Geezer HIIT

[MashedTaters]

So what's the consensus? Will it help shave a little off the waistline? If you believe (or, know) this is so, what is your HIIT routine?

Share your stories.

Me. I just started about a week ago to try the Tabata thing - hit it for 20 seconds, 10 second rest, rinse, repeat for 7 more cycles for a total of 4 minutes. I'm all about efficiency, so I like that it's only 4 minutes.

Since I workout 2X per week, I did the rower on my heavy day (that includes deads), and farmer's walks on the light day (no deads), thinking that I'm getting HIIT along with a grip workout.

But, what do I know?

[skid]

I've got a prowler, but don't have pavement to push it on. Gravel is too slippery and it digs in on my grass. I now have a long piece of heavy anchor chain that I hook into my dipping belt and pull that around the turnaround at the end of my driveway. Absolutely flogs me... way more than the prowler. I should do it more but mentally/physically it is very hard. One trip around is maybe 20 seconds and it is a complete max effort for the duration.

[Smyth]

But....does HIIT help to shed some of the novice program poundage?

[Smyth]

deleted double post

[Richard Seaman]

I did intervals on an airdyne bike for about 2 months during novice LP. Pretty much what Jordan recommends. 5 minute warmup, 7 reps of 20s all out then 140 secs rest, followed by 10 minutes cool down. It exhausted me each time. Several times I would get off the bike for a moment after the intervals and before cool down to pick up a bottle of water and had trouble standing.

I felt my conditioning improved only marginally. It made no difference in my waist line that I could detect. When I was doing it my progress on LP slowed and even stalled on some lifts, though when I stopped my progress on LP was no different. I probably was reaching the end of LP and perhaps the HIIT made no difference. The sales pitch for HIIT is that you can do it a couple days a week without affecting your strength training. Count me as skeptical. Maybe if you do it regularly for a long time that will be so, but it made more more tired than heavy lifting.

Personally, I hated every minute of it, and for now, I'm not doing it. Maybe if I had observed some tangible or measurable benefit, I could motivate my self to continue. But I didn't.

[Smyth]

Thanks Paladin.

[Mark E. Hurling]

I've done a GXP with and without intervals. They take 15 minutes and are done twice a week. I recently changed up my programming so that I do them after lifting, which allows me more total recovery time and less total time in the gym what with travel and cleanup. They don't seem to have helped in weight loss with me, but I tested out a 40% VO2 Max last week on one of the machines with a heart rate monitor built in. So the conditioning seems to working just fine.

[MashedTaters]

Good info, Paladin and MEH. Much appreciated!

[Mark E. Hurling]

You're welcome. Here's my take on leaning out and cardio and conditioning. I would so dearly love to drop 20 or so pounds, but I am having no luck with it. I have always had a sluggush metabolism, even as a heavy teen. I caught the aerobics jogging bug from Cooper's first book right after football season ended my senior year in high school. I was 5'11" (still am) and played offensive and defensive line at 230 lbs. Which was damn big for a rural Illinois high school in 1968. I started jogging miles upon miles with everyone in the village of 210 souls thinking I was nuts.

When I went off to college, I weighed 175. I stayed between 175-185 for the next 30 years through doing an ever increasing amount of jogging and eventually roller blading, stationary bike, and (God be praised!) ellipticals. There's no doubt that it cost me a lot of strength from never being quite recovered. Along with the 4 times a week 6-8 rep sets of a lot of sorry-ass bodybuilding routines. In my 50's I just couldn't keep doing 45+ minutes of cardio 5-6 times a week. Just didn't have the mojo any more. My weight and strength increased.

I gave things more thought as time went on about recovery and how much cardio you really need. I settled on short, sharp, and intense mainly under the influence of guys like Clarence Bass and Richard Winnett who both liked the GXP and things like it. I tried a lot of others like Tabatas but it required more focus and attention to form than I was prepared to devote to what had come to consider a necessary but tertiary activity. My priorities were and are martial arts, lifting, and conditioning. The first two still occasionally swap places depending on upcoming meets or evaluation for higher rank. But conditioning was firmly relegated to last place when I gave up trying to get or keep abz. I only succeeded at that three times in my life. I was half starved and weak on two of them, and in my early 40's I was more or less fairly balanced. But it was too much time and too much work.

As I marinated in all this in my latter 50's and early 60's, I started thinking about how long and how much aerobic effort I had ever really needed during the course of my life. Other than high school football, not much. NCAA judo has 3-5 minute rounds, so a moderate amount was required for that. As a cop, none of my foot pursuits were more than 400 yards or so. They either tripped, puked, or gave up. The fights I was in then were over in less than 30 seconds. Most less than 15 seconds. So in reality, life activities don't hardly ever require more than 5 minutes of a relatively intense bout of aerobic activity.

So why do more when you can get the conditioning you need for even the taxing threats you might encounter, fighting or fleeing? If you like to run, cycle, or swim, have at them. But if you want to kevlar wrap your heart, short, sharp, and intense will git 'er done! That 40% VO2 Max puts me at very good to excellent for a soon to be 65 geezer. So I am pretty content.

[SJB]

Mark, how much of your VO2 Max do you attribute to your martial arts training?