Do you want to lose weight, run a 5k, compete in your first triathlon or improve your fitness to keep up with your kids?

What compromises are you prepared to make that happen?

It would be great if we could have could have it all, but the truth is we just don’t have the time to fit everything in.

Using up family time to train doesn’t make sense, if your reason for improving your health is to be more active with said family.

You can’t keep adding more to your life and expect to keep the same quality and energy for each thing. Something has to give, or your health will.

There are only 24 hours in a day, some of those hours are taken up with activities that are out of your control. Things that you have to do like sleep, work and family care. Some you might wish you didn’t have to do but we must keep it real!

If you add an hour of training into your day, 3 times a week you are going to have to reduce or even give up time spent on other activities that aren’t crucial to survival or quality of life.

Things like –

The social media zombie scroll, Netflix box sets in the evening or You might have to get up 30mins earlier.

One of the reasons my hair is so short and any foray into long hair has been short lived, is to save time. I don’t wear make- up partly because most of my life has been spent sweating or swimming or in sweaty environments and also because it saves me time. This doesn’t mean I don’t want to look good I do. For me, doing things that make me feel good on the inside make me feel good on the outside.

I know for some hair and make-up is a way to express themselves, if that’s the case keep doing it if it brings you joy. What other things are you prepared to compromise on to free up the extra time?

Recognize the fact you will need to make compromises, figure out what they are going to be and have a plan how you are going to execute it before you make changes. Remember you are not looking for perfection but PROGRESS.

If you are want a training program that works with your other work/life commitments head to http://www.laurawoodley.com/apply-.html and apply for a 1:1 online coaching slot. I currently have a couple of open slots.

How long are your HIIT sessions? Are you heading towards 45-60mins? Unless a hefty chunk of this is made up of your warm-up, cool-down and recovery between intervals you are not performing true HIIT. I’m not downplaying your commitment; I just don’t want you to be misinformed.

To understand why I say this let’s take a quick view of the bodies energy systems.

The body’s different energy systems:

• The ATP-PC system is responsible for high power, short duration exercise; think “all out sprint” or a max-effort deadlift. This is the system you are using when performing a true HIIT session, and it lasts for about 10 to 15 seconds of work.

• The glycolytic system kicks in for exercise performed for slightly longer periods of time, such as, “30 seconds on, 30 seconds off” efforts on the rower/bike, or hypertrophy strength training. These types of workouts are no doubt high intensity and have a massive benefit for your body to deal with the build-up of lactate. However, due to the length of interval and system used they are not true HIIT.  The glycolytic system begins to tire closer to the 1-minute mark of work, a little longer than the ATP-PC system.

• The oxidative system doesn’t deliver energy as fast or as powerfully as the other systems, but it delivers it for longer. You use this system for long duration, low intensity exercise such as a walk, leisurely run or cycle.

The first two energy systems are classed as “Anaerobic” which in most texts you will be told is providing energy without the presence of oxygen. This is not true research has shown that your aerobic (oxidative system) is always running in the background. This is important to know because it highlights how systems work together and compliment each other. The stronger your aerobic system the faster you can recover and stay at higher intensities for longer.

True HIIT is meant to be short and INTENSE. Honestly done right it’s not fun or something you can go back and repeat the next day or day after that.

Here is an example of how to perform a HIIT session you could perform this on a bike or rowing machine that gives you a measure of your power.

• Perform a good warm-up that progressively increases your heart rate and power output.
• When warm perform a 10sec interval at your max making a note of your power output.
• Let your heart rate recover to between 85-100bpm before going again.

Once you can no longer maintain your power output you achieved in your first interval or your heart rate takes longer than 4-5mins to recover end the session. Using recovery heart rate to determine your rest between intervals allows does two things.

1. It keeps the session tailored to your current state, we all have days where we feel more ready to rock than others!
2. It allows you to maintain quality of performance.

If you find that your second or third interval is faster than your first, you probably were not warmed up enough to give it your max on the first interval. Next time you perform the session take a little longer.

Over time you are looking for the following adaptions.

