Nice Cosgrove write up.

[Mike Moore]

Originally Posted by Mike ODonnell

Diet is 85%+ of fat loss.....the other stuff while fun to talk about is not amounting to huge calorie burns over periods of time...as EPOC and all that stuff is kinda overrated.....eating right and burning fat all day through maintaining a strong metabolism is more key.....the only benefit of all that HIT stuff is the release of GH post workout. Yes we are overthinking HIT.....as people can still lose weight and gain muscle without it. (from a fat loss point of view) ....30sec ...2min ...4min .... whatever....it will all most likely do what you want from it. Unless there is a study on which has a greater release of GH pwo. Either way...we are probably fighting over a 100 cal difference.

Mike, I totally agree....and someone else's diet is a hard thing to control. When working with athletes though, the other stuff comes in to play as fat loss is not our only goal. Most of my athletes are wrestlers. If I train them with long and slow stuff...well you know the rest. Work intervals that I use pre and early season differ from those I use in the late season when peaking for state/national tournaments.

[Yael Grauer]

I did 15 seconds of sprinting and 45 seconds of rest on a treadmill for 20 minutes five days a week when I was trying to improve my run time in my pre-Crossfit days. It was an idea from a boxer/boxing coach/SF stud I know. I got my 12-minute mile down to a 7-minute mile this way.

[Jamila Bey]

Hey Yael, how long did it take for that GREAT improvement? And what effect on body comp did it have?

[Allen Yeh]

Originally Posted by David Wood

Are we over-thinking this a bit here?

Seriously, I'm kind of surprised to think that there is a difference between High Intensity (Anaerobic) Training and High Intensity (Aerobic) Training . . . in fact, I would have said that if it's "High Intensity", it pretty much has to be "Anaerobic", doesn't it? If you can do the work using only aerobic metabolism, is it still "high intensity"?

I get the idea that cranking up EPOC is a big part of Alwyn's strategy . . . is it really that important to fine-tune the workout to the nth degree?

For me, 8 sets of 1-minute on / 1-minute off seems to do it reasonably nicely . . . the 1-minute "on" is all-out for whatever I'm doing (uphill sprints, 300 meters on the C2, go hard on the bike, whatever), and the 1-minute 'off' is just "cruising" until I get my breath back. 1 minute isn't always enough, so I tend to start the later rounds not fully recovered, which makes them 'interesting'.

Does it really need to be more complex than this? I'm thinking I've got Pareto's rule in my favor here . . .

David while I agree intensity is the key, by definition true anaerobic work is mainly the work of the phosphagen and glycotic pathways right? So to keep these efforts mainly in the phosphagen path then you'd want to keep the duration of the work along the guidelines that Mike Moore said of 5-12 seconds and then to recovery that system completely you'd want a work rest ratio along the lines of 1:12-1:20 (that's a number pulled from CFJ #56).

Then aerobic HIIT would be something of longer duration while INTENSE, you still would be more in the glycolytic/oxidative pathways. So your actual work would be 1-3 minutes and the work/rest ratio is somewhere more along the lines of 1:2-1:4 and true oxidative work is 3 minutes+ and the work/rest would be more along the lines of 1:1.

I'm not saying from a best VO2 max or best conditioning work/rest ratio, it was just my conjecture to what Alwyn Cosgrove meant in his article for the Anaerobic HIIT and Aerobic HIIT.

[Mike ODonnell]

Originally Posted by Yael Grauer

I did 15 seconds of sprinting and 45 seconds of rest on a treadmill for 20 minutes five days a week when I was trying to improve my run time in my pre-Crossfit days. It was an idea from a boxer/boxing coach/SF stud I know. I got my 12-minute mile down to a 7-minute mile this way.

Funny...I probably would of added some 400meter intervals thrown in (aka 1:30min of sprinting)...but just goes to show....they all get results....

[Yael Grauer]

Originally Posted by Jamila Bey

Hey Yael, how long did it take for that GREAT improvement? And what effect on body comp did it have?

I think it took like five months or so. And it definitely improved my body comp, but I don't know by how much because all the methods I've used to try to figure it out have been inaccurate.

[Mike Moore]

Originally Posted by Yael Grauer

I did 15 seconds of sprinting and 45 seconds of rest on a treadmill for 20 minutes five days a week when I was trying to improve my run time in my pre-Crossfit days. It was an idea from a boxer/boxing coach/SF stud I know. I got my 12-minute mile down to a 7-minute mile this way.

Makes sense, although I'm suprised since some boxing coaches are still "old school", i.e. conditioning consists of long slow running. I think this thinking was based on the concept that since a fight was fifteen 3 minute rounds, a fighter should run at a constant pace for 45 minutes. The misconception lies in the fact that the action in a fight is not constant. I train a number of wrestlers (hs 6 min match, college 7 min match) and studies have shown that intense action of 15-25 seconds is usually interupted by 10-30 seconds of "less intense" activity.

[Jamila Bey]

So I tried the 15 work 45 rest on the elliptical trainer... (I'm not running in the gym so I can save myself for football.)

I decided to do no fewer than 230 strides per minute during the 15 secs and recover at whatever my legs felt like. Usually about 110-125 spm. I did it at level 10 of 20.

At interval #7 I had a stitch in my side and my heart was straining to get out of my chest! Sweat was flying off me and I was offending the people next to me with my profanity.

LOVED IT!!!!

This is my new routine! I think I'll do this every other day for 20 minutes to get my run speed up and get my belly flat.

Man I love this board.

[David Wood]

Jamila, wow! Turnover of 230 / minute is fast!

I do my 1 minute on / 1 minute off on the elliptical fairly often . . . for that, I also crank the elevation up to maximum (20) and resistance about 15, but at those settings, I can't keep the turnover above 160. Recovery is at about 120.

With 15 on / 45 off, I wouldn't try to change the elevation . . . it takes about 15 seconds to adjust from 10 to 20. I'll try it like yours. (Doubt I can keep that pace, though).


Reading this makes me think I understand the difference between High Intensity (Anaerobic) and High Intensity (Aerobic). Clearly, the 1 minute on / 1 minute off intervals I've been doing would qualify more as an example of the "aerobic" version . . . let me try 15/45 and I'll let you know.

[Mike ODonnell]

Originally Posted by David Wood

With 15 on / 45 off,

That reminds me of the old workout of sprint the on sideline the length of a football field...walk the endzone across....sprint the other sideline...etc.....those suck...