There’s a saying in sports performance: “If it fires together, it wires together.” That means if you want real-world conditioning, you need a combination of heavy lifting and tier-one conditioning.

Enter Interval Weight Training

Pat O’Shea first talked about interval weight training workouts, or IWTs, in his book Quantum Strength and Power Training. The basic setup goes like this:

• Perform a full-body athletic movement, such as the power clean, power snatch, or snatch pull for 8–12 reps. Immediately following the strength movement, move to a cardiac conditioning effort for 2–4 minutes and work at 90–95 percent of your maximum heart rate. After completing this round, rest for two minutes and begin again, performing three total rounds.
• Following the three rounds, take a 5-minute complete rest. Let’s face it: you’ve earned it. But you’re only 30 percent done.
• Following the 5-minute rest, repeat the format first used, again using a whole-body strength movement, but this time substitute a grinding-type movement such as the front squat. Perform 3 total rounds and then take another well-earned 5-minute break.
• The final stage is a bodyweight circuit using exercises performed at high pace for 6–12 reps, each with minimal rest between movements. Rest no longer than a minute between circuits. Complete 3–5 circuits.

After you’ve earnestly done one of these workouts, you’ll never think of a few mindless laps of farmer’s walks and prowler work as conditioning ever again.

Choose a weight that feels explosive for the duration of the workout.

Cardio or Conditioning?

Everyone gets all tangled up over trying to define cardio and conditioning, as if there is any appreciable difference between them. Both require you to have an elevated heart rate. Both teach you to work for extended periods of time. And truthfully, there is no one exercise that builds work capacity that is exclusively one or the other.

You may think anything that gets your heart rate up can count as cardio training, so you will be fine just doing high-rep squats. Well, no. Just like you can have concentric and eccentric muscle contractions when doing curls and presses, your heart can have different training adaptations. So it makes sense that the hearts of endurance athletes and strength athletes differ, just like their physiques do.

When it comes to conditioning, there is a clear hierarchy. Like it or not, some exercises are just more effective. In tier one are the classics – running, swimming, cycling, rowing, cross-country skiing, and the VersaClimber. Tier two includes kayaking, boxing, and kettlebell snatches. It’s not until you get to tier three that you find the exercises most people try to use for conditioning – jumping rope, circuit training, and kettlebell swings.

The reason why circuit training is in tier three comes down to one factor: blood flow. When a muscle is tensed beyond 50 percent, all blood flow is stopped. Since less oxygen is being used by the working muscles, less oxygen is provided. And when it comes to getting that adaptation to the heart that helps it grow, it’s all about the need for high levels of oxygenated blood to be pumped to the muscles.

This is one of the big disconnects when it comes to conditioning work – your goal is to end up with higher levels of work capacity. While circuits may help to develop high levels of strength endurance, they do little to boost your heart’s ability to pump large quantities of blood. Further, because of the low loads used, they do little to develop muscular strength. If you’re looking for ways to improve functional horsepower, there is a far better way.

An IWT Primer

Before I get into the specifics, here are some things to keep in mind:

• Substitutions: Don’t substitute small exercises for big ones. Lat pull downs aren’t a replacement for power cleans.
• Load: While the loads should be relatively light – O’Shea recommends 70 percent of your 3 rep max – don’t skimp. The strength component must tax the muscles so you learn to display both strength and high levels of conditioning.
• Difficulty: 90–95 percent of max heart rate is hard. Like, collapse-on-the-ground hard. If you don’t despise these workouts, you’re just not doing them hard enough.
• Equipment: If you think running for two minutes will make you skinny, then stick to the big guy options – the Airdyne, rower, and ski erg – although a two-minute incline run on a treadmill is the hardest option you could choose.
• Heart Rate: If you use a heart rate monitor, don’t expect to see your heart rate at more than 90 percent for the first 30 seconds. It takes about that long for it to really jump. Instead, expect to see it peak near the end of your effort.
• Bonus Points: If you’ve spent time already addressing your fitness and know that while you are strong, you suffer with endurance work, then use slightly longer intervals of 3–4 minutes. Three-minute efforts, in particular, are heavily used in training methods designed to peak VO2 max abilities. That is the kind of training that gets you comfortable with being uncomfortable and increases your top-end fitness dramatically.

More is not more when it comes to IWTs. A single session each week following the full format is enough to see great improvements in real-world conditioning, and prepare you to kick some serious ass when needed. Trying to do multiple IWTs in a week will leave you burnt out quickly.

If these workouts aren’t kicking your ass, you’re doing it wrong.

4-Week Interval Weight Training Program

Try this IWT once a week for four weeks before taking a break:

First round:

• Power clean x 8–12 reps
• Row 2 minutes
• Rest 2 minutes

Repeat for three rounds. Rest 5 minutes before the second round.

Second round:

• Back squat x 8–12 reps
• Airdyne 2 minutes
• Rest 2 minutes

Repeat for three rounds. Rest five minutes before the third round.

Third round:

• Mountain climbers x 10
• Push-ups x 10
• Burpees x 10
• Squats x 10
• Box jumps x 10 (jump up and step down)
• Rest one minute

Repeat for five rounds.

