The Truth about Exercise

[SwissVan]

Interesting study on the benefits of Max Effort training.

Will be screened on BBC2 tonight 28.02.2012 at 21H00 GMT

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17177251

[MrJacques]

Interesting, seems like very short and intense interval training.

[SwissVan]

Anyone manage to see the episode?

3 minutes of training per week TOTAL TIME for 4 - 6 weeks provides the following:

Improvement in aerobic fitness and VO2max

Improved the body’s ability to deal (reduce) with sugar and fat in the blood

And of more interest it also discusses how certain genes control how we respond to training and that some people are super responders while some are Non responders to conventional exercise theories. As a result training methods in future could will be revised to be much more specific to the particular individual.

[fandacious]

umm yeah... max effort training isnt fun at all.

 

google "tabata intervals"

[dirtrider]

Now this is what I've been looking for . No more excuses that I am waiting beer time !

[SwissVan]

umm yeah... max effort training isnt fun at all.

 

google "tabata intervals"

 

Hell I look forward to max effort intervals, just thinking about it makes me nervous in a pleasant way...

 

The thing with this study is that in the past we have been TOLD that you have to (for example) exercise at least 30 minutes a day etc.... and many people who dont generally enjoy exercising struggle to do that on a continuous basis.

 

Its actually easier to do 3 x 20 second max efforts 3 x per week than to go out jogging / cycling / swimming or whatever for 30 minutes every day.

The dude on the TV program did not even bother to get out of his work clothes (suit) on some occasions during the 4 week trail.

[igknot]

Here is a lot of reading on the topic

 

 

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/training/methods-of-endurance-training-part-1.html

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/training/methods-of-endurance-training-part-2-miles-build-champions.html

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/training/methods-of-endurance-training-part-3-tempo-and-sweet-spot-training.html

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/training/methods-of-endurance-training-part-4-threshold-training.html

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/training/methods-of-endurance-training-part-5-interval-training-part-1.html

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/training/methods-of-endurance-training-part-5-interval-training-part-2.html

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/training/methods-of-endurance-training-summing-up-part-1.html

http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/training/methods-of-endurance-training-summing-up-part-2.html

[GrumpyOldGuy]

- Not sure you will run the Comrades on that amount of training, but any excersise is better than none.

 

I think its more for a very sedentary person where there will be huge gains for doing any physical work, no matter how little it is, but for someone used to say running 8 kms a day or training in the gym 2 hours a day etc, I doubt it will make any noticeable difference.

 

Maybe you remember many years ago (in the 70/80's) weight training and especially bodybuilding was a 7 day a week, five hours a day in the gym routine, then along came Mike Mentzer who advocated very high intensity training for short periods, he won a lot of shows and the idea of a 45 minute workout as opposed to 5 hours was very appealing, but, sadly no-one except him ever won anything using that principle and many have speculated that his death at around 48/49 (I cant remember) was due to a heart condition which was exacerbated by the continuous very, very, high intensity training.

 

I dont want to speculate on anything, but every now an then these odd ideas crop up, some work I guess, but as far as I know nothing has ever come close to the standard good old basic training routines which are tried and tested over an extended time and we have all been doing for year after year after year!

[Capricorn]

umm yeah... max effort training isnt fun at all.

 

google "tabata intervals"

 

did some of that with thta porn star chick whatshername..but omw.. that stuff will kill you.

great fun though

[BigGuy]

... then along came Mike Mentzer who advocated very high intensity training for short periods, he won a lot of shows and the idea of a 45 minute workout as opposed to 5 hours was very appealing, but, sadly no-one except him ever won anything using that principle ...

Now that name brings back memories! What he realised was that if you could not do another rep, you probably could. And he did those reps, because they were the important ones. Only other person I can think of that also used (almost) that approach was Dorian Yates?

[GrumpyOldGuy]

Now that name brings back memories! What he realised was that if you could not do another rep, you probably could. And he did those reps, because they were the important ones. Only other person I can think of that also used (almost) that approach was Dorian Yates?

 

Could be he was another bruiser, did insanely heavy poundage's on a regular basis, but yeah, as you say, Mike did one set of a muscle to exhaustion, then one or two more and that's it. High intensity and short duration. Very differant to the standard 4 x 12 sets everyone else was doing.

 

Just as an aside, what many people dont know about Mike was that he was a trained philosophy student, he even wrote some published manuals, so unlike the usual "huffers" of the time, he was actually very well educated.

Edited March 6, 2012 by GrumpyOldGuy

[SwissVan]

- Not sure you will run the Comrades on that amount of training, but any excersise is better than none.

 

I think its more for a very sedentary person where there will be huge gains for doing any physical work, no matter how little it is, but for someone used to say running 8 kms a day or training in the gym 2 hours a day etc, I doubt it will make any noticeable difference.

 

 

The program concept was more about health benefits than actually improving sporting performance. However the Professors who tested him said that improvements in VO2Max would happen if the program was followed for at least 6 weeks AND if the person was a "good responder" i.e. did not have a NON repsonders gene's.

