I’ve heard a few people make remarks like, ?Matt is recommending interval training. I’m not actually. Interval training is just as retarded as many other forms of exercise, and this is why…
If you read stuff like Lyle McDonald, you’ll notice that no such magic status is given to interval training over other forms of exercise. If there are any advantages to it, those advantages are short-lived, expiring after 6-8 weeks or so. I would agree with this wholeheartedly.
Any form of exercise that you do that contains no element of progression will cease to continually give you results. Bodybuilders seem to understand this general principle of exercise and adaptation better than anyone else. To continually gain strength and muscle size, the exercise has to get harder and harder over months and years.
But with interval training as it is typically performed, the exercise doesn’t get harder and harder. It gets easier and easier, putting the brakes on adaptive hormonal changes that increase your fitness levels, partition the food you eat into muscle cells, and trigger spontaneous fat loss. That’s because, when you do the same thing over and over again, it gets easier and progressively LESS challenging. In a short period of time, usually just a couple of months or less, the body has fully adapted to the training and no longer needs to keep changing to meet the demand you are placing on it.
That’s one of the big problems with traditional interval training. When you go for a set number of seconds and then recover for a set number of seconds ? and those time periods remain constant, the exercise becomes increasingly less challenging and therefore less effective over time.
This is what makes Al Sears’s PACE program innovative and effective beyond just the initial phase. Still, I find that the PACE program is difficult to grasp. Even Dr. Mercola reported in his Peak 8 interval training video that he didn’t really understand PACE or ever figure out how to implement the idea of it.
Instead, Mercola went the traditional interval training route and had fantastic results in the short-term, but I think he will find that these results taper off and then stall completely over time. In one of’the videos he even mentions that his heart rate used to get a lot higher when he was doing the intervals. This is of course a sign that his body has adapted to the intervals, and without new challenges and new hurdles that push his body to its limits, he won’t continue to get the results.
This is what got me sort of re-branding this concept in a side project I’ve been working on and have shared with a handful of people. The concept that needed to be hammered home was that the effort that you give must be one of maximum exertion.
It’s this maximum effort, taking the lungs and heart to the limits of their working potential and stimulating them to get better in order to be better prepared for the next challenge that continues to produce results. When you ?push it to the limit? as demonstrated?by’the Turkish Doug Graham in this’training video, you can expect a lot more from doing short bursts of hard exercise than you can from standard interval training.
Plus, going to your own personal threshold is precisely that ? very personal. Set interval times are anything but personal, offering up a one-size fits all to a broad array of people of all shapes, sizes, ages, and fitness levels. For some, doing a 30 second sprint on a bike might necessitate 7 minutes of recovery before attempting another round. For others just walking on a flat surface for a minute may require 7 minutes of recovery. For a professional athlete, a 30 second sprint on a bike might not even get them totally winded, and a recovery period of 90 seconds may be way too long to challenge their capacity for exertion and recovery.
But if you ditch the set times and go to your threshold with a maximum effort ? reaching that threshold in as little time as possible (close to sprint intensity), then you have ?interval? training that is custom fit to your fitness level at that very moment ? and it always progresses along with you, as hard each time you do it as it was the first time when you were totally out of shape. Frequently switching to new exercises helps prevent adaptation and keeps you growing even more.
Of course it’s this continual progression that creates continual adaptation. And the metabolic adaptations to exercise are what have the possibility to yield fat loss and health improvements without willpower, calorie restriction or even thinking about your diet, or rebound weight gain. In fact, take a month off from this type of exercise and you’ll likely find yourself getting even leaner ? not gaining 10 pounds with the snap of your fingers as happens when you stop doing ?cardio.
So no, I’m not recommending interval training. I’m saying that if you are trying to lose fat and wondering if exercise can assist you, the type to do is one that causes metabolic adaptations that favor fat loss. We?re not talking burning calories or glycogen depletion or mechanically burning fat by being in some ?fat-burning zone. That stuff is beyond useless long-term in my experience. Instead it’s about providing a stimulus to the body that makes it view fat storage as a liability ? activating all its ?programs? to prevent body fat from accumulating. Not everyone has a dramatic response to this type of training, but many do. Very dramatic. And personally, I think the health and fitness benefits of expanding lung and heart capacity make this form of exercise worth doing even if it doesn’t do squat for your body composition.