Your goals for this workout each week should be as follows:

• Record the distances rowed on each interval. At the end of the four weeks, you should cover 10 percent more total distance than you did in the first week. A good starting goal is 550 meters per 2 minutes. That means you should break 600 meters per interval in the final week.
• Record total calories on each round for the Airdyne. Each Airdyne model records calories burned slightly differently. On the newer AD6s, we expect to see 40 calories or better for 2 minutes, while on the older AD4s and the Stair Master Air Bike we see roughly double that. In either case, just like with the rowing, your goal is to add 10 percent over the 4 weeks.

Aim for Progression

If you’re really out of shape, you’ll notice a tremendous drop-off in the number of reps you can get with the strength exercise, as well as how far you can go on each tier-one effort. Over time, as you become fitter and better adapted, you’ll see that all your efforts stay close to one another. At my gym, we expect to see less than a 10 percent drop in performance from one interval to the next.

When choosing your weights, don’t pick a weight that barely gets you 8 reps for the first set. That’s too heavy, and you’ll likely get only 5–7 reps in the second and third sets. Instead, pick a weight that you are confident you can get 10 reps with, and try to get at least 8 reps each set. If you are hitting 12 reps each round, add some weight for next week.

Embrace the Sweat

Don’t be scared of conditioning. You won’t lose muscle. In fact, as you get better conditioned and your heart gets stronger, you’ll find all sorts of other benefits, such as faster recovery between sets of your regular workouts and increased recovery between workouts. A strong, healthy heart is the most important muscle in the body. But to develop it, you don’t need to run an hour daily.

More Interval Training and Conditioning:

• The Fast Way to Long Health: Move Really Quickly
• A CrossFitter’s Guide to Interval Weight Training
• How to Choose the Proper Work and Rest Periods When Interval Training
• New on Breaking Muscle Today

Photos courtesy of Jorge Huerta Photography.

The post Rev Up Your Horsepower: An Interval Weight Training Plan appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Interval training involves a work period for a specified duration, followed by a recovery period with either no or minimal exertion. This work-rest menu is repeated for a specified number of repetitions (bouts) depending upon the training goal, the time of year of the training session, and the current conditioning level of the athletes.

The benefit of interval training is that it’s a fantastic means of improving cardio-vascular endurance beyond the use of steady-state work. It also adds more variety to a training program in that many different type of intervals can be used. Finally, it can be used in a sport-specific manner by replicating your sport skills repetitively with contest-specific work and rest periods.

Most interval training programs start with a break-in period that employs a minimum number of bouts, sub-maximal exertion effort, and maximum rest periods between bouts. Here are two examples of that:

400 meter running intervals – week one:

• Bouts – 3
• Work-to-rest ratio – 1 to 3
• Work effort (target time) – 1:35
• Rest period between bouts – 4:45

Boot camp station intervals – week one:

• Number of bouts (stations) – 16 (2 rounds of 8 stations)
• Work-to-rest ratio – 1 to 1.5
• Station work time – :30
• Rest period between stations – :45

Now, to be progressive and push abilities forward, the interval prescription would need to evolve to something more challenging than the above. Progressing from the week one examples above, here is what it might look like over time:

400 meter running intervals – week eight:

• Bouts – 6
• Work-to-rest ratio – 1 to 2
• Target time – 1:15
• Rest period between bouts – 2:30

Boot camp station intervals – week eight:

• Number of stations – 30 (3 rounds of 10 stations)
• Work-to-rest ratio – 1 to .5
• Station work time – :45
• Rest period between stations – :23

That makes perfect sense, but what is good for you? What are the best work and rest periods for your specific training goals? To determine this, first you need to analyze your event needs:

• What is the total time of your event?
• What is the length of time of the individual bouts (skill executions) that occur during your event?
• Are there varied bout lengths (i.e., some are short-term explosive and some require longer-term sub-maximal)?
• What is the intensity level of each bout? Again, maximal or sub-maximal effort?
• How many bouts are performed over the duration of your event?
• Does your event require multiple short-duration, all-out efforts with minimal rest between them?
• Does your event require multiple long-duration, sub-maximal efforts with varied rest times between them?
• Does your event entail maximal effort but with longer rest between bouts?

Whatever sort of athlete you are, you must attempt to replicate your competition needs in training. For a little more insight into your training needs, review the ATP-PC, glycolytic, and oxidative energy systems. But regardless of the science behind it, you’ll most likely in one of two categories:

1. A maximum short-term strength and power event that consists of maximum effort and lengthy rest periods, such as:

• Baseball position player
• Bowling
• Field event in track and field
• Golf
• Powerlifting
• Swimming short sprinter
• Track short sprinter
• Weightlifting

2. A sub-maximum to maximum event with multiple strength and power exertions of varied intensities and minimal to moderate rest periods, such as:

• Basketball
• Football
• Hockey
• Lacrosse
• Racquetball
• Soccer
• Tennis
• Volleyball

Whatever your event needs, here are practical work-to-rest ratio guidelines you can apply to your training using a twelve-week training program as an example.

