5 Minute Facts - Optimizing High Intensity Training for Busy Professionals

This is episode 255 of the Empowered Team Podcast. Welcome to the Empowered Team Podcast where we explore how to optimize your performance in career, sport and life. And now your host, executive coach and life strategist, Kari Schneider.

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Performance Power. We are on live today and this.

Is where we take your questions so.

That we can answer all the things.

Related to training, nutrition, health, wellness, injury, you name it. But whatever you need, we're going to answer for you. So Performance Power, we always dive in with five minute facts and that means that we're going to give you the facts on the topic today, intense training. Once we go through those five minute facts, then we will bring in your questions on anything related to our topic or anything you want to know about when it comes to your training, your best health, your performance and whatnot. So five minute facts today. Intense training. First of all, what is intense training? Now, intense training to me is going to be different than the next person. But these are the overall parameters that we look at with intense training. It's going to be high intensity. That means it's so hard that you can't do it more than a short span of time. That might be 10 seconds, it might be two minutes, it might be even five minutes, which will actually be a long time. You won't be able to keep going at that high intensity. And it's also a challenging workload. That means that the workload is such that you can't keep going more than that 10 seconds or two minutes or even five minutes. And it also is so short that sometimes your body stops you. So that means that when you go to do it, it might be a calf that's burning, it might be the lungs that are burning, it might be the heart rate that's really high. It might feel like too much intensity in some way on your body. But typically you're doing it because you want some sort of targeted adaptation. And what I mean by that is that you want to get a specific result. That's why you're doing intense training. That might be done with running, jumping, lifting, heavy weights. Plyometrics are the jumping part, but you might add agility in there. It's doing something that you know are going to be really challenging for you. So what are we going to do here? We're going to take a look at what are the most risky things about intense training, first of all, and then we're going to look at the major benefits of intense training. Because, you know, you've probably heard of a few Benefits. So the biggest risks are our overtraining syndrome. Why? Because when we train really intensely, it's going to have a lot of intense impact on our physiological system. So our cardiovascular system, our neurological system, also our actual mechanics. So our joints, our bones, our muscles, lots of intense, intense stuff there. The question has come in. I'll address, address that question shortly. It's an awesome one. Thank you, Peter. So good. Another one over training. So because it's so intense, we don't want to cause when there's not enough rest and recovery for the body, there's all kinds of cellular adaptations that happen. And when you cannot adapt because you haven't given yourself enough rest, then you won't be able to keep going. So there's going to be some sort of injury effect, some sort of problem. So injury risk is another one. Burnout is another one that people would more commonly refer to versus over training. But over training and burn can be very, very similar. We want to get to a space called overreaching. When we are in that intense training, we want to push ourselves in a way that's more than what we normally do because that's what stimulates our body to get the response that we want. We want the response of adapting. So we have to overreach. But if we keep overreaching and overreaching and overreaching and we don't recover, then guess what? That's where we go into going backwards instead of going forwards. The adapt that happen are worse instead of better. So that's why we have to be aware when we're utilizing intense training, it can cause, when you're getting into that over training or burnout, it can cause hormone imbalances, it can cause poor, poor adaptations. So we might have social and life lifestyle impacts. So we're devoting a lot of time to the recovery, a lot of time to the training. And we're not getting the impact and the output that we want in our lives. So what are some of the benefits of in increase intense training, increase that intensity in your training. Number one is that improved performance, improved performance is typically why we want to go through that pain of intense training. Because I promise you, intense training is one of those things that is really hard and feels tough and is typically so worth it because it gives us the improved performance we want that. Number two, an increased metabolic rate. So why does that matter? We want a hungry, burning hot, burning fireplace machine all the time so that when we're sleeping, we are burning fat. When we're awake, we are metabolically changing Our cellular turnover, we've got cellular apophagy. So this metabolic system is actually functioning and churning the way it's meant to. Intense can up that incre that metabolic rate. We have enhanced cardiovascular health. That means we are more fit when it comes to our heart and lungs. We also have these neurological adaptations. And those neurological adaptations come from our body having to adapt to higher forces coming onto our joints. And our nervous system has to adjust and adapt. So some really, really great training benefits come from intense training. And lastly, when it ca. When I talked about the hormone adjustment, when we're having the risks, there's also the benefits of hormone adjustment. So if you get the right amount of intense training, guess what happens? It does great things for our endocrine system, it does great things for our endorphins. It will release hormones in a way that's beneficial for us. But if we have too much intense training, it does the exact opposite. So where is the sweet spot? Where on earth is the sweet spot? That