In The MoreThanLifting Podcast Episode 3, Rhys and Chris discuss cardiovascular fitness, endurance training and high intensity interval training (HIIT). Also Chris runs a marathon – probably whilst recording – and we find out why Zombies are inevitably going to be the only reason you need to do any long distance running.
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Fitness, Cardio and HIIT Training
- Rhys hates HIIT training
- When we train we don’t think about endurance and cardio
- Most people like me want to build muscle
- Fitness is really important too, not just strength
Cardio Has Got A Bad Wrap
- We have got to the point where a lot of cardio has a bad wrap
- Running was encouraged and became very popular because it was deemed safe and easy
- Something is better than nothing but not all exercise is created equal
- Chris ran a marathon
- Chris is humble
- Once we achieve something it suddenly doesn’t seem so impressive
- Calisthenics is great for that
- You can learn a back lever quite quickly and suddenly it isn’t very impressive
- Like martial arts it is a discipline
- What’s next?
- It’s still important to recognise your achievements and take pride in little wins
- Chris occasionally does endurance events now,
- He would like to do more though because he is realising as he gets older it is harder to fire up the engines
- He needs to push it more on the endurance to balance with the strength work that he is doing
- Going back to running, it has got a bad wrap
- The strength and conditioning world does suggest your cardio is bad but it may be overdone slightly
- You do need to be careful and you need to be dedicated
- If your negative weight (excessive fat) will put more stress on your joints
- Endurance training is volume work it is an excessive amount of reps
- You would never do 1000 push ups in a row like that
- But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it
Alternative Cardiovascular Training Ideas
- Get better at running and focus on technique
- When you row keep your back straight
- If you are on an exercise bike, or just out on the weekend, sit with better posture
- Teach your body to have better posture rather than being lazy
- You can get a great CV response from strength training with circuits of simple exercise
- Great circuit idea: pulls press and bodyweight squats
- Cardiac shunting pushing the blood to different parts of your body is great conditioning
- This is very useful but it doesn’t mean your shouldn’t do anything else
- Everything is relevant everything is applicable if you are in the best place to do it
- Maybe you need to lose a bit of weight get in better shape before you start running, learn how to better
- Chris lets me talk for a bit
- Its important not to forget to do fitness and endurance element of your physical development
- With compound exercises you are exerting so much energy and force that it could be compared to some cv
- That doesn’t mean its sufficient enough to just do pulls and dips
- What i want is the most effective an efficient methods possible so i can focus on my strength and skills
- So what I do is called HIIT training . . .
HIIT Training – High Intensity Interval Training
- Its become really popular in the last 8 years or so
- You have loads of different options, in any form it works
- The basic idea is to work at 100% for a short period of time and then stopping
- Then repeating it as a cycle
- This shocks your body and then gives you a quick rest
- It is horrible but it is super good for you!!
- It will strip your body of fat and I mix this with my compoundiness for awesome results
- the rest is as important if not more than the work interval
HIIT Interval Splits
- Think of the cycle in minute intervals for simplicity
- So 1 minute might be a 30/30 split (work/rest)
- When you work you are at 100%
- When you rest you basically stop and sit at 0%
- You could try a 40/20 split (work/rest) shorter recovery harder work
- The other obvious split is 20/40 (work/rest) allowing you to work at your absolute max knowing you have a slightly longer rest
Work Your Ass Off!
- Whatever exercise you might do it is about pushing as hard as possible with complex movements
- You really push your heart and lungs and tissue
- Kettle bells rower bike whatever it is mostly about the work
- Then the rest gives you the big benefit of improving your recovery speed and ability
- This helps you recover faster in other situations like when you do strength training 😉
- It builds serious explosive power because of the nature of the work
- Its like driving a high performance car
- If you poodle along at 20 mph you aren’t really working the car properly
- Really test those heart and lungs
- Start with 3 sets of 4min
- Then you can start playing when you are comfortable
- Switch up the time the sets the intervals the exercises – get creative
- But there is still a time and place for steady state training
HIIT Training Tips – Avoid Cramping
- Rhys has a lot to say about HIIT training
- I don’t do anything complex like stressful exercise
- I wont do kettle bells or push ups
- I limit it to sprints cycles and rowing and thats about it
- This is because i never need to stop
- You are literally putting your body into shock, so you can easily cramp up in the resting, I do
- I tell people never to stop because what I have found is that clients also have similar issues particularly when they start off
- I had been doing really well not to swear until now
- We will be earning our explicit badge
- At the end of the 4 minute sets, have a bigger 2 minute break
- This sis when you can stop but your body wont want to, keep moving stretch etc
- This biggest benefit of HIIT training is it only takes about 15 minutes
- You might not be able to walk afterwards because you will have worked so hard, you shouldn’t be able to do heavy exercises
- 100% on – call it 10% off
The Biggest Benefit Of HIIT Training – Calorie Deficit
- After that 15 min, your body will continue to burn calories for 6-8HOURS!!!!!