In short?
Metabolic Adaptation Exercise is done by performing a burst of maximum intensity exertion.
MAX effort + Metabolic Adaption Xercise (MAX) = MAXercise
Yeah, I know it’s cheesier than the macaroni and cheese I’ll be eating for dinner, but it has meaning and that meaning is important. I think the concept can be loosely applied to just about any type of exercise. And what’s most remarkable about it is how much some people’s fitness, energy levels, and body composition can change with as little as 2-3 minutes of total exertion time each week.
How to RAISE YOUR METABOLISM.
That's the thing that hit me when I read PACE: progression. I really do like the personalized aspect of it. I don't do anything too specific (I'm a sucker for flexibility), but pushing myself to the max in a short time is an simple goal that I can manage. Right now I'm working on adding sets. For the first couple weeks I could only handle three short sets. Now I'm doing four most of the time. Funny thing, I do notice myself getting leaner when I take several days off in a row because I get busy with a project. Interesting side effects, eh?
That second video is classic!
Well of course, if there's no challenge there's little or no growth. I see plenty of people do intervals like this and wonder why "it's not working!".
Liz-
Yeah, that's the ultimate litmus test for an exercise program. If you lose fat doing it and then lose even more fat when you stop you know your body has made favorable changes from the exercise. If you stop doing it and gain fat back rapidly just like you would after switching from Jenny Craig to Chief's 3 Sisters Buffet, you know that you just calorie-restricted using exercise.
It should be noted that max effort work takes a bigger toll on the body & nervous system for those more advanced (3x bodyweight deadlift, 10.5 100m, etc).
Mercola is a retard. He recommends low doses of "medical" radiation to improve your health.
Jannis name calling isn’t necessary to explain you don’t like someone…..unless you’re like 5. Grow up if you want people to listen. BTW, are you a republican? I’d put money on it.
Matt,I can certify you've got the right idea when it comes anabolic exercise. There's a bodybuilder in a in you tryin' to breakout :-)
Cecil
Epic video, lol!
I agree with Ray Peat and many others here that weight lifting is the ultimate form of exercise, and it's a perfect example of this form of exercise. Ask anyone that's ever done widowmaker squats or deadlifts, or even clean and press… dayum!
As for PACE, it's pretty easy to set-up if you follow his suggestion of a few progressing sets of exercise. I've set it up for different kinds of exercise with this – FlowFit, kettlebells/sledgehammer work, and my favorite being weight lifting.
To quote Al Sears:
"But what you want to do is re-train your body so it performs like it was designed. That way, you can have the lean, muscular body nature intended for you.
And here’s how you do it:
? do sets of exercises that are progressively intense
? rest in-between each set
? exert yourself for no more than 12-15 minutes"
The first set is 4-6 minutes of warming up, still able to easily talk.
The second set is 3-4 minutes of ramping up the intensity, getting hard to talk now.
The third set is the peak exertion set for 2-4 minutes where you got all out (within your ability of course).
It's a good idea to start out slow and build-up your progression to your peak over a few weeks.
If anyone needs help setting this up, just ask.
This seems right. When I'm on the elliptical at the YMCA I don't look at the clock or the odometer. Usually I have a towel thrown over it. I just ask myself, can I go faster? Can I go further? If yes to either, do it.
I've never reached 30 seconds of exertion though. Three months in I still reach muscle failure. I've also noticed I need more time to recover now then when I started, as my ability to produce effort is growing faster than my ability to recover. I'm sure that will work itself out eventually.
PS: Agreed about the "bodybuilder" in Matt trying to come out, Cecil. Good call.
I spent many years in that world and the ones that know what they're doing are so far ahead of everyone else nutrition and exercise-wise. That's where I got the majority of my education before starting to explore the many general books and blogs on the subject like this one.