is the big question. So this comes down to what we call frequency, intensity, time and type. That is how we decide how to give exercise in the real world. Frequency, intensity, time and type. So typically, if we talk in general about intense training, we would say, hey, we want you to have intense training three to four days of the week. So that's the frequency, the intensity. You want them high intensity, such as interval training, circuit training, heavy lifting, plyometrics, agility training, all of those can be very intense. And that's the intensity time. How long is this going to be? Well, a high intense workout. If you're doing interval training, circuit training, weight training, if it's really high intensity, you're not going to be doing this for two hours. You're going to be doing this for say 20, 30 minutes with rests in between. Because your body isn't going to be able to maintain that kind of intensity for long spans of time. So it's not going to be a big long two hour, three hour, eight hour hike. That's not what we're talking about here. And then type. It's going to be the cardiovascular, the lifting, the things like that that were, that I mentioned earlier in the intensity. So here is the problem. I'm going to bring this in before I bring in the questions. Here is the problem. The problem is this, that if I gave you a recipe based on that generality of frequency, intensity and time and type, then you're going to think, okay, great, I go and work out intense three to four times a week. I'm going to choose it to be a circuit, a heavy lift, some interval runs. I'm set. This is awesome. But what about you and your life? Because this is what I see. I see really busy, intense humans who are leading other people in the world. Maybe they're businesses, they might be entrepreneurs, they might be teachers, they're people who are leading other people and the demand on them is really high. And that means that they've got a level of stress and that means they may not be getting a full amount of sleep. That means they may not be eating the way they want to all the time. It means that they might be dealing with urgent things all the time. And if that's the case, then adding more really intense work to their lives actually causes the opposite effect. Instead of getting an increase in performance, the performance goes down. And I say that because then there's just too much cortisol, there's too much load and they're not getting the response that they want to get. So what do we do for someone who is a busy professional, loading, loaded with lots of stress. Maybe they're a principal and they're starting school because school's around the corner. Maybe they're running their own company and when they're running their own company, that stress level or they're launching an event or starting a new business and that stress level is there. But they want to be fit, they want to have the intense training come in well then that's where the frequency, intensity, time and type change. We change that formula because it's going to be consistent for what is, it's going to be aligned and consistent for what you are dealing with in your life instead of what the general formula is. So instead of three or four times a week of intense training, it might be one time a week and making sure you're getting enough recovery from it. And then the other bouts of exercise are longer in duration and they are not as intense. So the exercise bouts are still there, but they're catering to, to the recovery that you need while getting the lifting and the, and the cardiovascular training happening at the same time. So what it looks like in the real world is instead of something that has you doubled over feeling like you're going to vomit in a 20 minute workout session, it might look like instead you've done a 45 minute workout session, it was lower intensity. When you came out of it, you felt energized and you felt really good and not like you needed two days to recover. In fact, you might feel like you only need two hours to recover. Whereas the real intense training, you feel like you need two days to recover. And most people don't understand that it's typically that intense to get those massive benefits from intense training. So I know that I've put a lot of info out to you and put a lot of context around the intensity of training. There's a question that's popped in. So intense training can be that bedroom time. What? Can it? Yes, it can, because it depends on the level of intensity. If that bedroom time, let's say your level of fitness is mediocre, and let's say that bedroom time was average, and then it's not intense. Let's say it's just, you know, spooning. Awesome. Great work, everybody. But let's say that bedroom time was super intense and the fitness level is low. Guess what? Then it will constitute as intense training, because you're going to come away from that as, holy cow, that was crazy. However, if that bedroom time of intense training lasted a minute, then guess what? It doesn't constitute a training. It constitutes a set of intense training. Okay, everybody follow. So we have to put it in the context. And I know that that someone kindly put in a funny question that's relevant for all of our lives. However, keep in mind that the context makes a big difference. How fit is the person? If I go to swim in the lake, I'm a really fit person. But right now I'm not as fit as I normally am and I'm not a great swimmer. So if I go to swim, what would ordinarily be a great aerobic exercise for someone, for me would be intense exercise that I would have to recover from versus someone else goes and does the swim, and that's fantastic. Aerobic exercise that is moderate and it is not going to be intense for them. So put the context in and add it in terms of the time, the frequency, intensity, the time and type and where you are. That's the most important piece of the recipe. Where are you in that particular context? Are you at a low fitness level? Are you at a high fitness level? Are you more adept at running or you more adept at swimming? Because the person who goes out running might find that really easy. The other person, the next person, might find that become intense exercise. So I'm going to open this up.