This is just one example and yes it can be confusing. There are numerous work-to-rest options that can be used depending on the event needs, the time of year, and ability of the athlete. Therefore, when structuring work an rest periods within an interval training program, these guidelines can be helpful:

Maximum short-term exertion (<:12) and maximum rest time events (3:00+) – use shorter work periods and longer rest periods, such as 1 to 50, 1 to 40, or 1 to 30. The volume of bouts can vary depending on your needs. As a general rule, a lower volume in the early stages of a program and a higher volume in the latter stages.

Sub-maximum to maximum exertion (:20 to 1:00+) and minimal to moderate rest time events (:20 to 2:00) – use ratios such as 1 to 4, 1 to 2.5, 1 to .5. Again, the volume of bouts can vary depending on your needs: progress from a lower volume to a higher volume over the weeks of your training program.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

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We have a lot of data to support the claim of using our hearts to their fullest and many of us now know the results of our exercise in real time. Indeed one of the many trends to hit the fitness industry in recent years is that of instant information. We have machines, bracelets, and Fitbits that can tell us everything from our heart rates, to calories burned, to steps taken. There are tons of apps that track calories and help us design our workouts. As a coach, I sometimes wonder if coaching will go the way of dinosaurs with so much data readily available at our fingertips.

While exercise and diet fads will come and go, the focus on data and information is here to stay. Knowledge is power and ultimately knowledge and wisdom are what will save our ailing society. Data is key and no data is more important than the information as it relates to the all mighty heart rate. The heart rate tells us how hard we’re working when we’re exercising (max HR), how hard our heart has to work while we’re at rest (resting HR), and how quickly our heart recovers from exercise (exercise recovery HR). These are all important indicators of fitness and the health of our heart. They also are correlated and interconnected. What the data shows us is that when we use our hearts properly and vigorously, we recover faster and are healthier for it.

In the past year, much of my focus professionally has been on heart rate interval training. The idea has been to help people train in peak training zones to optimize their fitness levels. As noted in a recent article of mine, training anaerobically is also a great way for the body to consume calories and make one a better athlete. When you train anaerobically (at 84% and above of your estimated max HR), the body’s calorie consumption mode kicks into overdrive and we burn more calories at rest too. This is part of the reason anaerobic athletes have the shredded physiques most of us covet. They’re willing to get those heart rates up into those uncomfortable zones.

Certainly fat burning and becoming more athletic are things that people want, but something else comes along with such training – better health. Exercise recovery heart rate is one of the biggest predictors of cardiovascular health. As anyone who has had a heart condition can attest to, one of the first things a physician will do in evaluating the health of a heart is a stress (or treadmill) test. The stress test is pretty simple. Put someone on a treadmill and have them exercise up to a strenuous point and then see how quickly they recover. Heart rate recovery is a measurement of how quickly one recovers in the first two minutes after peak exercise. The first minute of recovery is the most important indicator.

In a study by the Cleveland Clinic Exercise Laboratory in Ohio, Michael S. Lauer, MD, the lead researcher of the study, found that people with abnormal heart rate recovery, which consists of a decrease of twelve or less beats per minute, were at a greater risk for death from heart disease than those with normal heart rate recovery, which is a decrease of fifteen to 25 beats per minute.

Athletes recover quickly and their heart is better for it. Like any functioning part of the body the heart is best served by being exercised. Athletes don’t struggle to recover and so they don’t struggle mentally to buy into exercising intensely the way a novice exerciser does. It often takes a sedentary person’s heart a long period to recover, meaning they are uncomfortable much longer than the athlete. As for getting into athlete shape, it certainly takes work to get there, but the science shows us it’s more than worth it – lower mortality rates, better physiques, and feeling better while exercising intensely. The key is buying in psychologically to getting uncomfortable, as it is with many things in life.

It all seems pretty straightforward and simple, right? Start doing interval training and getting the heart rate to recover faster by working harder. But again, harder work is not always easy. For many, just starting a regular exercise program can seem daunting, let alone the prospect of having to get really, really uncomfortable doing things like uphill sprints. Many would just rather do the elliptical machine. The truth is, though, the elliptical machine probably won’t get us there unless we’re sprinting on it.

I have witnessed time and time again this past year what happens as people become better and better conditioned as they do heart rate interval training. They become athletes and get in tiptop shape from anaerobic training. Their physiques change to look more like an athlete and their bodies become calorie-burning machines. Through such training, I have seen huge improvements in things like running times and, of course, exercise recovery heart rate times. All good, right? Definitely, but there is one additional hurdle to overcome and again it’s a psychological one.

As noted, data reigns supreme these days and when we see results we like, such as high heart rates and calories burned, we come to expect these results. Many come to expect achieving the high exercise heart rates and the calories burned. So, the thing is, as we become better athletes, we will spend more time in the recovery heart rate training zone, which might make us feel like we aren’t achieving the same results as when we have a more consistent, higher heart rate. However, what really is happening is that we are becoming better athletes and our hearts are recovering more quickly. As you experience more stress along the way, it won’t be easy, but you’ll recover with increasing speed, and your heart and health will thank you for it.

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

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