Hey Matt,
I wrote a funny comment which I was proud of but I made a mistake when I sent it so i'll quit the humour and get to the point this time lol:
– I think you are right about losing weight after exercising properly: I experienced it full force a few years ago after quitting my 400m/800m competition training
– Do you think that training three times a week on only one exercise (200m full speed) would be enough? as in: short warm up, 3 short sprints to finish warming up, 200m as fast as you can, like you're in the olympic games, then go back walking.
– I'm saying this because I notice that my body can't take the 8-10reps Sears recommends. I'm sure it'd be fine if I wasn't able to run so fast. I think I could run 200m in 23sec. It's far from Bolt but it's still a toll on the body when you do it 10 times in a row !
– I think that sprinting is the best exercise (while running, biking or swimming or even doing skipping without moving) because, as you said, you are always going at full speed. It doesn't matter how good you are. You will always challenge your best time.
Martin.
I think one advantage of Peak 8 over PACE is that Peak 8 requires that you go at full throttle when doing the exercise, whereas in PACE you might do 2-3 minutes of something which, by definition, means doing it a pace far below your maximum. There's no such thing as a 2-minute sprint.
I think this is why Mercola (the retard) got better results with Peak 8 than PACE. I'd prefer to see the two ideas fused together. That's what Brock is doing – going as fast as he can but not doing it in set and rigid intervals that prohibit progression.
To me that's the solution for the shortcomings of both approaches. MAXercise bizzies.
And it's also amazing how the body can adapt quickly. If you push yourself to the limit, you're pretty sure that by the next training, you will have improved significantly (and the less good you are, the bigger the improvement, in my opinion).
Martin.
Martin-
I think 1 set of full intensity is probably enough – especially as you become more advanced. With Olympic 400 meter runners, 99% of the workout is warmup and cooldown.
8-10 reps is totally outrageous if you ask me. I've gotten to where I do the absolute minimum and feel really confident in this approach from a health perspective – with both sprints and more weightlifting-ish stuff.
Matt,
Something to consider and what John alluded to above is that constant max efforts take a huge toll on the CNS. This would be especially detrimental to someone that's still trying to heal, or has adrenal issues.
Either way, no-one can constantly push to their max without burning out fairly quickly.
Martin,
To use the twins example from Sears' work, he had the one twin doing 6-8 sprints bu they were only 50m or so, so really six 50m (300m total) sprints isn't far off what you're doing with one 200m sprint.
I agree Michael. That's why I think it's much better to err on the side of too little than too much when it comes to this type of exercise. I tried doing it every other day but that's way too much if you are doing multiple sets to absolute max.
Michael,
How do you know that Peat is fond of weight lifting? Did he tell you personally or are you refering to one of his articles?
Hey Jannis,
Someone emailed him and asked, and this was his reply:
"Weight lifting is the only form recommended. Weight lifting helps the muscle cells produce anabolic steroids, which lowers cortisol."
I've also been in communication with him lately. Well if you can call it that haha. Anyone who's ever tried having an email convo with him would know what I mean ;-)
I'm a huge fan of Scott Sonnon's work – will provide clip further done for your viewing pleasure – and really like his focus on joint health and injury prevention. His approach to exercise is slightly different to a max exertion one because its military/martial/buteyko influenced background deems that one wants to exercise cleverly enough to not get caught in non-adaptive territory but create adaptive changes through increasing sophistication of the exercises in terms of their ability to train the nervous system to handle increasing levels of sophistication in movement and stress. A real cns directed workout. He wouldn't be down with heaving breathes for example because of its effects on co2 levels and because it usually means that one loses the ability to correctly monitor ones body resulting in poor form. I've heard him mention that when you start panting you should slow the breathing and the exercise down to cause an adaptive response from the body which I have experienced as vastly improved and easier movement when you then crank up the intensity again.
That said, I think there is much to be said for maximum exertion training and in Sonnon's training regime I found that his Intuflow joint mobility training is really amazing stuff and would be ideal as a warm up before attempting max exertion training. The first time I ever really experienced running easily was after a session of Intuflow and it was beyond phenomenal. Openness of hips, easy of movement, gliding through every stride, powering from the abdomen. It certainly would allow for improved intensity when performing max exertion training.
