![]() Rønnestad (here’s a video of a good lecture, for those interested) indicates that during maximum perceived exertion efforts, 30 second intervals with 15 seconds rest allow athletes to accumulate more time above 90% of VO2 max than 5 minute intervals. Here’s how short intervals do both: More time at higher intensity When my coaches and I work with athletes, we have to recognize that we have to help athletes build greater physical capacity as well as the psychological tools to actually use it. There are both physiological and psychological reasons that very short, very high-intensity intervals improve performance. Physical and Mental Benefits of Short Intervals The long interval group experienced a small decrease in mean power output (-1.4%), and no increase in average lactate level during the 20-minute test. ![]() There was also an increase, from 5.7 to 7.5 mmol/liter, in the short interval group’s average lactate level during the 20-minute test. What did improve, by nearly 5%, was the short interval group’s mean power output during a self-paced 20-minute time trial. Previous research has also shown that longer intervals (3-5 minutes with 2:1 work:recovery ratios) are more effective than very short intervals for increasing VO2 max. It is important to note, however, that this was a group of highly trained cyclists with mean VO2 max values of 73 ml/kg/min, so the total work may not have created enough stimulus to achieve positive adaptations for such a highly trained group. Neither group achieved an increase in VO2 max after 3 weeks. Both groups performed 3 workouts per week for three weeks, and the work times for each group were essentially equal (19.5 minutes for the short interval group and 20 minutes for the long interval group). ![]() New Informationįast forward to 2020 and an interesting article by Alex Hutchinson for Outside Magazine, which describes the results of a 2020 study that showed that 30:15 intervals (3 sets of 13 x 30 second max RPE efforts with 15 seconds recovery between efforts and 3 minutes between sets) yielded greater real-world performance improvements than 5-minute intervals (4 x 5-minutes at max RPE with 2.5 minutes of recovery between efforts). Over time, the duration and structure of intervals and recovery periods were manipulated as sports scientists and coaches sought to optimize the adaptations for specific sport demands and unique needs of individual athletes. Soon, “Tabata workouts” gained popularity, and the concept broadened out to “High Intensity Interval Training” or HIIT workouts. The result was an increase in both maximum aerobic capacity (VO2 max) and anaerobic capacity.īy comparison, the group that performed steady efforts at 70% of VO2 max saw a smaller improvement in maximum aerobic capacity and no improvement in anaerobic capacity. Izumi Tabata described a protocol of 20-second high intensity efforts separated by 10 seconds of recovery. Short intervals ranging from 10 to 40 seconds, with 1:1 or 2:1 work:recovery ratios, have been a staple of training programs since the 1990s, and were used less formally before that. Here’s the bigger picture of why my coaches and I incorporate very short intervals into our athletes’ programs. ![]() What’s important for athletes and coaches to understand, however, is that the reasons they work go beyond physiological adaptation. ![]() From the sports science side, short intervals work. The question of whether very short intervals (30 second max efforts with 15 second recoveries) are superior to longer five-minute intervals bubbles to the surface regularly, including this interesting Twitter thread. In exercise science and coaching there are long and passionate debates about the structure of interval workouts, the intensities that should be used, the duration of efforts and recoveries, and the total amount of work performed during a training session or a block of training. ![]()
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