21/365 Mix it up with Intervals

Friends and Fitness Enthusiasts,

Yesterday we talked about the difference between interval and distance training. For those of you interested in intervals, here's a crash course.

Whether you're trying to lose weight or increase performance, you can benefit from interval training. Interval training is a way to increase your anaerobic and aerobic exercise performance, increase your lactate threshold, increase your caloric burn, and increase your muscle oxidative capacity. Let's break it down!

Your body uses a couple different methods for providing you energy. The anaerobic pathway is for high intensity while aerobic is for low to moderate intensity exercise. By going from high to low and back again, you utilize both pathways and can increase your capability in both. Lactate is the product of anaerobic exercise. It causes that burning sensation. By working within that heart rate where you start to feel the burn, you can push your tolerance and production of the lactate. During the recovery phase of the interval, your body resorts to burning fat to conserve the glycogen its been using to fuel your exercise. Finally, by working your muscles and getting blood rushing through them, you increase those capillaries' ability to take up oxygen. Oxygen is crucial for your aerobic pathway to run smoothly.

Convinced? Good! Here's a couple ways to mix it up with intervals:

Running/Cycling

• Warm up for about 5 minutes. Pick up the pace for 2 minutes, this will be your low intensity/recovery time. Time to power up! Sprint for 30 seconds to 1 minute. Recover for 2 minutes, repeat until your time is up. 
• Warm up for about 5 minutes. Low intensity/recovery for 2 minutes, high intensity for 2 minutes or a similar 1:1 ratio
• Warm up for about 5 minutes. Low intensity/recover for 45 seconds, high intensity for 15 seconds or a similar 3:1 ratio

Whatever you decide, be consistent! Commit to your time and pace each time. You may want to start out doing an interval work out for 10 minutes or until you reach a certain distance, then finish your 30 minutes at your regular pace.

Research has suggested that you can see the results I mentioned above by doing 6 HIT (high-interval training) sessions over a 2 week period (Gibala and McGee). Try it out for 2 weeks and let me know how it goes. I'm going to start next week after I've recovered from my wisdom teeth extraction on Thursday.

In health,

Lauren


Gibala, Martin J., and Sean L. McGee. "Metabolic Adaptations to Short-term High-Intensity Interval Training: A Little Pain for a Lot of Gain?." Exercise and Sport Sciences Reviews. 36.2 (2008): 58-63. Print.