The following link is to Sonnon's Intuflow training which has all been put up on Youtube, well at least the beginners and the Intermediate stages. This is part 1 of the beginners level – the rest can be found quite easily.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsMPqP7hxRk&feature=related
The program starts with the exercises you will see then the advanced forms start to use clubbells, which works the tendon/ligament/fascia component of strength, health and fitness. His Bodyflow component also works this aspect of elastic strength but let's not get ahead of ourselves.
Matt, how are you exercising now? You mentioned, was it, joint issues before?
see you later, Robert
Hah! In your face, blogger. I control c'd. Hah!
I think i'm going to do just that: warming up and doing one rep at full speed.
maybe smth like:
– monday: 200m
– Tuesday: bodyweight exercises
– wednesday: swimming (50m full speed)
– Tuesday: bodyweight exercises
– Friday: 100m
– rest
– rest
It should give me enough resting time.
I find the same to be true with bodybuilding as well. I see no difference whether I do 10 one-handed push ups or 3 sets of ten.
Martin.
Michael,
Thanks. And yes, it sure is difficult to have a casual conversation with him.
But since he probably answers dozens of recurring questions every day, I can understand that his replies contain only the necessary information.
Well said Matt. This has been my experience and that of many of our members. One point that gets lost in the fad of "muscle confusion" is the advantage of some strength adaptation, especially for certain key functional movements that are very practical to get stronger in. Too much variety and random "intensity" prevents the trainee from getting as strong as he could with the same or less time invested.
What we try to do is have progression and variety, but not too much variety. We always center around the key themes of a hip hinge, squat, and overhead pressing (unassisted by a bench or machine.)
Also lost in the intensity craze is the power of good quality movement. The trainee often starts single minded about fat loss but after achieving that (assuming injury is averted) the trainee wants better posture and realizing that a nice physique goes beyond being lean. Sound posture and good range of motion offer both cosmetic benefits and huge quality of life bonuses for the person moving into a more fit/active lifestyle.
All of that could have been baked into the plan from the beginning without extra time invested and at the end you achieve fat loss, better posture, better movement quality, etc. All significant bonuses and useful for giving us the best chance possible at enjoying productive sunset years :).
So I would just recommend that anyone doing a self guided program with some fancy moves or any type of load bearing exercise, take a little extra time to perfect the movements. If the trainee has poor range like most of us do, find a couple of corrective moves that can be added in your program to counter your deficiency.
Thanks for the killer blog!
-Yusuf
If I enjoy steady state cardio (running usually) a few times a week but supplement with this 2x per week do you think that will negate the damage? I feel better mental-health wise doing some 45 min workouts during the week…. I dOnt get the same effect with super short& intense workouts
Anonymous,
So you're asking if you can add more stress in the form of exercise to overcome the stress of the poor form of exercise you're already performing?
If I understand your question then I think the answer is obvious.
Why are people so into crap like PACE? It's the same thing as following a diet program with stupid unnecessary rules with no evidentiary basis.
Hard work with heavy weights on "big" exercises will pay off if your goal is to lose fat and/or build muscle. Bulgarians do well with a very repetitive routine; Russians vary exercises more; bodybuilders don't have a magic workout (one to another can be vastly different), but they don't coast through like most people. If you want to get more nuanced for the sake of performance, resources like [the late] Mel Siff, Louie Simmons, etc are good–not Al Sears.
so are we talking old-newschool or new-oldschool?
;)
Seriously though, I like your style. Rather than the old adage "one more" I prefer "one less".
My goal is to do 1 superhuman feat of strength (lift a car off an old lady trapped beneath with just my barehands for example) and then never work out again!
Totally agree John. I'm a big Louie Simmons/WSBB fan, some of my best BB'ing results ever were achieved with variations of their stuff.
I think things like PACE are appealing and discussed here because it's targeted to the general public, whereas most people are clueless about weight lifting and think they're gonna get huge and nasty if they so much as look at a barbell.
Plus, most people here are in recovery from many different issues and programs like PACE are a simple, and quick way to start exercising effectively without impacting recovery. What's more, Al Sears approaches it with a focus on health, which I also think plays a part in the interest.
