Get off the high intensity bandwagon!

I’m sick and tired of listening to strength coaches jump on the “high intensity” bandwagon. This god awful bandwagon contains misguided quotes such as “you’ll lose strength if you run for over 20 minutes”… or…. “your biceps will shrink”….or even worse…”you’ll lose power”

SERIOUSLY?

The majority of trainers/strength coaches have this idea in their heads, that if you are working aerobically then you may as well be wearing Lycra and dancing to music. After all, why run for 4 miles when you all you really need to do is perform 8 sets of 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off. Right?

Wrong, again!

Much like all fads in the world today, I am 100% certain that this HIIT fad will die down soon, but for the time being let me at least try my best to make you consider missing the bus that leads to nowhere.

Intensity is a tool. Use it wisely! The higher the intensity, the bigger the disruption of homeostasis, the bigger the improvement OVER A VERY SHORT PERIOD!! If you look at all the research done on a high intensity program versus a low intensity program they were performed over a 4 to 6 week period. So of course you will see a bigger improvement within the high intensity group. Its not rocket science. BUT. And it’s a freakin’ huge BUT… you also a see that the high intensity groups see NO FURTHER IMPROVEMENT after the first initial 3 weeks. Lets take the research done on “tabata”. Tabata seems to be the mother of all intensity programs. The research done on tabata showed that there were no increases in aerobic fitness after the first 3 weeks. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. The way I look at it, you’ve trained hard for 3 weeks for nothing. The ONLY way they could have continued to see improvements was to raise the intensity, and continue to raise the load on the athlete which will soon reach its peak. Lets not forget about the lyrca wearing low intensity group. They continued to see improvements throughout the course of the study.

End result = higher intensities produce bigger increases, but are much shorter lived. You have to keep increasing the intensity, to keep going.

So what happens if you throw massive amounts of intensity at your athletes, unnecessarily, you’ve just increased the intensity threshold tenfold and fairly quickly they will plateau as you can’t increase the intensity any more. That’s the main reason why we see high intensity do-gooders plateau after about 3 to 4 months. They’ve thrown everything, include the barbell, at their programming, and now have nowhere to go.

Conclusion: If your looking to make money from your fat mums, who come to the gym to “work hard”, but still want to have their double cream shake, then by all means jump on the bandwagon and ride the hell out of her. But if you want to see continual improvements from your athletes, take things a little slower. Athletes don’t need to be doing the most ‘advanced’ methods possible. Increase the intensity over a longer period of time. That’s how you’ll see continual improvements over time.

What ever I say, there will still be those proud few who disagree. It doesn’t bother me. In fact I encourage you to keep going. Soon enough your athletes or clients will jump ship. Then all you’ll be left with is a misused barbell and a broken treadmill.

Until next time

Stay Strong