 

The BBC dude who took part in the study was tested for the amount of sugar / fat in his blood and the amount of internal fat (fat accumulating around his internal organs), he initial tests before going on the program were not very good and showed that he had high amounts of fat and sugar in his blood plus a lot of internal fat as a result of the way his body dealt with fat and sugar through his normal consumption.

 

After a 4 week period of doing only 3 x 20 seconds HIT intervals 3 x per week (total of 3 minutes per week) and following the same eating habits as before, the blood tests showed a significant decrease of fat and sugar in his blood.

[GrumpyOldGuy]

Yeah, I sort of skimmed it, but it reminded me of that discovery programme that was on a few years back, you may have seen it, where they took 10 average joe's off the street and put them through a complete physical, then they gave them a number of excersise tests to do, you know the usual run 2.5kms, swim 800m etc and recorded all the results, these tests were competitive, so they competed against each other.

 

Then they randomly divided the 10 into two groups of 5, one group was taken under the wing of a top sport scientist, they were fed special diets, told when to sleep, when to eat, when to train etc. Training was all done very scientifically in a gym and heart and lung measurements were taken daily, blood was examined and excersise and diets changed accordingly.

 

The other group went to the army, basically all they did was live like a troopie, they ate what the other recruits ate, they did everything they did, they had no special training or testing, nothing, they just fell in with army life.

 

The training lasted two months and at the end the 10 were again given a complete physical and the same tests were run to check who got fitter.

 

In the end it was noted that the lab students showed they had made the most physical improvements according to the medical tests, however they lost every race in the tests, it was decided that although they got fitter than the army recruits, the army recruits developed a far greater mental strength and were able to push themselves much harder before giving up, usually at exhaustion, the lab rats had not developed that mental strength.

 

Interesting is it not.?

[Seeker911]

I think it has its merits. I was doing a 1.5 km swim in about 37 mins (open water tri race) with normal workouts - my swim sessions consisted of 3 * 1.5 hour sessions a week of about 3km per session. Then came the new coach. The program looked like this 3 * 40min sessions a week of about 1-1.5km per session. The difference being that in the revised sessions we concentrated purely on form and high intensity sprint work. 4 weeks later at Sun City I reduced my 37 mins to 30 mins.

[BigGuy]

Could be he was another bruiser, did insanely heavy poundage's on a regular basis, but yeah, as you say, Mike did one set of a muscle to exhaustion, then one or two more and that's it. High intensity and short duration. Very differant to the standard 4 x 12 sets everyone else was doing.

 

Just as an aside, what many people dont know about Mike was that he was a trained philosophy student, he even wrote some published manuals, so unlike the usual "huffers" of the time, he was actually very well educated.

Found this on Wikipedia:

Mentzer was an Objectivist and he insisted that philosophy and bodybuilding are one and the same. He said "Man, is an indivisible entity, an integrated unit of mind and body." Thus, his books contain as much philosophy as they do bodybuilding information.

 

Some time later, Mentzer attracted more attention when he introduced Dorian Yates to high-intensity training, and put him through his first series of workouts in the early '90s.^[1] Yates went on to win the Mr. Olympia six consecutive times, from 1992–1997.

 

Mike had met Dorian Yates in the 1980s and made an impression on Dorian's budding body building career. Years later when Yates won Joe Weider's "Mr. Olympia", he credited Mike's "Heavy Duty" principles for his training. Mike, his brother Ray, and Dorian formed a clothing company called "MYM" for Mentzer Yates Mentzer, also known as "Heavy Duty Inc", in 1994.

[GrumpyOldGuy]

Found this on Wikipedia:

Mentzer was an Objectivist and he insisted that philosophy and bodybuilding are one and the same. He said "Man, is an indivisible entity, an integrated unit of mind and body." Thus, his books contain as much philosophy as they do bodybuilding information.

 

Some time later, Mentzer attracted more attention when he introduced Dorian Yates to high-intensity training, and put him through his first series of workouts in the early '90s.^[1] Yates went on to win the Mr. Olympia six consecutive times, from 1992–1997.

 

Mike had met Dorian Yates in the 1980s and made an impression on Dorian's budding body building career. Years later when Yates won Joe Weider's "Mr. Olympia", he credited Mike's "Heavy Duty" principles for his training. Mike, his brother Ray, and Dorian formed a clothing company called "MYM" for Mentzer Yates Mentzer, also known as "Heavy Duty Inc", in 1994.

 

Yeah, interesting that. I still have one of his books here somewhere, I must try find it, really was interesting reading, he also wrote for a few magazines, most notably Muscle and Fitness which was obviously a Joe Weider publication.

 

I didnt know he trained with Yates or started a company with him, interesting. I guess you also know of or have heard of Gary Strydom then, and ex South African (Durban lad I think) who made it in the body building world in LA, he was another proponent of the heavy duty principle, he did very well and has maintained a fairly active career in the sport, but sadly he never made it as big as Mike or Yates.