But like you said, weight lifting is truly where it's at in terms of results. It checks all the right boxes.
Preach it brother. What perfect timing as my wife and I have recently started 'runnin tha hill'. We don't have any set times of running or resting. We are just going @ 90% until we are totally spent. This is the first exercise either of us has done in over a year so "2-3 minutes of total exertion time each week" is the exact plan we are on. I can already see some minor improvements and can't wait to see what's in store the next few weeks n months.
The most valuable thing I take away from this is that the intervals needn't be precisely timed. When I've listened to Mercola talking about Peak 8, I've always stumbled a little at the idea of having to acquire all kinds of technology to measure how far, how long, how heavy, etc.
The idea that I could just put on sneakers, climb down the bluff right outside our door by rope (when it's done thawing and turning to mud), and then do sprints on the beach sand at low tide, to the max, with some breaks in between, and then climb back up the rope, and do my metabolism some good, is really encouraging–empowering, even.
Does that sound like the right track or am I missing sthg?
I don't have a clue about body building, but hear more and more about how good it is. I'm always a fan of using my own bodyweight or just working on the homestead for that… What should I be reading?
Many thanks for this!
Ela, that's how I'm taking it. It's something about seeing what your body can do, I think. That's why I'm not measuring "how far, how long, how heavy, etc." as you said. It's so much more fun to just get out there and just doing what my body is capable of doing at that moment on that day. Something very freeing about it. It's probably just a mental thing, but it's definitely fun.
Can someone give a concise definition of what "interval training" actually is? I can make guesses, but I don't know what people actually mean by this.
As for this idea of progression, Matt, do you mean that to be applied within a particular workout (as in doing 25 pushups, then 30 pushups, then 40 pushups, all within a few minutes of each other), or only across weeks and months (as in doing 25 pushups today, then 30 tomorrow, then 40 the day after that)?
Matt- I think you will find most athletes are already doing or including progressively harder and harder intervals, aiming for their own personal peak (whatever that may be, for me its 189 beats/minute running uphill.) I don't know if non-athletes think of it differently, maybe they do. I have used plyos (lots of jumping) to improve my ability to scale those hills with relative ease but its still tremendously hard from a cardiovascular perspective.
Alisha
Nice post, its a great point because we can get carried away with interval training and over do it. It is certainly something I have done in the past and still do occasionally. I have always gotten the best results from workouts that were totally new and shocked my body in a certain way pushing things that bit further than I would normally do.
Brocks idea of putting the towel over the cross trainer and just going for it for a couple minutes on and off sounds about right. Just going for it is key whether it be on a treadmill or doing pushups – keep it short and sweet but go hard.
So what type of exercise is everyone doing? I have a stationary bike but my legs give out before I'm particularly winded. I like to do sprints outside by I have a family so I find it hard to fit those it…maybe when the weather warms up.
i do this with a concrete block in my back garden. snatch it off the ground up to my chest, front squat into overhead press back to front squat etc. just drop it when i'm done.
Fellow Matt Stoners (aka readers of this blog) might find this interesting:
"Two vegans who fed their 11-month-old daughter only mother's milk went on trial in northern France on Tuesday charged with neglect after their baby died suffering from vitamin deficiency."
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.35c2caa5efa0e183b7b38a2d0e2b7f40.71&show_article=1
violet beauregard…
Nice name !
Martin.
Mike –
I mean progression over time.
Interval training just means set periods of exertion and rest. Such as 30 seconds of exertion followed by 90 seconds of rest repeated 8 times like you see with Peak 8.
Michael-
Thanks for pointing out what gets lost in the fray – that this information is about trimming down exercise info. to the absolute bare minimum so that it can be applied to the greatest number of people in the most simple way possible. That's what I'm looking to do.
Sears's book or what I have written on the subject is nowhere near as advanced as some of the best writing on the subject – which is why it is superior.
I feel very confident that a large percentage of out-of-shape people could read 5 pages of information on the subject and go out and get real, tangible results without being intimidated by complexity, gym memberships, time constraints, and so on. That's what I'm after.
