of view that’s neato and all, but there’s strong evidence that doing short bursts of hard exercise has very unique, and potentially unmatched health benefits. The first time I ever paid attention to the term “oxygen debt” was during my review of some of Scott Abel’s stuff. I didn’t count, but I’m pretty sure in his 5-Day MET DVD series he says “oxygen debt” while gasping for air in between sets at least 372 times. It seems kind of important to the guy, who I consider to be… Read more »

Marathon? More like Moron-athon. Smarter Ways to Exercise

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In the last post we discussed the “not so fast” exercise. Not so fast as in endurance exercise and not so fast as in be careful about believing that endurance exercise will enhance metabolism, help you lose weight, improve your health, improve your insulin sensitivity, and so on. For the vast majority of people, it won’t – particularly if taken to extremes of intensity and duration – like marathon running. Although, in marathon-running’s defense, it is a great way to achieve infertility, risk sudden heart attack, damage joints, suffer from chronic inflammation, raise cortisol, suppress your immune system, suffer from frequent colds and infections, develop arthritis, asthma, and autoimmune disease, lose sex drive, get rid of pesky muscle tissue, and age much more quickly including developing raisin skin. That’s of… Read more »