High Intensity Training- Is it regaining popularity?

[Sisu]

The Norwegian physiologist Jan Helgerud is attacking the commonly accepted training methods of high volume, low intensity for endurance athletes. His theories have caused a firestorm of controversy in the ski world and specifically Norway, but without doubt, a new training movement is emerging, based on his theories. He has worked closely with Svein Tore Samdal the Norwegian women’s national team coach since 2003. Recently, I’ve seen that the US nordic ski team is incorporating his theories as well. His ideas are now starting to trickle out to other sports such as distance running, but without a doubt many are flatly rejecting his theories. It will be interesting to see how this develops, and when it starts getting tested in rowing. (I just started reading about him and his ideas, so I’m sure there is a lot of material on his theories that I have not seen.)

To quickly summarize how his training is being implemented by some of the Norwegian ski team:
1. This is during the off-season, base period of training.
2. Training blocks (conjugate periodization) of 2-3 weeks alternating between high-intensity, low volume blocks followed by classic lactate-based low intensity training blocks that incorporate low rep lifting.
3. High intensity weeks average 3-4 days of high intensity intervals. In some weeks the amount of interval days can be increased to over 6 times per week.
4. High intensity training is based on 4 X 4’ at 90-95% max heart rate, with 2-4 minutes active recovery.
5. The 2nd Block focuses on low intensity recovery matched with maximal strength lifting to improve efficiency through low reps (1-5) rather than endurance or hypertrophy lifting.

One of the big draw backs of his methodology is the increased susceptibility to illness. His program requires an extremely controlled measurement of intensities to avoid overtraining. One of the principles of his theories is that VO2 max can be improved by elite athletes. It is in direct conflict with almost all traditional research that has shown elite endurance athletes cannot improve VO2 year-to-year. I have not found anything published to explain why his methods would change this.

Anyway, I thought that this is interesting to review. He has not sold me on his ideas, but given the caliber of athletes experimenting with his ideas makes it worth investigation & reflection.

Looks like Caustic may have a friend in Norway!


Links to articles:
http://www.xcskiworld.com/training/Raci ... nce_no.htm
http://www.xcskiworld.com/training/Raci ... oaches.htm
http://www.xcskiworld.com/training/Raci ... aches2.htm
http://old.fasterskier.com/print.php?id ... 50e4ebb847
http://www.hofmag.com/content/view/224/41
http://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/Abstr ... in.16.aspx


In Norwegian: (Google Translation seemed to work fairly well)
http://folk.ntnu.no/oysteios/artikler/S ... 6-2003.htm
http://home.c2i.net/aboe/TEMA/Tema_1.html
http://www.sport1.no/sw4557.asp

[1xsculler]

Thanks for posting the links. It should make for interesting reading. Stuff like this makes Rowing Illustrated worthy of you donating to the Wolf to insure his incentive to keep improving the site. I have learned so darn much and gotten a ton of enjoyment from RI.

[MChase]

I guess the million dollar questions are:
Has the old training rule of three been gutted: duration, intensity and frequency? It's been reduced to intensity and frequency. That is appealing but I'm sure that it's been tried many times before, particularly in our society where time is often the limiting factor.

What about recruitment of muscle fiber type? High intensity/short duration recruits fast twitch preferentially over slow twitch muscles, but we know that the best rowers in the world have more slow twitch muscles. And slow twitch have more mitochondria for converting glucose to energy, and more mitochondria means less lactic acid.

What about lactate removal? There is no doubt that VO2 max can be improved through short, intense pieces, but VO2 max is not the end-all of winning a 2000m race. If performance degrades at 1500m due to overwhelming lactate (but with an increased V02 max), who cares? (Though doing short fast intervals in the endurance-trained athlete can improve lactate removal, does not mean lactate removal is even better by not doing long pieces).

What about improving rowing economy? If only, let's say, 17-25% of the energy expended during a 2K race goes into the water as power output, then increasing that 17% to 22% is huge-- nearly a 30% gain in power-applied-to-the-water without needing another breath of air. Does this improve rowing economy?

Lots of questions. I am skeptical of "too good to be true", but I also believe that while SS has huge benefits, it should not be done at the elimination of intervals, during any part of the season.

[Sisu]

I’m not a believer in Helgerud’s theories, but he is approaching it differently than most older high-intensity methods.

It is important to realize that though intensity is increased, he is not advocating explosive speeds during his intervals. Though these intervals are more intense that lactate threshold pacing, they are not executed until exhaustion. Rather his intervals spend more time at or near distance race pace but stop before high lactate levels are reached. As such, I think he would argue that his methods are not recruiting fast twitch muscle fiber outside of the maximal strength lifting.

The athlete’s technique-efficiency is one area that I think his method is appealing. Many criticize long slow distance training in that it makes an athlete’s form efficient for slow speeds, but the superior method to improve racing speed efficiency is through work actually completed at or near racing speeds. Some have criticized that for sports like nordic skiing, the reduced volume of his methods would require that the athlete has already developed good technique prior to his training. Since his intervals are not executed until exhaustion, it would be arguable that an athlete can still focus on good technique during the intervals. Technique would still be a focus of the recovery days.