Yusuf-
Great to have your comments buddy. And they were excellent.
Ela-
That's great. You totally got it. Completely. That sounds awesome.
Heart rate monitors-
I have actually used a heart rate monitor to perform the exercise. I think that's a good tool for someone who might want to take this a little more seriously. I find that my max effort is very consistent in terms of the maximum heart rate I reach during exercise (192 typically, or 197 with lots of sugar in my diet).
Matt, I can totally get what you're saying here, yet there's one thing that has me thinking… I don't think doing an excersice without gradually increasing the intensity across time is necessarily stupid. After all, it's probably what humans had been doing since their their dawn. You do some hunting, lifting, walking and your body adapts, but the intensity is, on average, the same through the months, and it worked very fine. The kitavans are agricultural and their physiques are light years above those of industrialized men. Get what I mean? Of course one may not keep improving above a point, that I can get, but that doesn't make an excercise that is constant through the months bad in any way.
I've been finding a similar question in myself to El66K's, but predicated on a slightly different scenario: living up here in AK, physical activity demands are very different, and much less, in the winter than when it isn't frozen (unless you're a skier, which I'm not yet).
I'm finding myself wondering how I'm going to be in condition for all the wilderness hiking that inevitably happens around here in the summer, let alone helping my husband with hunting/fishing and doing my garden, without spending a lot of time hiking, and adapting myself to doing a lot of that.
But actually, my thoughts are coming out on the side of something like what Matt's describing anyway. With my work, I don't have time to take half of each day hiking to get in shape. So I need to find some forms of exercise that give maximum bang for buck, that get me in shape (without re-crashing my adrenals) in the most effective way for the least amount of time.
I imagine (and hope) that if I do that, I'll be able to tolerate lots of hiking, or whatever, without the drawbacks of slowed metabolism or accommodation to exercise quantities. Am I right?
El66k-
You can be a "native" and have a great body by modern standards or an awful one. The type of exercise done has a lot to do with that, as does the diet. Modern science and experience reveals a much more clear picture of what types of activity yield what types of results. What someone's ancestors did does not make it healthy or helpful to a modern human.
Ela-
This type of short exercise will not get your feet in shape for hiking, but it will certainly get your cardiovascular system and muscles in shape for hiking. You'd be surprised. I can play frisbee like a madman for an hour without ever getting tired or particularly winded.
From a health and body composition perspective, I don't think you want your body to adapt to hiking – but to offset the hiking with anabolic exercise like MAXercise or weightlifting to prevent hiking adaptations.
The adaptations to hiking are:
1) Loss of muscle mass, particularly in the upper body
2) Enhanced fat storage capability, particularly in the abdomen
3) Reduced metabolic rate
4) Increased appetite
Matt–ew, no, then: I _don't_ want my body to 'adapt to hiking.'
So, does it have to be weightlifting, or could it be all-out sprints/rowing machine? I was also wondering, does holding plank to failure count in the same way? I can definitely go for longer if I keep doing it, and it definitely gets me panting. Although that's about holding stationary, is it having the same effects?
thanks
Again, Matt- I want to know how one can minimize metabolic damage from endurance exercise. Or can you?
I ENJOY exercising, and I feel happier because of it. Maybe I've just been brainwashed or its a masochistic thing, but I do!
However, I would like to lose about 10 lbs I gained from …. eating the food.
OK. But I was talking about doing an excercise that does not get increasingly difficult as a way to mantain a certain level of benefit. I doubt such excercise is harmful to someone or his ancestors.
I don't really understand the whole point. You can make interval training progressive if you chose so (more reps, shorter breaks, higher resistance, whatever) or you can just do the same program all over. Many people also lift the same weights the same times over and over again in the gym once they plateau.
just an fyi,
since i started eating sugar 2 weeks ago my weight has gone up 3 pounds on average. dunno how much is fat, but for what it's worth my face looks leaner today than it did 2 week ago. my mood is amazingly stable and constantly in the positive. the last time i remember feeling this good was when i was super young. i'm 23 now.
