HIIT or miss

Some of you probably saw the recent Horizon programme ‘The Truth About Exercise’ which explored the assertion by a Canadian Physical Science team that you could improve your fitness by just a few minutes of training each week (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01cywtq)
While many of us wonder just how much exercise we really need in order to improve our health and fitness, the Canadian Scientists turned this on its head and set about asking how little exercise we need.
The emerging and answer appears to be - a lot less than most of us think — provided we’re willing to work a bit.
The Researchers at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, gathered several groups of volunteers. One group consisted of sedentary but generally healthy middle-aged men and women. Another comprised middle-aged and older patients who’d been diagnosed with cardiovascular disease.
The Researchers tested each volunteer’s maximum heart rate and peak power output on a stationary bicycle. In both groups, the peaks were not very high. All of the volunteers were out of shape and, in the case of the cardiac patients, unwell. But they gamely agreed to undertake a newly devised programme of cycling intervals.
Most of us have heard of intervals, or repeated, short, sharp bursts of strenuous activity, interspersed with rest periods. Almost all competitive athletes strategically employ a session or two of interval training every week to improve their speed and endurance.
But the Canadian Researchers didn’t ask their volunteers to sprinkle a few interval sessions into exercise routines. Instead, the Researchers wanted the groups to exercise exclusively with intervals.
CAN IT WORK? As with all things training the answer is yes AND no.
First you need to be prepared to work VERY hard. This doesn’t mean getting slightly out of breath and it starting to hurt a bit hard – it means flashing before your eyes and your body feeling like your limbs are about to explode and fall off hard. Your breathing will be so hard that all you will be thinking about is ‘when will this end?’ If you can take yourself to this place then you will be a fitter person.
Secondly, you need to be fully aware of the benefits you are gaining AND not gaining - the key loss being FAT LOSS. The intervals can’t be used to replace the maintenance of a good healthy diet.
The McMasters scientists did test a punishing workout, known as high-intensity interval training, or HIIT, that involved 30 seconds of all-out effort at 100% of a person’s maximum heart rate. After six weeks, these lacerating HIIT sessions produced similar physiological changes in the leg muscles of young men as multiple, hour-long sessions per week of steady cycling, even though the HIIT workouts involved about 90% less exercise time.
Recognizing, however, that few of us willingly can or will practice such straining all-out effort, the Researchers also developed a gentler but still chronologically abbreviated form of HIIT. This modified routine involved one minute of strenuous effort, at about 90% of a person’s maximum heart rate (which most of us can estimate, very roughly, by subtracting our age from 220), followed by one minute of easy recovery. The effort and recovery are repeated 10 times, for a total of 20 minutes.
This routine was then further abbreviated for the TV programme to 3 minutes a week with the presenter only doing 12 minutes of exercise per month! By the end of the programme he was exhibiting greater insulin sensitivity (good for removing excess sugars from the system)
According to the Professor of Kinesiology at McMaster who led the study Martin Gibala, HIIT training will not be ideal or necessary for everyone. “If you have time” for regular 30-minute or longer endurance exercise training, “then by all means, keep it up,” he said. “There’s an impressive body of science showing” that such workouts “are very effective at improving health and fitness.”
My personal view is that you might do well to commit to BOTH types of training in order to achieve a balance and not just target a single element of fitness. I have used HIIT training for a number of years to provide a short term alterative to a full programme and it works very well as long as the commitment is there SOOOO…
Try the methodology by all means - but don’t cheat yourself!!
Happy Training

Running in the park

A couple of weekends ago I ran my first Parkrun event at Cutteslowe Park in Oxford - http://www.parkrun.org.uk/oxford/home.

Almost 80 runners turned up for the three lap course and while it will never net you a PB, it allows you to have a good ‘gallop’ as my friend Kevin would say. The volunteers were very friendly and helpful and everyone was welcoming in a relaxed (yet competitive) way!

On the multi-terrain course, I did better than I had expected running a time of 20:34, coming in 8th overall and 2nd vet 45-49 (the first vet was the overall fastest on the day).

The Parkrun would make a good regular ‘sharpener’ for race preparation and I would highly recommend giving it a go.

Coast to Coast bike ride with a difference (that’s across America)

I am currently helping an ex-American soldier Tom Von Kaenel prepare for an epic charity bike ride across America. Tom was badly injured while cycling in the Pyrenees in Sept 2010 and was helped by both British and American solders and medical staff who saved his life and so to say thank you he has decided to do a cycle ride to raise some money for veterans of both the UK and US military. Despite still suffering from the after-effects of his accident, Tom is intending to ride from Brize Norton airbase in Oxfordshire on the 21st April to Heathrow and then from the West to East coast of America starting in Seattle, Washington and finishing in Washington DC on 4th July. Tom will then fly back to the UK on 6 July, riding through London back to Brize Norton arriving on 8 July – a staggering total of 4,200 miles.

Tom is hoping to raise £5,000,000 from his endeavours and you can find out more about his challenge at: www.sea2sea.org. Alternatively Tom can be contacted on: tvk@sea2sea.org; twitter: Sea2Sea1; facebook: Sea2Sea.

