24 March 2009

My back is sore and I didn't want to do anything strenuous today. So I decided to try something I read about in an article "Metabolic adaptations to short-term high-intensity interval training: a little pain for a lot of gain" (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18362686?ordinalpos=2&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum)
It's a review on High Intensity Interval training and its benefits, as well as its physiological basis.

This article mentions Wingate protocol developed by the authors and tested on various athletes. It is the usual interval workout on a stationary bike, 30 sec work and 4 minutes rest, repeated for 4 to 6 times - which makes total workout time 2-3 minutes.

I decided what the hell, let's do this today. An so it went:

Treadmill run 10 minutes at 8km/hour, then

Stationary bike Wingate workout: 30 sec/4 min x 4

That's it. And I am absolutely FUCKED!!! I could hardly walk away from the bike, the legs felt like wet cottonwool. Heart rate during the sprints went to 180/min, though - thanks to the previous GS work - declined fairly fast to 140-120. I am going to incorporate more of this workouts in my training, if only for variety.

4 comments:

Peter said...

interesting. 30sec at near 100% of maximum would definitely hurt and hence why they have a 4 minute rest period. running/sprinting hurts me as well and thats simply because of the SAID principle - Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands. The less i sprint, the harder it always is.

personally i prefer tabata work. using the 16kg and performing snatches for a 5min period rather than the traditional 4 min period, 20sec on for left, 10sec off, then 20sec on for right for a total of 10 sets and going nearly all out. I can do between 10-12 snatches in 20sec which translates to roughly 100 reps of snatches in 5 mins. My HR spikes to about 175 beats/min and very quickly drops down.

Ive also done a 10min tabata which is excellent in my opinion and can snatch out 200reps in that time period.

tabatas are great and the period of 20sec is just enough to impose the specific demands of the exercise without wiping you out as much as the SIT training outlined in PubMed. But thats just my opnion.

Good post!

My blog: http://zen-and-the-art-of-diverse-interests.blogspot.com/

Smet said...

Peter, what's SIT? I never heard of it.

Peter said...

Eugene! Dude! Mate!

*lol* SIT is your post from PubMed!

:)

(S)hort term high (I)ntensity in(T)erval trainig.

Smet said...

I need to get more sleep... ;(