I just want to check. What I'm hearing is people can say, kari says, as my partner, is your duty to my future health to put out three to four times a week. That's what I'm choosing to hear.

You can choose to Hear that? So just to repeat that so everyone hears that because this is being recorded. You know that, right?

So I said partner.

I didn't use it or your partner for your partner to support your best physical, cardiovascular, cellular health and hormonal health for your future. That putting out three to four times a week would constitute supporting your intense training. Yes, it absolutely could. So put it in the context that works for you. I love it. Okay, what are some other questions? What do you got on intense training or on anything else that has to do with your fitness, your injuries, your whatever it is, your nutrition? What do you have? For me?

Yeah, I do have one. Is the, the argument people have mixing up the type of intensity, so like weights and then high impact, is that purely just to keep the intensity so you're not getting used to it, or is there other reasons to do that?

Okay, so mixing up cardiovascular work and weight work in the same workout, you're saying, Correct.

No, like say Monday you're doing high impact, Friday you're doing circuits.

Okay, so the mixing up of that is. There's multiple reasons. So, yes, what you were pointing to, which is so that there is more adaptation, because when you're changing what you're doing on a week to week basis or even on a day to day, like you're suggesting, then the body, yes, has to adapt. The problem with it is if you're mixing it up all the time, you, you're really not getting specifically better on an area that you might want to be improving on. So for instance, if you want to be improving on shoulder strength and you're mixing it up so much, you might get a little bit stronger and shoulder strength, but not significantly. Now, the thing about mixing it up when it comes to intensity is that, yes, if I did a heavy lift, very intense, heavy lift on one day, chances are I'm not going to be able to tax those same muscles the same way the next day. However, if that lift was so heavy on Monday, then it didn't just tax the muscles. And this is the most important part, it taxed the whole nervous system. And when it taxes the whole nervous system, that's what needs recovery. So if you go and do an intense circuit, cardiovascular circuit the next day, even though the weights were on day one, and the difference is day two with the cardiovascular circuit, the problem is, is that the nervous system, the whole system has not the brain and the body connection, the cel system, the endocrine system, it hasn't recovered from day one of the heavy lift. So that's where the problem comes in with intense training, doing it day after day after day after day, even if it's a different modality, even if it's one is agility and one is strength. Chances are what's happening for most people is that they're actually decreasing intensity on something the next day or the next day if they're still seeing a lot of benefits. So then what's happening is that high intensity, moderate intensity, low intensity, high intensity, moderate intensity, low intensity, then they'll see some training benefits out of that because they're still getting the high intensity. But it's not sustainable for high intensity to be doing it day after day, even if it's different because the nervous system is too taxed. If they're not finding that they're very taxed, then I would simply say it's not as high intensity as they think it is. Okay, I think that gets that question. Okay, awesome nods. Next question. What else do you have as a question for this topic or other? What do you have? Okay, go ahead. You haven't.

Yeah, I'm just gonna say, like, I guess it's different for everybody, but, you know, when you say intense training or how much intense training every day, or say not every day, how much do you do per week? Say, on like, or, you know, I guess, or how long. How about, how fast does your heart rate have to be for how long in order to consider it? Actually intense training, like, so good. So if I go on a bike ride, it could be mellow. It could be like, I don't have no idea what my heart rates are, but, you know, you might be an hour climbing, right? You're consistently going uphill, right. But if you punch it, your heart rate's going to be like through the roof. Like, you know, there's different way, different levels of intensity. So how do you look at it? Right.

Yeah. Okay, so if you had metrics on it, what you'd be looking at is your heart rate relative to your maximal heart rate. And I'm not talking about your predicted max heart rate. What I'm talking about is your max heart. So there's a formula for predicted max heart rate, and the formula is 220 minus your age. The problem is, is that it's so variable. That formula actually has always been wrong on me because I'm a very fit person. So when it puts my age in there, it's going to give me a way lower heart rate as my max than what is actually my max. So that it is confounded in various ways for for general population it tends to work okay. But for people who are Fairly fit to 20 minus your age is not a great predictor. But for people who are fairly average, it is a more efficacious predictor. However, you get that max, whether it's the predicted max with 220 minus your age or you actually do a max test where you max out. So you might be going on the bike at increasing intensities or on a treadmill at increasing inclines or speeds until you can't go anymore. You physically have to stop. And that kind of test is an awful feeling. You feel like your legs are lead, you feel like you are going to vomit or your head is going to explode, but you actually get this number. I've done thousands of max tests and you get this number and the number is your max heart rate. And that max heart rate, then you can create a percentage of your, your workout based on a percentage of that max heart rate. So then you're looking at going high intensity with some be somewhere in between 85 and 100 of your max heart rate or 85 and 95% of your max heart rate. And then you know you're working in that intense zone. So if you're on an hour long bike ride and you're on a climb, what's going to happen is that if that climb keeps going and keeps going and keeps going, there's kind of come a point where you can't climb any more. Your legs or your lungs are going to be your limiting factor. Your legs are either going to turn to burning balls of lactic acid and make you have to stop because they won't move, or your lungs are going to be screaming so hard that you just can't go anymore. So something is going to be your limiting factor at some point. But chances are you're always keeping it at a gear or you're keeping it at a level that you can keep going. And so what would happen is if you're doing some hills or this would be intervals on a treadmill, intervals on a bike where you're going, going more intensely, either for a short span of time via, via hills or cadence or whatever it is that's increasing the intensity and then what happens is that you ultimately are seeing what your heart rate is at, those intense bursts. Is your heart rate at that 85 to 90 zone of your max or is it at, is it at 70%? And you thought it was intense, but it's not as intense as you thought it was. Your heart is going to tell you the truth. And this is why people can use running, swimming, they can use weights, they can use plyometrics, they can use sprints, they can use different forms of exercise to create intense exercise. Because the heart is a dumb muscle. And what I mean by that, it doesn't know the difference. The heart doesn't know the difference between the swim I did and the lifting I did. It's just thinking that this is intense. And that's why I gave the swimming as an example, because I'm not a good swimmer. It would become very intense for me, very fast, but if I was running, it wouldn't be as intense for me as fast, even though running is usually a more intense activity. So the point being is that you have to know where your cardiovascular heart rate, your heart fitness is via your max heart rate. And look at a percentage of your max from there. And then when you look at that watch or you look at that metric feedback when you're on the bike, you're going to go, oh, okay, I'm at. I'm aiming for 85% of my max. And I want to hold that for a minute, then that, and I want to repeat that 10 times. That would be an interval training using hills or climbs, and it would not be sustainable for an hour. It would be the kind of thing that you did within your hour workout. You did some intense intervals for maybe 15 minutes, and it was so intense that you couldn't maintain those same intensities the rest of your ride or the beginning of your ride. It's only for that 15 minutes. That would constitute intense training, the whole hour. There's no way that you can do intense training for a whole hour. It may seem intense because you sweated a lot. It may seem intense because it was an hour long. It may seem intense because you did some climbs, but it is not intense training unless it's something that's a shorter bout because you simply cannot sustain something that's intense training for an hour.

