@phatbitzrwrote:
The biggest hype of a fad is the incorporation of tabata into workouts. That workout is suppose to be performed at 170% VO2 max, which is incredibly hard to reach, let alone sustain for 20 sec, and to be repeated 8x with a 10 sec recovery in between. I see it everywhere, from low intensity workouts, to at most something where somebody is breaking a sweat. The person needs to be dying, if not the first one, should be by the 4th or 5th one.
To see how hard it should be, use your estimated VO2max, subtract 7 from it, multiply by your weight in LB, and divide by 23.8. That is the sustainable power output in watts at 100% VO2max. Now go to one of those stationary bikes in the gym, set the display to show watts, then crank up the resistance high enough and pedal fast enough so you reach your 1.7x of your sustainable watts output and hold for 20 sec. That's how hard you should be pushing. Forget how close it is to your calculated max heart rate, because this is how hard you should be working on HIIT.
I think the bigger fad is calling anything that gets intense, especially things that can really ONLY be intense, as HIIT.
That term used to be specific to a specific type of interval training, compared to regular intervals, Sprint Interval Training (SIT), ect. Now many sites are just lumping them together.
And intervals used to be taking something that would normally be done as endurance cardio (running, biking, rowing, swimming), but instead done as intervals to get a specific effect from them, to benefit the cardio activity.
Now applied to almost anything - I guess because it sounds better to say you are doing it - therefore routines are called HIIT to get attention.
Even the Tabata research was on bike, ie cardio. But you'll find articles now that say use it on anything, kettle balls, pushups, situps, ect.
Uh, no, if you want the specific benefits given by the research, you do it the same way.
If you want something that was going to be intense anyway, and just want to make it faster pace so it can be done only for 20 sec, then not the same improvements to the aerobic/anaerobic system.
Sure you'll get improvements, but not the same. Just harder.
If that's the only purpose, making it harder, then hold your breath next time during the 10 sec rest, it'll make it much harder!
Actually, the Tabata routine as done with somewhat athletic people (but medically safe) in the study, is still tough, but not that bad - because their VO2max wasn't that high, so it wasn't as bad to get 170% of it being low. They could also specifically measure everything needed - watts, HR, ect.
They actually weren't at max effort even on first set. But, their last set was pretty poor compared to the first set, so it obviously took a lot out of them.
They also didn't recalc their VO2max during the 6 weeks as they were increasing it and use it - or then their workouts would have become pretty hard, because as you mention, the range left up to their HRmax would have shrunk.
It would have been interesting to recalc on their ending higher VO2max, and then have them attempt the workout again at new values.
I'll bet it would have degraded even faster, because the recovery is too short.
And like you did they had to do - can't actually go by HR because it responds too slow and starts just being elevated in general - you have to calculate the watts required to produce that from tests already done too.
Treadmill especially hard to estimate that, but can be done. But that ramps up even slower when it's time to go hard, could take 5-10 sec.
Elliptical seems to be easy to increase fast - but not sure how you'd estimate resistance - so I guess going all out, or almost, would be good enough.
But it does produce some real improvements for those not well trained.
Not sure what kind of improvements you get with someone already trained, since not as big of improvements available.
So it's one of those studies that is interesting just how much improvement you can get out of untrained or lightly athletic people.
But real world continued usage - does it keep making improvements, does it help hold onto improvements? What's the usefulness of the improved anaerobic markers, unless you do indeed use it for soccer, basketball, ect? Sure the improved aerobic markers could be useful. Except, their results showed the energy was supplied by carbs mainly compared to fat - that's not going to benefit endurance cardio where you need better fat usage with carb usage limited by stores.
Despite that study, there were studies years before (perhaps what he was testing against) that showed good aerobic training improved the anaerobic side of the range (by raising Lactate threshold), better than the anaerobic training improved the aerobic side of the range - which actually the Tabata study still seemed to say.
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