Iron, Speed, Paleo…and the Magic of HIIT

I get plenty of questions – and understandably so – one way or another related to my fascination with the fixed-speed (or fixed-gear) bicycle.  Well, one aspect of the fixie experience that I covet — aside from the cycling purist’s love of the unbroken convergence of body, machine and pavement – is the ability to absolutely thrash a high intensity interval training (HIIT) session on each and every fixie ride.  The fixed-speed machine lends itself well to HIIT sessions due to the fact that an all-out effort can be achieved virtually right out of the blocks, and for the fact that this effort can be maintained for the duration of the sprint – whether that sprint lasts 5 seconds, or as long as a full minute – which happens to be the top end of the range, for my particular purposes/goals.  On a fixie machine, if the wheels are spinning, your legs are humping – coasting is not an option – and slowing down requires a direct opposition to the momentum you’ve previously established.  The legs, in other words, are under constant assault.  “Huckin it fixed” imparts a huge overall energy expenditure coupled with a very fast power output/energy ramp-up requirement (if one so chooses to push the ride in this direction) that is unique to a fixed-gear set-up.  By way of analogy, I think you could look at the difference between a fixed-gear ride and a single/multi-speed ride as being the difference between a stadium step sprint session and a long, slow jog.

The spill-over efficacy of HIIT-like training, into the more endurance-ended demands of cycling, have been born out to me time and time again.  I never train for endurance per se, yet when I engage in endurance rides, my conditioning is more than equal to the task.  The link cited above references many of the most informative university studies on the efficacy of HIIT training.  If you’re endurance minded, looking for a conditioning boost (great preparation for the upcoming football season!), or if you simply want to kick-start (or maintain) some serious fat-burning potential, do yourself a favor and don’t overlook this method of training.  Of course sprinting is the easiest way to implement a HIIT-like protocol, but any exercise modality can be modified to work – weight training, biking, rowing – the possibilities are truly endless.

This I can tell you: a short HIIT session – whether that session involves riding, sprinting or weights — will leave your body in metabolic hyper-drive for many, many hours following the session – much, much more so than any prolonged-slog or plodding trudge will ever do.  For instance, on Monday I did a short series of sprints totaling approximately 8 miles and 30 minutes – approximately 4 miles/15 minutes to the coffee shop, 4 miles/15 minutes on the return.  Now, 8 miles is no big deal on a bike – especially since I kick back with a red-eye and a good read for an hour or so in the middle of it all — however, each leg of the trip was marked by a series of hard sprints and easy “spins” (“spins” being at a light, recovery cadence).  What was the sprint-to-spin ratio?  Well, it varied – hey, this is real life! —  the key is that I sprint until I have to stop due to exhaustion or traffic obstacle, and I spin until I recover “adequately”, or until I have another opportunity to sprint.  In this way, the sprint/spin ratio is highly fractal/variable, and that’s the way I like it.  Sometimes I’m fully recovered from the previous sprint before diving into the next, sometimes I’m still heaving like a freight train.  The bottom line is that little bit of work jacks my metabolism for the remainder of the evening and into the night.  The buzz in the legs, the elevated body temperature, the ravenous appetite – yep, those are the signs of a metabolism in high-gear; the same prolonged indicators you’ll never enjoy following a long, slow and excruciating dull session.

Of course, endurance types attempting to better performance in a particular event – or modality, for that matter — can always combine more precise and directed HIIT training together with heart rate monitoring/tracking in order to maximize training effect.  For example, check out Dr. Mike Nichols’ take on heart rate training, here (note: this is part 5 of the series, which is, as of this writing, the final installment on the topic.  Make sure you check out all the installments, though.  Very, very informative stuff indeed!).  It’s a little more than I care to manage at the moment, but hey, there may come a time when I’ll want to train in a more directed manner.  It’s always good to have options, and to understand the science behind those options.

Tuesday’s Iron Works –

Basic? You bet.  Effective?  No friggin’ doubt.  Remember, the mind might require novelty, but the body doesn’t give a damn.  The body’s job is to overcome a stress, and be better prepared to face that stress next time around.  Simple as that.

Beating the coming rain acted as added incentive, both in busting out a fast fixie sprint session heading into the gym, and getting my ass home following.

Kicked things off with the following superset:

front “military” press (strict, no “push”): 115 x 5; 135 x 5; 155 x 3; 165 x 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2

straight bar muscle-up (pull-up variety): bodyweight x 2 reps each round.

then,

good mornings (wide stance, slight knee bend): used red bands on all sets – 135 x 6; 155 x 6, 185 x 4, 4, 4

then a quick superset of –

db triceps roll-out extensions (from floor): 50 x 10, 9

ez bar bicep curl: bar + 80 x 12, 12

then, as a finisher –

Nautilus 4-way neck: front and each side – 50 lbs x 10; back – 65 lbs x 10 (last 4 reps rest-pause)

A cool front is punching its way down south tonight.  Sweet relief  🙂

Burnout? Overtraining? Not if You Cycle Exercises, Volume, and Intensity Properly

Here’s the deal: if you fail to rotate through a number of different exercise variations, and choose, instead, to continually hammer-away at a few specific exercises — the bench, squat and deadlift are, to a great detriment, rarely rotated out of a “serious” trainee’s program — you will eventually stagnate, regress and/or tumble into an overtrained state, both physically and psychologically.  Why can I go heavy and hard with very few down periods?  First, I continually rotate exercises and I continually juggle methods, volume and intensity.  This keeps me mentally, physically, and neurologically fresh, and able to push each and every rep to attain maximum power output relative to the exercise load I’m handling.  At 60% of 1RM, yes, the bar speed is actually blazing fast.  At 98% 1RM?  The bar speed is noticeably slower to be sure, however, the intent to move the bar as fast as possible is present — it’s a mental and neurological habit that must be incorporated and nurtured.