You can generate more power.

Your heart rate recovers quicker.

You are able to increase the number of intervals.

You can of course perform longer intervals using this format, which I think is important to do to provide a balanced training program. Longer intervals would be more of a High intensity conditioning session than pure HIIT.

HIIT is one part of the training puzzle. Perform it wisely, combined with other forms of training you will see great improvements in health and body composition.

If you want help structuring your training head to www.laurawoodley.com and sign up for 1:1 online coaching.

References:

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.98.2.457

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28877871/

Wouldn’t it be great if you could hit your cardio goals with just a few minutes of hard effort a day. The past few years High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) has exploded in popularity, partly down to this claim.

HIIT does burn a high number of calories in a short time, improve your ability to buffer lactate acid, burn fat and build your mental toughness.

Does that mean you should ditch your 30+min cardio sessions? Stop being able to chat with the person on the bike next during the 4mins of 30sec intervals where you can’t even speak?

The answer is no!

HIIT and Steady state cardio cause different adaptions. Steady state improves your aerobic capacity (the amount of oxygen you can take in and utilize during exercise) and HIIT improves your ability to work at higher heart rates due to the ability to buffer hydrogen ions, improving your power.

They complement each other.

Using a combination of both, will give you the most improvement not just for cardio conditioning but also strength work also.

Having a strong aerobic base helps you recover quicker between sets allowing you to increase the volume of sessions. If you are worried about the interference effect, there is growing research to show that moderate amounts of cardio do not impact strength gains.

In the real world (not the “Click Bait” world) it is never a matter of either or. For long-term health and performance, you need both HIIT and steady state cardio.

Do some HIIT

Lift heavy

Run/cycle/row steady

Recover

Repeat

HIIT is time saving but if done properly it is HARD and will leave you tired! Which is something you have to consider when planning your schedule. Steady State might take longer but is easy to recover from and can be used for recovery.

If you would like advice on how to plan your training to get the most out of your time sign up for a 1:1 online coaching slot at http://www.laurawoodley.com

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4657417/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34757594/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28513103/

Resilience is a well-used term in sports and fitness. If you have a setback you need to have the resilience to get back up again. I would argue, (Ask my kids, they will tell you that’s something I’m good at) that you don’t just want to get back up, you want to be able to get back up stronger. That is the difference between being resilient and being antifragile.

Being antifragile means that you actually benefit from disorder and failure because you can learn from it and move forward. Unfortunately, humans are becoming less antifragile we avoid hardship and disorder, which means when we do have to face hardship, we don’t cope well with it.

We may be living longer due to the advances in medicine and science but that has come’s often at the cost of quality of life. Of course, we shouldn’t pass on health care or not continue to make scientific advances that preserve life. You can help yourself improve the quality of life as you age, by partaking in activities that test you physically and emotionally.

If you want to be able to carry your own groceries from the store in your 80’s, then by lifting weights that are heavier than your shopping bags increases your physical capacity. Making the grocery bags a cinch to deal with.

It never fails to amaze or frustrate me that, women can carry a toddler around on one arm and a heavy bag in another but freak out at picking up a heavy set of dumbbells. If you want the capacity to be able to carry your grandkids around in your 60’s with the same ease, lift heavier in the gym than you do in everyday life.

Brain health benefits from the same principle. As a child you are constantly learning new things, how to crawl, walk, speak, do math (Ok, not sure that ever sunk in with me!). Then as an adult you learn a career perhaps you have several, then you retire and for the most learning stops. Why? The brain has an amazing capacity to change, adapt and learn new throughout your life. Like your muscles you need to work it! Without a stimulus such as learning a new skills and social interactions it slows down and becomes less able to perform those everyday tasks. It becomes fragile.

As a human being you can choose to always take the easy option which may lead to longevity with less quality or take the second option. Work a bit harder for the longevity and quality. For the sake of both my health and the planet I’ll take option 2.

“The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization” – Ralph Waldo Emerson.

It doesn’t have to happen!

For online 1:1 coaching that aims to build antifragile humans head to http://www.laurawoodley.com