Okay, is intense training better for burning fat than a moderate longer training?

Yes. Easy answer. Yes. But people think that it's not because technically, the fuel that is used in low, low intensity is fat. So if you have heard, I'm in the fat burning zone, when I'm walking, I'm in the fat burning zone. When my heart rate is low, I'm in the fat burning zone. When I'm sleeping, I'm in the fat burning zone. So everybody thinks that that's the best zone to burn fat by staying low intensity, because that's the fuel of choice for low intensity. That's why you can do a, a low intensity ride for hours, a low intensity hike for hours, because we have unlimited fuel source called fat. However, if we want to be a fat burning machine, we need to rev the engine. And what that means is that we do short, intense bouts in order to create that new gear to rev that engine. And that's what makes us burn more fat when we're sleeping. So the, if we pepper intense bouts of exercise in, let's say it's two times a week or three times a week in the midst of our more moderate exercise, that is what will increase more fat burning when we're sleeping is that intense exercise. During the intense exercise, I'm burning carbs. That's what's burned in the moment. But because I've revved my engine, my engine is running hotter for the rest of the day and throughout the night. So I'm burning more fat on all the other hours after that workout because I've gone intensely during that workout. Does that make sense? So that is why intense workouts are better for burning fat in the bigger picture. But during the workout, you're not actually burning more fat, you're burning more carbohydrate, because that's the fuel of choice for intense work. But during sleep, the fuel of choice is fat. And if you have dialed that intense workout up, then guess what? During sleep, you're burning more fat. Now this is the problem, because people who are intense, people who work a lot, people who do a lot, they want to have the most efficacious workout. They're going to go in, they're going to hit it hard, but then they're going to wonder why over time, they're not getting some of the results that they want, they're not going to get some of the fat burning they want. And that's a case where they're just running the engine too high all day long. Because if there's one thing that intense exercise requires, it is recovery. You must, must, must have recovery from intense exercise. When it is that intense, we need maybe another 15 minutes of sleep. We need to make sure that we're not doing another intense bout for another two days in a row. We're going intense day after day. It's just not sustainable. And if we are doing it day after day, then our intensity is either dropping or we're not getting the performance results that we, that we want. So that's the, the caveat is that intense bouts require recovery. All right, we'll I think wrap it there for this topic. I think that's a great topic for people who are busy, people very focused. Maybe a lot of stress coming in. To see that intense day after day, you would have a different prescription. You might have to just do one intense bout for the week instead of three or four. You might have to do maybe just two intense bouts for the week instead of three or 4. And mix in more moderate or low. If there's a lot of intensity in work, a lot of intensity in life or family, or maybe there's been a big urgent thing coming along. So take this as the lesson to know that needs to be put in context of your life, of what really, really is going on in your world. Because there's more intensity coming from other places, not just the workout. All right everybody, have a wonderful rest of your Monday and rest of your week. We'll do another Performance Power next month with a brand new topic. Give us some feedback as to what topics you would like more info on and we will get those all curated for you. Have a great rest of your day. Keep up with that Performance Power.

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