Defining HIIT vs. Steady State for Adaptation

we always i mean we've been told by men's health and and whoever else maybe cross I don't know for a long time that like kind of HIIT training will be enough and that will get us our aerobic gains or you can get better aerobic kind of gains from HIIT training than steady state and but I think now we're starting to kind of dispel that myth is that right or maybe I've got that wrong no I mean it will one thing is we have to define what we're talking about with HIIT training right so again we've we split this into two different categories you have you have researchers that will look at at high intensity interval training as a as a factor of how high you can keep your heart rate for a certain amount of time. But then you'll have another side of the researchers that dictate hit as power output. And I tend to look at it as more power output. How high can I have my power output? How long can I maintain that power? For me, that's going to be more important when we're talking about sports is that I can maintain power and repeat that power over and over and over across however many minutes I have to compete at. So things like pick intervals and things like that. what's that? So things like a lactic intervals, lactic power intervals, things like this. Yeah. And like even things like, like a lactic intervals to me, if, if it's a lactate with complete rest, I don't see a lot of usability for that in combat sports. Um, there's no, there's nothing you're really going to do. That's going to last 10 seconds that you need to recover from, right? You're probably, you're probably looking more towards building an aerobic base and then building enough glycolytic base so that you can maintain a high level of power and endurance by using both fat and carbohydrate equally at the same time. Okay. So, but just to go back to the question, you're saying that we need to lay that foundation with like lists, essentially, low intensity, you know, steady state cardio. Could it be done with interval training or is it really that we need to focus on that low intensity stuff? actually yeah that was one of the questions you had like what's the usability of lists i mean there's a reason why over the last however many hundred years that we've been having combat sports that people do road work like why do boxers do road work why do if you go to thailand and you go and you do muay thai you're going to be running a lot okay and there's a good reason for that they understand the value of that now i do think that that can be taken to an extreme like we're not trying to create marathon runners, but being able to go out and do a 5k and maybe a couple of 5k intervals and perform that really at a high level is probably going to be beneficial for you. But again, whenever we talk about cardio, there's two things people think about. They either think about weight loss or they think about running a marathon. They think about like the two most extreme things you can think of. I'm thinking about adaptation, right? I'm thinking about recovery, I'm thinking about better sleep, I'm thinking about the ability to eat more food, the ability to maintain power output for a long time, that's the stuff I'm thinking about. And it doesn't take a long time to build that aerobic base, depending on where you start, right? If you start in your VO2 max, if you put somebody in a concept two and they're at a 24, yeah, it's going to take them a while to get that up. But for most people, I see massive improvements in just six to eight weeks of dead weight.

complicated VO2 max training, if you just get that out of the way, the drop off from that is very, very low. You just get that out of the way and then kind of put that on maintenance. And you can maintain a lot of that, you know, just doing easy flow rolls and things like that. If you go in, you know, go in on a, you know, open mat and just find somebody who wants to do easy flow rolling for 20 or 30 minutes, very easy to maintain that cardiovascular adaptation. And then you can focus on other things like if you want to throw in you know more hit type training that's good too now the secondary thing with this is when we look at hit training we have to we have to dictate what we're looking for you're looking for global cardiovascular respiratory adaptations or you're looking at localized um localized conditioning right so global conditioning is vo2 max localized is do I have enough enzymes and do I have the machinery in my peripheral system to then take you know take advantage of that extra oxygen like doing things like rowing and running and the airdyne and the skier and that type of thing will build a lot of good global conditioning if I'm going to turn that into localized conditioning which I should when I move it into a more specific phase now since you've done Joel Jameson's things this is where we're looking at things like HRIs and HICTs and things like that to then build the machinery localized in my limbs to then be able to take advantage of that and be able to oxidize better now that I can get that oxygen in. So if you think about the first thing is you have to get the oxygen into the body, then you have to get the machinery in the peripheral system to be able to utilize that oxygen as well. So if I can't get the oxygen in, it doesn't matter how good I am locally, I still have to support that with my lungs and with my heart, with my vascular system. So it makes sense. Go ahead and take care of that first, then get really specific on, you know, heavy sled pushes and pulls and strong man type work. And then working more on that really high intensity interval training side of it. Now that I can take advantage of EPOC because I can get oxygen in now. Yeah. I suppose if again, taking that to the next level, if you can do that with specific movements that SPP stuff in like your drilling or you know specific MMA or jiu-jitsu related movements going to be kind of even more you know efficient and you know preparing you for the task at hand yeah I mean if you go like like just imagine you know if you go to a if you don't go to a fight specific class where you're getting ready for a tournament you're going to do things like shark tank like you're going to be in there you're going to you're going to be going hard balls to the wall. If you have a good level of aerobic foundation, it's not going to be as hard for you as if you didn't, right? So it's only going to be a benefit, right? And you see that, right? You go to a competition class, and you can see the guys who it's their first class, and they don't know what to expect. And then they quickly realize this isn't a normal class. And you're basically rolling hard, like you're basically fighting for your life for 60 to 90 minutes and they find out really quickly after 10-15 minutes of this oh shit I need to get in shape it's the stress tester I know my heart rate always goes up is if the coach says well it's shark tanks today you're like fuck I wish I had that pizza for lunch okay you touched on like your your um jiu-jitsu coaching kind of the example you gave around probably globally amongst uh MMA fighters but actually let's even look out at the weight loss population and how people tend to just survive in a calorie deficit so if we switch our focus to a weight loss scenario it can be a fight or it could just be someone trying to lose weight