Some trainee’s will claim that their “big three” lifts will suffer if they don’t pound away at these lifts routinely.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  And try telling that to Louie Simmons, and the rest of the Westside gang.  Ask them how often they actually perform a competition squat, deadlift or bench.  The short answer is rarely, and/or only at an actual competition.  They do, however, rotate through a plethora of similar exercises, performing max-effort lifts weekly in both the pressing motion and squat/pulling motion.  All this max-effort, balls-to-the-wall training results in a severely overtrained athlete, right?  Again, ask Louie how overtrained his athletes are, and how stymied each athlete’s progress is.  And before you think this applies only to powerlifters, think again — this is simply the application that the science has been applied to.  The science, is fact, is relevant across any discipline; all that must be tweaked are the discipline-specific applications.

One thing, though: don’t confuse strength and power development with the “10,000 hour” principle of skill acquisition; fine motor skills and “reflex”, or “do without doing” is an entirely different animal.

The Last Couple of Days Worth of Action:

Thursday evening: 40-minutes worth of intermittent-intensity fixie romping;  20-minutes on, break for library cruising (about 15 minutes), then 20-minutes on.

Friday morning iron works:

elevated feet ballistic push-ups: bodyweight x 5, each round.  Rebound fashion (i.e., “hot floor”, minimize hand-to-ground contact time).  Used as a set-up, or “prime”, for the press.

standing front press (minimal hip kick): 115 x 5; 135 x 4; 155 x 4; 175 x 2; 185 x 2; 190 x miss; 185 x 1, 1

pull-up bar muscle-up: bodyweight x 3, each round

8 total rounds of that, then a superset of:

dimel deadlifts: 135 x 20, 20, 20
flat DB triceps extensions (palms facing one another): 45 x 8, 8, 8

Very little rest time between movements, even with the heavy presses.  Total workout time was approximately 45 minutes.  I perform Dimel DL’s as a release-and-catch on the eccentric portion of the movement.  Not much load required in this movement; in fact, too much load will destroy the speed of the movement.  Find the sweet spot here between enough load and the maintenance of speed.

New Book in the Rotation
This one is a re-read of something I devoured many years ago, something that nudged me on to my own particular, spiritual path.  I’m curious to see how I relate to it now: The Way of the Peaceful Warrior, by Dan Millman.

What’s for Dinner?
Check this free-range egg scramble out: mushrooms, spinach, cherry tomatoes, raw, grass-fed cheese, all scrambled-up in a generous amount of bacon fat.  Yum-o!

3/19/10; The 20-Minute Squeeze

Sometimes work is the beast that endeavors to devour every last bit of your free time; now is one of those times for me.  Big, looming deadlines on the horizon, plenty of late hours at the grind.  I woke up this morning and realized that even if I hauled some serious ass, I’d only be able to squeeze-in maybe 20 minutes or so of actual iron time.  Now, I could’ve said the hell with it and chilled, chalked it up to the interventions of “randomness” or whatever; but that’s not me, and I’ll tell you why — because, although I might not have pushed the envelope physically this morning, what I did do was give my body the signal that, yes, it still has to perform — and no, it can’t get lazy and “chill”.  That short little burst this morning let my nervous system know that it’s not okay to “throttle-down”.  Hey, there are plenty of completely missed workout opportunities to chalk-up to “randomness” — if you’ve got a 20 minute window, you’ve got to jump on it and do what you can.

Serendipity strikes:
My good friend Skyler Tanner (who comments quite a bit here at TTP), recently drew up a fine practical example of Post-Activation Potentiation/Post-Tetanic Facilitation (PAP/PTF) and, after having read Skyler’s piece, I thought, “hey, yeah — I can dust-off a couple of sets of PAP/PTF, weighted pull-ups”.   I haven’t done front presses in a while, so I coupled some heavy presses with the the pull-ups.  The result?  A nice, challenging workout — compressed into 20 minutes.  Not bad at all.

After a quick warm-up of ballistic stretching, a few sets of whip-snatch to OHSs, and a couple of  “primer” super-sets of pull-ups and front presses, I did the following:

• regular-grip pull-up “hang”, 135 lbs x 15 secs.  This isn’t a “dead” hang, but rather a “contracted” position — a position equal to the first inch or so of movement out of the bottom-out, dead-hang position.
• rest approximately 2 minutes
• regular-grip pull-up negative from full, end-of-movement position; 90 lbs, 9 secs of TUT (time under tension).
• 2 minute rest

Then I jumped into 3 rounds of this super-set:

• front press (minimal “jerk” or “cheat push”): 165 x 5, 5, 5
• Regular-grip pull-ups: 45 x 6, 6, 6

Nice, snappy reps on all.  45 lbs felt mighty light; I may have been able to pull-off a muscle-up single at this weight.  I’ll give that a shot next time around.

An article in this month’s Esquire (Mutant, by Luke Dittrich), about sprinter Usain Bolt, got me thinking about the interplay of strength, power and elasticity.  Can an athlete be explosive, yet not be a good sprinter.  Absolutely.  More this weekend.