-Anonymous
I'm on day 20 now of binging on fruit sugars in the morning. Feeling a lot better than in the first week, hardly any headaches and less energy/blood sugar drop in the afternoon, though I still get some hot flushes. Caught a cold about two weeks ago so I had to take a break form the interval training, but I still haven't gained any fat since I started the fruit loading from what I can tell. I had definitely not expected that outcome from adding about 300g of fruit sugars to my daily diet. The facebloat is mostly gone now as well.
Then again, I still haven't really noticed any real energy boost from doing this and my basal temperature is still shaky. So the negatives are mostly gone but I've yet to see any real positives, but I'm intrigued to see where this is going now at least.
And I think I may have overdone the interval exercises, I was doing five to six 15 sec intervals that were intense enough to have me panting for minutes and occasionally make me feel on the verge of vomiting, 3 times per week. That may be one of the reasons I finally caught the virus that had been going around my workplace for weeks.
So what would be better, going down on the number of intervals per session and maybe just have one real 110%-all-out sprint per session, or keep doing 5-6 intervals per session but fewer sessions per week?
Hi Matt,
What do you think is the best exercise to do to maintain a certain body weight?
Matt,
What do you think about Crossfit? Have you ever experimented with it? Do you know much about it? Cause I think that if you take your theory of exercise far enough you end up with something like Crossfit. Crossfit equals constantly varied functional movements at high intensity. I tried it for awhile and liked it, but I was sore almost everyday and I'm not sure that part is healthy.
Oh and I did the 4 Hour body protocol and gained 5lbs of muscle in 28 days. Maybe though I should get my basal temp up first and then try to build muscle
…
Dave-
I've done HIT as Ferriss describes before. It did nothing, although I did like it overall and think it would be really practical for a lot of newbies. But I was eating a lowish, slow-carb diet like he recommends which really limits muscle growth potential.
High-glycemic carbs are much better for muscle gain and fat loss than low glycemic carbs.
Crossfit is overly strenuous, and there is no muscle overload theme so there is no chance of obtaining decent muscle gains if that is what one is after. My exercise is similar to Crossfit in intensity but I do it for a total of 5 minutes or so once per week. (Yesterday for example I did a warmup followed by one 300-400 meter sprint to dry heaving, followed by cooldown and stretch). Much more effective and exponentially healthier to spend 99.9% of the week in a rested state. One can always add volume if they aren't getting results.
I've also been doing a fair amount of the CIWG workout, which seems to be highly (re)productive…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oaHHrNQVrg
It all boils down to eat whole foods!
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,2037749_2219851,00.html
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,2037749_2219875,00.html
468 lbs and he only eats 1600 calories of processed crap or 140 lbs and he eats 5200 calories of real food.
That second video didn’t look like Star Wars training, it looked like hard force training for Kung Fu. That kid at the end had a pretty high stance… Your cheesier than Gouda idea about MAXercise sounds like the only kind of exercise that’s ever been useful for me.
Hey all,
I found that PACE did have a fat loss effect when I began doing metabolic ass-kickers as my PACE modality (burpees, but now I’m expanding into leg blaster set, mountain climbers etc. as well as burpees).
I did not notice much of a fat loss effect when I was doing swimming sprints and mountain bike sprints. I’m pretty close to my ideal weight, and hadn’t been specifically focussed on losing fat, so I was pleasantly suprised when it just started to happen.
The key with PACE is that you must continually keep increasing the difficulty and you gauge that by wearing a heart monitor. You try to hit your target rate which is close to your personal max. Note: 220 – age was just a WAG and PACE uses 207 – (.7 x age). However, this is only an average for your age group. You need to figure out your own target/near max. I’m nearing codger-dom but I get my heart to 170+ in my intervals and have actually hit 180 on occasion.
It’s true you can’t sprint for 2 minutes, but for the last minute or more of my intervals I’m over 95% of my target near max, which I believe is what causes the metabolic benefits in this type of training.
Yeah, the heart rate is the key. And there’s no way to calculate it. Each individual has to go and find it for themselves. The highest mine has gone is 196 bpm. So I know that’s a 100% effort level for me.