Though he is using more intervals throughout the year, athletes are still using a very structured periodized system. Though not defined in what I found, I am rather certain that training methods during the competitive period are much different from this base period of training, similar to that of many low-intensity training programs in the comp. period. Additionally, some athletes are adopting a more complex conjugate block system incorporating his interval block less frequently, with 3-4 other blocks that have different focuses.

I would say that most exercise physiologists would agree that his methods could produce good results for an untrained athlete that is significantly below VO2 max potential. Even the low-intensity physiologist camp would agree that Helgerud’s methods would produce the greatest improvements in year one. Of course this group would argue that his methods offer a non-optimized method for year 2+. This is when/why I have such problems with his theories.

The other big point that I did not originally address is that this is originating in Norway, with some of the national team athletes and coaches. They do not mess around. Elite athletes in that country have absurdly detailed training logs with training testing results that go back through their entire competitive careers. They just don’t do anything willy-nilly. Low-intensity, high-volume training has been the bible for the past 20+ years for Norwegian endurance athletes of all sports. Getting their athletes and coaches to move outside of this training protocol is similar to converting the Pope. They have used low-intensity training with amazing results in running, x-c skiing, and rowing.

[Norm]

To steal from an old economics witicism:
"Put all the physiologists in the world end to end and they wouldn't reach a conclusion."

[caustic]

I guess the million dollar questions are:
Has the old training rule of three been gutted: duration, intensity and frequency? It's been reduced to intensity and frequency. That is appealing but I'm sure that it's been tried many times before, particularly in our society where time is often the limiting factor

The reason duration was always part of the rule of three was because in order to train up your aerobic system while training purely in the aerobic range, you need to do a LOT of training. However, high intensity training has been shown to not only train up the anaerobic system, but the aerobic system as well - so, you get more bang for your buck. You're working smarter by working harder. However, there is always a balance; you need more recovery time or else will run into overtraining. While even I could belt out 20K a day with my HR at 140 until the cows come home or I get bored off my a$$. But, if I bump it up to 180, I'll be able to do maybe 6K a day, and then after a week will have horrible erg times because I will not have had enough time to recover between workout.

What about recruitment of muscle fiber type? High intensity/short duration recruits fast twitch preferentially over slow twitch muscles, but we know that the best rowers in the world have more slow twitch muscles. And slow twitch have more mitochondria for converting glucose to energy, and more mitochondria means less lactic acid.

And I believe that to a post hoc, ergo propter hoc approach to training. If an athlete trains to emphasize slow twitch muscle movement, then they will obviously have the most slow twitch muscle. Rowing as a sport is notoriously behind the times when it comes to applying current training regimen, and definitely does not encourage experimentation in training methods at the elite level. This is somewhat understandable, since elite coaches are up at that level because of their current knowledge, not because of their experimentation.

This training mindset ignores the reality that muscle fiber composition is in fact plastic, not static - through modifying our training methods, we modify our muscle fiber composition.

The question, ultimately, is whether or not rowing as we currently race (2000m, 7min or less duration) is truly an occupation that is optimal for slow-twitch muscles. I would say no. Marathon running is literally over 900% longer. Why should we train like marathon runners? Yes, at the same time, we are not 100m sprinters either, I get that.

What about lactate removal? There is no doubt that VO2 max can be improved through short, intense pieces, but VO2 max is not the end-all of winning a 2000m race. If performance degrades at 1500m due to overwhelming lactate (but with an increased V02 max), who cares? (Though doing short fast intervals in the endurance-trained athlete can improve lactate removal, does not mean lactate removal is even better by not doing long pieces).

Which is a valid concern. However, high intensity training also has been shown to stimulate the development of increased blood vessels in the musculo-skeletal system, allowing for increase purging of toxins in the muscle.

What about improving rowing economy? If only, let's say, 17-25% of the energy expended during a 2K race goes into the water as power output, then increasing that 17% to 22% is huge-- nearly a 30% gain in power-applied-to-the-water without needing another breath of air. Does this improve rowing economy?

I don't know if you can attribute training wholly to rowing economy, as technical proficiency is also a major contributing factor for power transfer to the water, and even at the elite level, there is a wide variance of technical expertise.

Lots of questions. I am skeptical of "too good to be true", but I also believe that while SS has huge benefits, it should not be done at the elimination of intervals, during any part of the season.

Skepticism is never a bad thing, especially when dealing with new ideas that challenge a known "good enough" system. In a sense, you could say that today, on a training KNOWLEDGE basis, all countries are on the same competitive level; they all have programs that are modifications with the same theoretical underpinnings. But, this knowledge isn't really all that new, just being used in a new application. Tabbatta pioneered something very similar to this, but for mid-level athletes. Crossfit is a strong proponent of the high-intensity training methodology, and aspects of crossfit have percolated into higher-level training regimen over time. I think what this new data is is really a more formalized approach to determine if it's good, and if so, by how much.

