Interval Training

A Fitness & Nutrition Newsletter Article

If you are like I was, you believe the secret to getting proper exercise was accomplishing three types of duration training:

• Cardio
• Weight training
• Aerobics

After much research, I am convinced I was uninformed. Maybe you are too, here is why:

I now believe doing an exercise thousands of times without resting will not build a healthy heart and lungs. Most weight training just produces bloated muscle fibers that become dysfunctional. Staying within your aerobic limits may even shrink your heart and lung capacity.

For several years I’ve published articles by Exercise Physiologist Greg Landry and told you about methods used by 3-time Olympian, best-selling author, and co-producer of Pass It On Ruben Gonzalez in Interval Training. In this article I’m going to focus on some things about Interval Training I’ve learned from Dr. Al Sears, author of a great book, I’ll tell you about later.

When you read the recommendations of The American Medical Association, The American Heart Association, The Institutes of Medicine, and even the new USDA food pyramid, they all focus on durational exercise. In fact, the latest recommendations are that we increase the duration of our exercise to at least 60 minutes.

Jack Kelly was an acquaintance of mine through to my involvement with the United States Olympic Committee and Amateur Athletic Union. Jack was an Olympic athlete, president of the USOC and also the brother of actress Grace Kelly. One day he went for his usual morning run and it resulted in heart failure.

Jim Fixx was known for touting the benefits of endurance running. That is, until he suffered a fatal heart attack while he was running.

Sergio Grinkov, famous Russian ice skater, who did endurance training, died from a heart attack, which occurred while he was skating.

You probably don’t recognize the name “Philippides”, but he’s the source of the Marathon. He ran 26.2 miles from Marathon to Athens to relay the victory of the Greeks over the Persians. He proclaimed the name of the sports products manufacturer “NIKE”, a Greek word which translates to “Victory”. What you may not remember is that he collapsed and died immediately after.

I know there are a number of factors including oxidative stress and clogged arteries that could have contributed to the death of these athletes. All I am saying is that endurance training is not a guarantee of heart health. Heart attacks do not occur because of a lack of endurance, they occur when there is a sudden increase in cardiac demand that exceeds your heart’s capacity.

There are some interesting comparisons between long duration training and interval training. At the Laval University in Quebec, using exercising for long duration of 45 minutes with out any interruption and short interval duration of 15-90 seconds with resting in between, the researchers found the short interval group lost 9 times more fat than the endurance group. The research also showed that short duration bursts:

• Improved Maximal cardiac outputs
• Promoted quicker cardiac adjustments
• Helped lose body fat with as little as 10 minutes a day
• Achieved higher peak stroke volumes (maximum amount of blood pumped by your heart)
• Improved cholesterol levels
• Continued to burn fat after stopping exercise

Would everyone like to get these benefits without spending more time at the gym? YES!

Do you want to be lean, energetic, disease-free and injury resistant while building powerful lungs?

I mentioned earlier about a great book by Dr. Al Sears, a member of the American College of Sport Medicine and ACE certified fitness trainer, who has written over 500 articles and 6 books in a variety of health medicine fields. His latest book is entitled “Rediscover Your Native Fitness” and discusses in detail his program for Progressively Accelerating Cardiopulmonary Exertion – PACE*. Simply put it is a method of exertion and recovery.

Progressivism is doing a little more of each exercise component each time you do it.
Acceleration is training you body to respond faster each time you exercise
Cardiopulmonary refers to heart and lung capacity enhancement
Exertion is increased demand for oxygen

I’ve included some excerpts from his book in this article and would encourage you to purchase his book and study it.

Forty years ago Dr. Kenneth Cooper published “Aerobics” as the perfect way to train your heart and boost your aerobic conditioning. We have learned a lot since then about what is the best way to train. A recent Harvard study shows that athletes doing short duration, high intensity workouts reduced their risk of heart disease by 100 percent more than if they just practiced aerobics.

A study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine showed that men and women who exercised at a higher intensity had lower blood pressure, lower triglycerides (blood fat), higher HDL cholesterol and less body fat.

Burning fat while exercising sends signals to you body that it needs fat, thereby training your body to produce more fat for the next time you exercise. With the short duration routines your body burns ATP, a molecule muscles use for energy and the most readily available source of energy for about 2-3 minutes; then switches to carbohydrates stored in muscle tissue. If you continue past 15 – 20 minutes, the body will start burning fat, which generate more fat, so Dr. Sear’s advice is to keep to the short duration.

In his article on Interval Training Exercise Physiologist Greg Landry says:

Intervals are brief periods (about one minute) of more intense exercise mixed into your regular aerobic exercise sessions. For example, if you're walking, you would do a one minute interval of faster walking about every five minutes throughout your exercise session.

Here's how it will look.. you'll start with your normal three to five minute warm-up and then five minutes into your workout you do your first interval, one minute of faster walking (or perhaps jogging). At the end of that minute you should be "winded" and ready to slow down. You'll slow down to your normal exercising speed for the next four minutes and then your fifth minute is another one minute interval. This pattern continues throughout your exercise session.

A sample PACE workout for a 3-day period using two sets of each exercise is:

• Day 1: Lower Back – squats, lunges, and jumps
• Day 2; Abs and Lower Back – crunches, leg levers, and scissors
• Day 3: Upper Body – push ups, dips, and instep touches

Dr. Sear’s book also includes an 8-week intermediate program and a 5-set, short-duration high-intensity workout. It has something for everyone.

The great aspect of Interval Training and the PACE System is that you can apply the principles with all types of exercises. I’m noticing more and more of the Olympic athletes are using this method of training.

After reading the information from Greg Landry and Dr. Al Sears, I have started using the Interval Training method and noticed considerable changes including a reduction in the recovery time. Another aspect of Interval Training is relieving monotony. Most of the people I see at the health club doing duration training have their headsets on and are watching the news.

I couldn’t believe that I could have a complete workout in 10-15 minutes that included burning fat. I’d always been taught that burning fat doesn’t happen until you’ve exercised at least 20 minutes. What I didn’t realize was that if you burn glycogen (a form of carbohydrates) while you exercise, your body will burn fat after the workout in order to restore its fuel levels in your muscle tissue. This is a simple method of putting your body into the fat burning mode automatically.

We try to make everything we discuss in Fitness & Nutrition Newsletter as flexible as possible so that you can use the techniques indoors or outdoors, in a health club or in your own home. The Interval Training methods fit this philosophy very well.

You can have the greatest system in the world, but if you don’t put it into action, nothing will happen. I’ll leave you with this old Japanese proverb:

Vision without action is a daydream.
Action without vision is a nightmare.