Why Many Forms of Exercise Don't Work Very Well
Over the past six months, or so, I've been going to a chiropractor to reverse my scoliosis (see a future post about this). He wrote an article in his May newsletter that I really liked. The author is Dr. Daniel Gonzalez:
"As many of you know, I have been an exercise fanatic for the last 42 years. Life is a journey and I certainly made a load of well intentioned mistakes over those years. It is my goal to help you understand some of those mistakes so you don't have to make the same ones I did.
My major mistake was that I focused nearly exclusively on cardio. I focused on running and actually did fairly well competing as I ran a 2:50 marathon and a sub 5:00 minute mile. However, even though I was aerobically fit, I virtually ignored anaerobic training after I stopped competing 25 years ago.
[It] turns out, that is what most people do. They stop doing speed work when they get older. Most exercise works just fine for most people so long as they are under 30 years old. At that time one's growth hormone dramatically starts to drop.
A better name for [the] growth hormone would be "fitness" hormone. It is the strongest influence on increasing your muscle mass and reducing your body fat. That is why many people inject it illegally. Fortunately, with the right type of exercise, your body can produce it naturally.
It turns out that nearly ALL exercises that are typically done in this country by those over 30 do not generate [the] growth hormone. This is because they are not exercising the super fast muscle fibers. Cardio, aerobics and even most all strength training do NOT increase [the] growth hormone. The only way to do that is by using anaerobic exercises or speed work. You have to push REALLY hard and work intensely for brief periods of from 10 to 30 seconds.
These are typically sprint type of workouts but they don't have to be done by running. You can do them on many pieces of aerobic equipment such as a treadmill or bike. One of the best is a recumbent bike.
The principle is simple. You warm up for two minutes then increase your intensity level to as high as you can and pedal as hard as you can for 30 seconds. If you can pedal for 45 seconds you are not working out hard enough. You simply have to push it very hard.
After your 30-second workout, you pedal at a comfortable intensity and relaxed pace for 90 seconds to recover, then you repeat this 7 times for a total of 8 cycles. If you are doing it correctly you will be sweating profusely, and it will likely be one of the best workouts of your life. Remember you have to work out intensely as you possibly can. If you aren't sweating very profusely and really gasping for air at the end of the workout you aren't cycling fast or hard enough.
The beauty of this approach is that it only requires FOUR MINUTES of exercise and only a total of 20 minutes of your time. If you do it properly I can assure you that it will improve your health far more than HOURS of regular cardio.
For the two hours following your exercise you will radically increase your level of growth hormone too, as long as you avoid sugar. This will tremendously help you to lose fat and gain muscle.
This really is some radical new information that can change your life. Once I started doing this I was able to easily drop extra weight I had picked up and could not lose despite doing my standard cardio. You can even apply this to strength training and rather than exclusively exercise your slow muscle fibers, like all cardio does, you can use explosive lifts and exercise your fast muscle fibers.
This is a bit challenging to describe in text so I hope to shoot a video on it soon so I can actually demonstrate it for you...
The master educator who taught me this was Phil Campbell and his term for it is Sprint 8. I recently met him at a fitness camp in Mexico. He has a book where you can get more information on this phenomenal form of exercise; it's called Ready Set Go
." (punctuation added)
I have not tried this for myself at this time. But, the principals seem to ring true to me. You cause your muscles to "fast" from oxygen and then they are replenished. To me this seems to be a type of oxygen therapy (see a future post). I would not be surprised if this had similar effects to fasting (see past post).
"As many of you know, I have been an exercise fanatic for the last 42 years. Life is a journey and I certainly made a load of well intentioned mistakes over those years. It is my goal to help you understand some of those mistakes so you don't have to make the same ones I did.
My major mistake was that I focused nearly exclusively on cardio. I focused on running and actually did fairly well competing as I ran a 2:50 marathon and a sub 5:00 minute mile. However, even though I was aerobically fit, I virtually ignored anaerobic training after I stopped competing 25 years ago.