- This is because your body builds up a debt of oxygen its called EPOC
- You have expended so much energy that you owe all those calories to yourself
- It will strip fat off your body because of this
The Other Biggest Benefit Of HIIT Training
- The only way to strengthen you heart is by training it at 90+ %
- It is heart attack zone, so you d need to be careful but it does have massive benefits
- Make sure you get a checkup from your GP before to check that this is safe for you to do!
- You may have to build into this, but thats ok, you shouldn’t train to actual DEATH that isn’t productive
- You can burn a lot of calories doing classes or whatever, but the after burn isn’t as good
- Whereas HIIT does have a much more effective after burn
Steady State Exercise – We Don’t All Want To Run A Marathon
- But there is a place for steady state exercise but that is always really haha
- A walk is great and a lot of people swear by it
- It is safe and simple
- I sometimes fall on stairs but not down stairs, up stairs haha
- Our bodies did evolve for some period of time but wouldn’t often run for prolonged periods
- The battle of marathon
- But it is an extreme case
- The chances are you training is more for fun or health or recreational reasons
- So you don’t need to run for bloody ages
- Often the super extreme stuff is specific for people who are training for those disciplines and not for everyone
- It all works but it is best to do the most efficient so you can work on your goals
Form And Fatigue – Keep The Movement Simple
- It is simple to do simple exercises because the fatigue will destroy your form
- Even running s bad for this you see people shuffling and falling along more than running anywhere
- That old saying “form and fatigue make bad bed fellows – @coachthatch”
- When you are fatigued and tired your form falls apart
- When Chris did his marathon he ended up getting a few little injuries and pains as his form fell apart towards the end
- When you do something that will fatigue you, your skill level your coordination suffers, so keep the movement simple
- This give you much less risk of injury
The Other Other Awesome Thing About HIIT Training – You Never Get Too Good
- The good thing about HIIT training is that you never get good at it, you are always pushing 100%
- Your 100% increases as you develop,
- it isn’t about the movement it is the amount of force exerted in that period
- You get the exact same work the same timescale, just your 100% threshold increases
- It is very simple movements that we have dialed in to work on the stress element rather than the difficult of each rep
- If you could do 20-30 pull ups or 5 pull ups you get the same kind of cardio output or comparable
- So you are just flipping that concentration of strength onto the concentration of cardiovascular output but applying it to the same framework
- Ultimately its about hitting the max you are capable of don’t compare it to the work someone else does
Wrapping It Up
- I think that about covers it
- Focus on the movement
- For me endurance work only comes into play with my gymnastics
- I don’t go for long runs, I do long walks
- I don’t focus on long term endurance because I don’t need to do marathons, I’m not interested in it
- That is why I do HIIT
- It fits nicely into your life – its a 15 min workout
- There is no reason why you cant do it one day
- Instead of doing reps one day do HIIT
- One day you may get chased by a wolf
- You don’t need to run faster than the zombies, just faster than the next guy
- We talk about the zombie apocalypse phenomena
- We aren’t scared of nuclear war, aliens, demons, we are scared we create some virus that turns us all into dead running man eating crazies
- It is a very niche thing
- Do HIIT and run faster than Dave down the pub
- Chris wraps it up
- Leave us a rating and review,
- Let your friends know
- Give us some love @coachthatch and @morethanlifting – check out CoachThatch.com
- Check out the HIIT video, there is a little one I have as an example
- We are gonna make some videos of us looking stupid doing stuff
- Chris did a silly one and fell over doing an olympic lift but he deleted the video (whatever Chris)
- Fitness fails are awesome!
- Its fun to laugh at yourself
- In the next episode we are talking about Skills Training
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