Long hours on short days

The last few weeks have been VERY busy!

I am very pleased to be able to say that at long last my website back up and running (with a new Web Designer on board) and can be found again at: http://www.cwpersonaltraining.com. We are working on some changes and improvements which will be rolled out over the next few months but in the meantime if anyone wants to get in touch all my contact information is on the site. In addition to looking at Twitter (as mentioned previously), I have been having fun looking at using a QR barcode for future promotional materials. Watch this space!

The results from my speed test with Justin have given me a good base to set my paces for my speed, interval and race pace training. The pace for my longer runs is fine but I am definitely going to have to increase the distances if I am going to enter any of the ultras I would like to do this year.

It feels great to finally be able to get some good consistent training in but getting back training properly while also taking clients for run training has made me realize that I am going to have to be careful not to overload my legs. I can feel that my shins are tight and my knees are a little sore, which is probably my IT bands having a bit of a whinge. I’ve also noticed that this has coincided with me doing more of my training on the roads, so it’s back to running off-road again this week as I do need to keep up my run tally if I’m going to get anywhere near hitting my Jantastic challenge targets with Marathon Talk (http://www.marathontalk.com). If you haven’t listened to Marathon Talk before then I thoroughly recommend giving it a go – it’s a great place for lively chat, information and quite a few laughs.

On the business front I have had quite a number of new enquiries and I have also been helping with Tom von Kaenel with his training for the Sea 2 Sea Challenge (more about this next time) – hence the busy last couple of weeks – but it’s all fantastic stuff!

New Year, Old Body, New goals

Well, I have done almost a month of steady shorter and longer runs with the aim of building a solid base from which to begin my training programme proper. I am doing a 10k speed trial with Justin on Thursday to enable me to calculate my VDOT time, which will effectively allow me to set all the times for my programme - from intervals to easy runs. While I have tried to be sensible over the past few weeks while I make sure that I really do seem to have put the problems of last year behind me, I am SO looking forward to returning to a more structured approach to my running. It makes it so much easier to see where I need to put the work in and that I don’t waste effort on the wrong sort of training.
Most of my recent runs have been off road and I do feel that this has paid off. Although the times per mile are slower, I have been able to get out more often as I have had very few aches after each session. It also means that I have been able to put some concentrated effort in at the end of each run by trying hard to pick up the pace in the final mile. All good practice for the last push at the end of a race! I have done a couple of longer runs (up to three hours on the ground or around 18 miles) and given the lack of light at this time of year, these runs have usually involved using my headtorch. I know a lot of people don’t like running off road in the dark but I do find it very focusing running to the beam and I love the sense of isolation it creates (I know – sad!).
I had a really enjoyable run on Boxing Day while I was at my Mum’s for Christmas. My Aunt’s running club always put on a well organised and well attended two lap race over four(ish) miles for those who can get themselves out of bed! I started well but the second mile of each lap was a long slow uphill against the wind and when I came round for the second lap I was done in! I averaged just over 7 min/miles. Not fast but not too bad after a big Christmas dinner the day before and a few real ales (possibly not the best way to taper for a race!).
Away from the training, I have been looking at how to better make use of social media sites to promote my Personal Training business and hopefully you will see the fruits of this research very soon!
Happy Running!

Web site update

Some of you may have noticed that my web site has been down since the middle of December. Unfortunately this is due to a dispute between Oxford Web Consultants and the hosting company which is entirely beyond my control. Despite being aware of the position and assuring me that they are dealing with the issue, so far Oxford Web Consultants have not been able to resolve the situation although I hope that the site will be up and running again in one form or another in the near future.

However in the meantime, please do contact me by e-mail (cwpt@hotmail.co.uk) or on my mobile (07581 229 393) if you would like to discuss your personal training needs!

Winter Workouts

Well after the Brecons Ultra it took me a week to recover enough to do anything more than a recovery run and for me not to feel like my quads and hamstrings had been through a mixer! Since then, I have been trying to keep some quality running going and while this hasn’t always been possible, I have managed a mixture of easy and more challenging runs – albeit not in the number I will need to do to get me to where I want to be in terms of fitness.
I have run in a couple of local cross country races and felt very slow and haggard by the end of six miles but having reflected on my performance, I am consistently middle packing in the V1 (40-50) class which I should be happy about given where I was six months ago. I just need to get my head down and work hard and the fitness and speed will improve.
Last weekend, Justin and I did an 18 miler which and I did felt as though I managed to run well from beginning to end. The great thing about running with Justin is that if I need to crank up the pace for the final couple of miles to come in in a particular time, I just give him the nod and off he goes. He dropped our overall pace from 8:40 min/miles to 8:24 min/miles and I was able to lift my game and make the pace as we hit the 18 mile mark. I felt strong, relaxed and not too tired. All in all, a very good overall run at this stage of my recovery to full fitness and a very solid base to go into my winter base endurance training.
I am also reading the Daniels Running Formula http://www.amazon.com/Daniels-Running-Formula-Jack/dp/0880117354 and really enjoying it. Justin has used the calculations for the last couple of years and found them very useful. I will let you know how I get on and if I think they are worth recommending