[It] turns out, that is what most people do. They stop doing speed work when they get older. Most exercise works just fine for most people so long as they are under 30 years old. At that time one's growth hormone dramatically starts to drop.
A better name for [the] growth hormone would be "fitness" hormone. It is the strongest influence on increasing your muscle mass and reducing your body fat. That is why many people inject it illegally. Fortunately, with the right type of exercise, your body can produce it naturally.
Super Fast Muscle Fibers
It turns out that nearly ALL exercises that are typically done in this country by those over 30 do not generate [the] growth hormone. This is because they are not exercising the super fast muscle fibers. Cardio, aerobics and even most all strength training do NOT increase [the] growth hormone. The only way to do that is by using anaerobic exercises or speed work. You have to push REALLY hard and work intensely for brief periods of from 10 to 30 seconds.
These are typically sprint type of workouts but they don't have to be done by running. You can do them on many pieces of aerobic equipment such as a treadmill or bike. One of the best is a recumbent bike.
The principle is simple. You warm up for two minutes then increase your intensity level to as high as you can and pedal as hard as you can for 30 seconds. If you can pedal for 45 seconds you are not working out hard enough. You simply have to push it very hard.
After your 30-second workout, you pedal at a comfortable intensity and relaxed pace for 90 seconds to recover, then you repeat this 7 times for a total of 8 cycles. If you are doing it correctly you will be sweating profusely, and it will likely be one of the best workouts of your life. Remember you have to work out intensely as you possibly can. If you aren't sweating very profusely and really gasping for air at the end of the workout you aren't cycling fast or hard enough.
The beauty of this approach is that it only requires FOUR MINUTES of exercise and only a total of 20 minutes of your time. If you do it properly I can assure you that it will improve your health far more than HOURS of regular cardio.
For the two hours following your exercise you will radically increase your level of growth hormone too, as long as you avoid sugar. This will tremendously help you to lose fat and gain muscle.
This really is some radical new information that can change your life. Once I started doing this I was able to easily drop extra weight I had picked up and could not lose despite doing my standard cardio. You can even apply this to strength training and rather than exclusively exercise your slow muscle fibers, like all cardio does, you can use explosive lifts and exercise your fast muscle fibers.
This is a bit challenging to describe in text so I hope to shoot a video on it soon so I can actually demonstrate it for you...
The master educator who taught me this was Phil Campbell and his term for it is Sprint 8. I recently met him at a fitness camp in Mexico. He has a book where you can get more information on this phenomenal form of exercise; it's called Ready Set Go
." (punctuation added)I have not tried this for myself at this time. But, the principals seem to ring true to me. You cause your muscles to "fast" from oxygen and then they are replenished. To me this seems to be a type of oxygen therapy (see a future post). I would not be surprised if this had similar effects to fasting (see past post).
Comments
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-intensity_interval_training
There was an article about it last you in the New York Times.
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/can-you-get-fit-in-six-minutes-a-week/
Personally, I do 30 seconds of high intensity every 5 minutes (4.5 minutes of recovery), for a total of 6 cycles. There is no way I could recover in the 90 seconds he suggests, but it's certainly possibly for someone in good shape. (One of my problems is I can't really eat for several hours before working out so I have little readily available energy.)
The supposed reasons it works are relatively simple. Muscles are spurred to be improved by the body when challenged the hardest. Warming up helps to increase blood flow and prepare the body. The 10-30 stresses the muscles as much as you are physically able, but this depletes the oxygen from the blood stream and causes lactate to build up.
The recovery period serves to re-oxygenate the blood stream, and remove the buildup of waste from the surrounding areas. With a blood stream full of oxygen you are ready to again stress your muscles as much as possible.
With basic aerobic exercise, your muscles become tuned to a specify output and are never stressed enough to cause your body to build them. Trying to go as hard as you can for 4 minutes just means for the first 30 or so seconds you are really stressing your muscles and doing good, but after that you simply lack the oxygen to be able to continue providing enough stress.