[MChase]

A couple of years ago, we switched from SS as the primary workout type, to HIT. We did erg testing before the switch and then 2 months later after the switch. It was a disaster, so bad after testing that a car full of kids drove to my house that evening to ask how the wheels fell off. They were upset; I was upset. We switched back to primarily SS and starting building a better base. My lightweight eight went from essentially no improvement during those 2 months to 4th in GF at Youth's. I will remain a skeptic after that experience.

As caustic noted, stroke still matters. We know our lot in life-- we don't have big guns with killer erg scores. You hear numbers like a 6:20's average for a HW men's eight from some of these teams. We aren't even close.

[Sisu]

Just to add one more link. This is to a cross-sport review of endurance training intensities. There are some good rowing examples of Tufte, and the German National team.

http://sportsci.org/2009/ss.htm

[Michael]

MChase,

What did you do for the HIT?

[MChase]

Sisu- Great article. What a find.

Michael- For HIT, we varied the intervals and number, but the minimum interval was (without going back to our logs) 2 min; the greatest was probably 6 min. We did not use HR monitors back then.

The most vocal kids want more HIT and less SS. The problem is that they are young and they naturally believe that harder is better. I have to convince them that volume is better, but on those days when we stress speed, it's important to go fast. The younger the rower (and maleness) contribute to going to hard on SS and not hard enough on HIT. As the article suggested, the less mature the athlete, the more likely to merge toward the center.

This is my 5th or 6th year as varsity men's coach (I coached novice forever) and so I'm relatively inexperienced as compared to many on these boards, but my experience tells me that SS is way too important to dismiss easily.

Which reminds me-- anyone know of an study that calculates the total amount of work done (regardless of intensity) as it relates to VO2 max, lactate threshold, etc?

[Michael]

How many intervals/workout, how much rest between intervals, and how many interval workouts/week? And did you cap ratings, or just let them go?

As far as studies and such on lactic acid and VO2 max and that sort of thing, I just find someone who did a study that looks interesting, and then I call them. They usually love talking to some who actually designs training programs and that sort of thing. They're usually pretty interested in how things actually get applied. I guess it's a nice change for them. I called one professor who did a study a few years ago on rowers. I was the first rowing coach who had ever asked him about it.

[Almostflipped]

Anyone else catch this quote from the last link:

Rowers compete over a 2000-m distance requiring 6-7 min. Steinacker et al. (1998) reported that extensive endurance training (60- to 120-min sessions at <2 mM blood lactate) dominated the training volume of German, Danish, Dutch, and Norwegian elite rowers. Rowing at higher intensities was performed ~4-10 % of the total rowed time.

This is interesting because, anecdotally, the Danes are supposed to be the kings of intensity. Yet here they are mentioned as doing "extensive endurance training (60 to 120 min sessions at <2mM)". They were top dog at that point in time and it was shortly before Eskild set the lightweight 2k record. The devil's probably in the details of the plan, but I'd sure love to see what those details are.

[Michael]

I don't know what the Danes did for workouts, but if you don't do much between 2 and 4 mM, you're going to end up with a ton of time below 2 mM. Figure out how much water time you have, and multiply it by 10%, and figure out how many intervals you would have to do to fill that time. It's an awful lot of intervals. If you do, say 3x7' for a workout, and you're on the water for 90' for that workout, is that 90' of intervals, or 21'? I imagine it's 21. Without adjusting for power work in the warm-up, that's only 23% of that workout. So the week is going to be far below that, unless you do intervals every day.

To go over 10%, you need to be seat-racing at camp or on spring break, IF that's how they do the math.

[Trailer Monkey]

I guess the million dollar questions are:
What about recruitment of muscle fiber type? High intensity/short duration recruits fast twitch preferentially over slow twitch muscles, but we know that the best rowers in the world have more slow twitch muscles. And slow twitch have more mitochondria for converting glucose to energy, and more mitochondria means less lactic acid.

Fast twitch isn't recruited "preferentially." Rather, muscle fibers are recruited in an additive fashion, starting with the slow twitch fibers when the force required is low, and then adding more and more fibers (and eventually fast twitch fibers) as the demand for force increases. So high intensity work will recruit both slow twitch AND fast twitch fibers, while low intensity work will recruit only slow twitch fibers, and fewer of them.

[Sisu]

Which reminds me-- anyone know of an study that calculates the total amount of work done (regardless of intensity) as it relates to VO2 max, lactate threshold, etc?

Here is the German Jr. Program study with more details. I don't know if this is the type of info for which you were looking.
http://hk.humankinetics.com/eJournalMed ... N=28736738

Here are two more HIT or HIIT studies. I guess this training theory has been around for a fairly good amount of time.
1. Trained US cross country skiers 2 year study
http://www.pponline.co.uk/encyc/0671.htm
2. Rowing Initial Testing (just a 4 week period)
http://ecite.utas.edu.au/52259/1/Driller et al 2009.pdf