recovery intervals PHA Polarised training Intensityfartlek speed MHR EDT INTERVALHIT TRAINING ACT YOUR ULTIMATE FITNESSsprints AND SPORT PERFORMANCE TOOL Tabata power flexibilityAndrew Hamiltonworkouts lactate threshold VO2max INTERVAL TRAINING YOUR ULTIMATE FITNESS AND SPORT PERFORMANCE TOOL INTERVAL TRAINING YOUR ULTIMATE FITNESS AND SPORT PERFORMANCE TOOL © Green Star Media Ltd 2016 Published by Green Star Media Ltd Meadow View, Tannery Lane, Bramley, Guildford, Surrey, GU5 0AB. United Kingdom. Publisher: Jonathan A. Pye Editor: Andrew Hamilton The information contained in this publication is believed to be correct at the time of going to press. Whilst care has been taken to ensure that the information is accurate, the publisher can accept no responsibility for the consequences of actions based on the advice contained herein. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the permission of the publisher. CONTENTS An introduction to and history of interval training 1 Why does interval training work? 5 Anatomy of interval training 11 Rest and recovery 20 High intensity interval: why less can be more! 28 Intervals: good for health as well as performance! 37 Intervals: looking at the bigger picture 43 Interval Training Workouts 52 Interval training for endurance 52 Interval Training and Sports Performance 55 Interval Training for Speed 58 Interval Training for Fitness 61 Interval Training and Resistance Training 64 Some frequently asked questions about interval training 69 INTERVAL TRAINING AN INTRODUCTION TO AND HISTORY OF interval TRAINING What is interval training and how did it evolve to become such an effective form of training? Introduction Distilled down to the very basics, ‘interval training’ is a method of training that intersperses intervals of high-intensity exercise, with short periods of rest. Why has this type of training become so popular among elite sportsmen and women? The answer, dear reader, is easy – done right, interval training allows you to get bigger fitness gains, faster than simply ploughing along endlessly at a steady intensity (we’ll explore why this is in the next chapter). But if interval training is so effective, why doesn’t everybody do it? Well, mention intervals to anyone that has participated in organised sport and the chances are you’ll open a floodgate of (mostly unpleasant) memories of gruelling and monotonous efforts on the field or track, in the pool, on the pitch etc! And that’s a big shame because interval training doesn’t have to be like that. As we’ll see in the coming chapters, recent findings from the world of sports science show that interval training can be quicker and easier than most people imagine. Better still, it’s also becoming clear that interval training can benefit everybody and anybody who exercises or participates in sport, whatever the level – not just in terms of sport performance but also by providing significant health benefits. In short, whether you exercise for fitness or train for sport, if you don’t include intervals in your programme, you’re losing out. Interval training: history and background It’s hard to say exactly where, when and how interval training first emerged as a training tool. We know that just over 100 years ago, the Finnish runner Paavo Nurmi and his coach Lauri Pikhala put together a system of training that includes what we might call intervals today. Also, the Finnish gold medallist (5k, 10k, 8k, and cross-country) Hannes Kolehmainen prepared for his Olympic performances by using a type of interval training. Both of these runners focused on alternating fast and slow runs and in some cases they would ramp up the effort, while decreasing the distance. However, it was a little later before modern interval training began to properly emerge. The history books recount how Germany in the 1930s was a nation 1 INTERVAL TRAINING preparing for a war that was to engulf the planet. However, two physiologists named Reindell and Gerschler had other matters on their mind. They had been studying the various functions of the human body and applying their findings to athletic performance. With the aid of a physician, Reindell and Gerschler tried to develop a method to train the heart muscle in the same way that other muscles would be trained. They found that repeated runs of 100-200 metres proved to be very effective and they had great success with one runner, Rudolf Harbig, who went on to set the world record for 400 metres. This was a golden age of sport science where the best physiologists in the world and best track coaches were working simultaneously. It resulted in the development of the now widely accepted ‘heart rate zones’ during exercise and the exact rest periods for the heart to return to a particular level before the next bout of intervals. During the years that followed, another German physiologist called Franz Stampfl moved from Germany to England and brought the interval training idea with him. His idea was different: some runners who can’t run a mile in 4 minutes can still run two miles at the same pace, if those two miles are divided into 8 x quarter miles with short rests in between. In other words, splitting the race distance into smaller segments and running these at the required race pace allows runners to do far more work at race pace than if they attempted the distance in one continuous hit. Stampfl’s idea caught the attention of a medical student called Roger Bannister, who used his medical background and Stampfl’s method to break the 4-minute barrier for the mile! Interestingly, when Bannister wrote about his training methods in a subsequent book, he only mentioned the last 10 workouts he did. This caused much confusion and endless troubles for those who tried to emulate his success because Bannister failed to mention that he was tapering (reducing his training volume and intensity) during these workouts! However, the importance of Bannister’s approach cannot be underestimated; apart from breaking through what seemed to be an unbreakable barrier, running a 60-second 400 metres ten times, with a rest of two to three minutes in between each effort, is still the starting point for those wishing to run a mile in less than four minutes! Beyond the mile Training at race pace, in short, produced great results for Bannister over the mile distance. But it soon became apparent that it was restricted in its application for significantly longer events – certainly beyond 5km. The next step in the evolution of interval training came in the late 40s and 50s when Czech runner Emil Zatopek 2 INTERVAL TRAINING (and others) realised that there was a limit to Bannister’s approach. For example, in no way would 12 x intervals of 3 miles be appropriate for marathon training! Instead, the idea was to perform an interval workout and then build upon it, either by increasing the number of repetitions, increasing the pace, lengthening each repeat or decreasing the time interval in between reps. This led to a bewildering array of different interval workouts, each with its own benefits and drawbacks. However, the proof of the pudding was in the eating because at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki, Zátopek won gold in the 5km, 10 km, and the marathon. He also broke the existing Olympic record in each of the three events! Fast forward to the late 60s and early 70s, and interval training took another step forward. This was because there were enough runners doing enough different workouts to compare them, which allowed sports scientists and coaches to use actual empirical evidence to determine what worked best and what didn’t. In California, Gerry Purdy and Jim Gardner were computer scientists and running fanatics who began hypothesising about the relationship between a runner’s level of ability and the workouts he or she could perform. They turned it into a science project and developed a scoring system that could pinpoint the fitness of any runner. They then published their results in 1970 in ‘Computerized Running Training Programs’, which soon became a bible for thousands of track coaches and runners. The essence of Purdy and Gardener’s finding was that runners could only run at 95% effort once, but could run at 90% two or three times with a 4-5 minute rest, 85% four or five times with a 3-4 minute rest, 80% six to nine times with a 2-3 minute rest, 75% ten to fifteen times with a 90-120 second rest and 70% up to 30 times with a 60-90 second rest and at any distance. This allowed coaches to write workouts quickly for several members of a team at once and before long, every college and school had a copy. Unfortunately, however, it also taught a whole generation of athletes to hate intervals! Modern interval training Interval training has remained popular since the late 60s, albeit with some resistance from coaches down under – for example, Percy Cerutty in Australia and Arthur Lydiard in New Zealand. Cerutty was known to dislike interval training and his training philosophy added resistance training to running – for example, his runners often ran on beaches and up and down dunes or ran with weights. Meanwhile, Lydiard developed an approach that emphasised very high training volumes with little interval content. While this approach is now eschewed by most coaches and sports physiologists, Lydiard did go on to develop 3 INTERVAL TRAINING the (now essential) tool of ‘periodisation’, which ensured his high-mileage runners were able to recover by drastically reducing their training mileage at certain times of the year, and also to peak for specific events.